Theodore's mother died sometime before 1490, and his father sent Theodore, then still a child, to live with his great-aunt, Mara Branković. Mara was the daughter of Đurađ and Irene, who had been taken as one of the wives of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II. After Murad's death in 1451, Mara was allowed by her stepson Sultan Mehmed II, to retire to her estate at Ježevo, where she "maintained a privileged and protected enclave of Christian faith" (Nicol). It was in this "exalted and privileged" environment that Theodore was brought up, and it was there that he learned to speak some Turkish and acquired first-hand knowledge of Turkish customs and history. In 1503, he visited the Ottoman capital of Constantinople to aid his brother Alexander, who had been brought to financial ruin by the recently concluded Ottoman–Venetian war and the Ottomans' confiscation of Venetian goods. Upon his arrival, he found that his brother had died in the meantime. From 1509, he was forced to leave Venice and live in exile in France. It was during this exile that he composed the first draft of his history, which he dedicated to King Louis XII. This first version was translated into French by Balarin de Raconis in 1519, and was published in a modern edition in 1896 by C. H. A. Schéfer.