Bayezit did indeed die of natural causes, his spirit broken from having lost his throne to a reviled and defiant son. Whatever the truth, Bayezit’s death on the road to Dimetoka surely pleased Selim, particularly since it occurred outside Istanbul, providing him with plausible deniability. Later historians, hoping to avoid the suggestion that any sultan’s reign could be illegitimate—even the first to involve the overthrow of a sitting sultan—were loth to assign blame for Bayezit’s death to Selim.
