who would maddison jaizani and juliette motamed be in the medina-verse?
Maddison Jaizani would be a werewolf who has already triggered her curse and is actively struggling with what that means. She would be Iranian, and I imagine Medina came across her during one of her travels. While Medina rarely ventures into Iran itself, simply because it is too painful for her to return to a place she remembers as Persia and be confronted with the fact that the home she knew no longer exists, she still spends quite a lot of time in the surrounding countries. There is something about the air, the landscape, and the warmth of the sun that reminds her she is close to home, even when that home hasn't existed for centuries.
I would name her Roxanak Al-Hashim.
I think Medina and Roxanak's first encounter would actually be rather brutal. Medina comes across her during a full moon, when Roxanak is completely out of control, and somewhere during that encounter, Roxanak manages to bite her. Of course, this is Medina we're talking about. The venom is dangerous, certainly, but when you are a siphoner, having magic literally coursing through your bloodstream in the form of supernatural venom creates a rather convenient solution. Medina simply siphons it out of herself before it can kill her.
Roxanak, however, is absolutely horrified when she realizes what she did the following morning.
And I think that is what gets Medina.
Roxanak would remind Medina of herself. Not necessarily because their circumstances are identical, but because Medina remembers what it was like to wake up after losing control and realize that someone else had paid the price for it. She remembers being newly turned, frightened, directionless, and horrified by what she was becoming. Most importantly, she remembers how much the kindness of a stranger changed the trajectory of her existence. Someone once offered Medina compassion when it would have been considerably easier to condemn her, and I think she would recognize an opportunity to do the same for Roxanak.
So Medina makes her a moonlight ring.
Not because she believes Roxanak should never have to confront what she is, but because she doesn't believe suffering through an uncontrollable transformation every month somehow makes someone morally stronger. If Medina possesses the ability to alleviate that suffering, she sees very little virtue in withholding it.
I don't think the two would remain particularly close afterward, though. Their paths would separate naturally, and Roxanak could eventually become surrounded by werewolves who hold much harsher beliefs about vampires. Perhaps she is taught that vampires inherently view werewolves as lesser beings, or that vampirism represents some unnatural superiority forced upon the supernatural world.
Medina wouldn't agree with that whatsoever. She doesn't believe vampires are inherently superior to werewolves, or humans, witches, or anything else. If anything, after eight centuries of watching vampires behave atrociously, she'd probably find the concept of vampire supremacy rather embarrassing.
That could make a future reunion between them interesting. Medina remembers Roxanak as the frightened young woman she helped; Roxanak remembers Medina as the vampire who proved everything she has since been taught isn't necessarily true, assuming this entire encounter was set in the modern world.
First of all: yes. Stunning. And I absolutely see the vision.
Juliette Motamed would work beautifully as Edin Abaan, a relatively young vampire who enters Medina's life for one very specific reason:
She has been sent to find her.
Up until this point, we know Medina would rather bury herself alive than willingly confront her sire. As far as Medina is concerned, he believes she died alongside the rest of his bloodline, and she would very much like to keep it that way. For centuries, that was actually achievable because Medina made a deliberate effort to remain anonymous. She traveled, changed identities, avoided building reputations that could follow her, and generally ensured that very few vampires knew enough about her to put the pieces together.
The problem is that modern Medina isn't doing a particularly spectacular job of remaining in the shadows anymore.
More vampires know her. She's forming meaningful relationships. She's involving herself in supernatural conflicts. She's making enemies at a somewhat alarming rate. She is even willing to step in and save a few people because at her very core she isn’t a villain, she understands that she isn’t morally good or evil, she is just somewhere in between. And as guarded as she is in terms of emotions, she doesn’t turn her back on those that need help, though only if it is under supernatural circumstances. But with that comes people that see her do certain things, most dangerously, people know that she is a vampire who can practice magic.
And vampires gossip (probably doesn’t help Medina is quite pretty and at times just leads people on because she felt like it, hence Alessio).
Medina might be careful about revealing her history, but she cannot control what hundreds of other people say about her. Eventually, someone is going to mention the strange vampire witch thing who seemingly appeared from nowhere. Someone else mentions that she's ancient. Another remembers hearing the name Medina. Perhaps nobody individually knows enough to expose her, but eventually those fragments reach precisely the wrong person.
And I think what makes that revelation particularly powerful is that he doesn't necessarily hear, Medina survived.
He hears something closer to: There is an approximately eight-hundred-year-old vampire practicing witchcraft, nobody knows who turned her, nobody knows where she spent most of her life, and her name is Medina, and she is dangerous.
Especially because I think that losing an entire sireline would have profoundly affected him. Imagine having created generations of vampires, watching your bloodline spread across centuries, only for all of them to disappear when you died. Every vampire remaining in the world belongs to someone else's lineage. Whatever legacy you created has seemingly been erased, done, out of sight and out of mind.
Except for Medina, and to hear that she has actually a full blown heretic, capable of frightening people to the degree that they whisper about her in confusion.
Technically, she may no longer be magically connected to him, but I don't think he would consider that relevant. He made her. Therefore, in his mind, she is his vampire. His lineage. His legacy. And by that same logic, any vampire Medina subsequently created could arguably be regarded as an extension of his line, that is if they were turned after his demise.
There's a question gnawing at him too: How did she survive?
Perhaps his immediate conclusion is that Medina somehow severed herself from him. If the rumors say she's capable of magic, that explanation becomes plausible enough.
And that's where Edin enters.
I wouldn't make Edin that old either. Her being recently turned specifically for this assignment is considerably more interesting. Medina knows old vampires. She understands their mannerisms, their arrogance, and the particular ways centuries of immortality shape someone.
So her sire does something much cleverer, he chooses someone Medina might actually feel compelled to help.
Edin is of Iranian descent. Young. Newly turned. Seemingly frightened and completely out of her depth. Perhaps even her personality has been considered when choosing her. Her purpose isn't initially to capture Medina or hurt her. She's simply supposed to locate her, confirm her identity, observe her abilities, and determine whether this really is the same woman her sire knew eight centuries ago.
The spying probably lasts about five minutes.
Because this is Medina we are talking about.
Edin might successfully track her down. She might even manage to enter Medina's property unnoticed the first time. But Medina is paranoid for a reason, and eight hundred years of survival have made her exceptionally attentive to disruptions in her environment. Something has changed. Someone has been nearby. Someone keeps appearing where they shouldn't.
Eventually, Medina catches her.
But this is where Edin being a young woman becomes incredibly useful. Medina is considerably more patient with women, particularly those who appear frightened or vulnerable. If Edin immediately spun some story about being newly turned, pursued by vampire hunters, abandoned by whoever made her, and having nowhere else to go, Medina wouldn't instantly trust her, but she would listen.
And listening is all Edin needs, because then Medina lets her stay temporarily.
Temporarily becomes several nights.
Several nights become weeks.
And somewhere along the way, the assignment becomes a relationship.
That's where I think Edin gets really good.
She starts out gathering information deliberately. She asks innocent questions. Medina gives vague answers. Edin remembers them. She notices the magic. She learns Medina's routines, relationships, weaknesses, and habits. She discovers which subjects make Medina uncomfortable and which memories make her soften. Every tiny detail gets passed back to the person Medina has spent eight centuries avoiding.
But eventually, Edin actually starts caring about her.
And Medina begins caring about Edin.
Perhaps Medina even sees something of her younger self in her, just as she did with Roxanak. She starts teaching her how to exist as a vampire without surrendering herself completely to hunger. She protects her. She gives her somewhere safe to sleep. Maybe she even makes her daylight jewelry.
Meanwhile, Edin knows exactly who is waiting at the other end of every report, and she might start to question why he didn’t bother to get her a daylight ring before sending, or rather commanding, her off.
That makes the eventual betrayal so much worse because Medina isn't merely discovering that someone lied to her. She's discovering that everything she told Edin has been traveling directly back to the one person she constructed eight centuries of secrecy to escape.
And there's an especially painful irony there: Medina's character development is partially about realizing that hiding forever isn't living. She finally starts allowing herself to form relationships and become visible, and visibility is precisely what allows her past to find her again.
That doesn't mean Medina was wrong to stop hiding but it would make it hurt.
I also wouldn't necessarily have Edin remain loyal to the sire forever. Her eventual choice could become the heart of her arc. She was created for him, given a purpose by him, and sent to infiltrate Medina's life, but Medina may ultimately become the first person to treat her as though her existence belongs to herself.
So eventually Edin has to decide whether she is his creation or her own person. And Medina, of all people, would understand exactly what that question feels like. But on that note, I don’t think Medina would go through the trouble to then try to recreate what the coven did a long time ago to her. Because Edin might beg her to server the connection for her as well, but I don’t think Medina would. Not so much because she doubts that she could recreate that ritual but more so, and I feel like this has been not addressed directly yet, but Medina is extremely traumatized because of that ritual. Being changed down into water that then started to boil with her along is not something she wants ever to experience again.
I think between the two concepts, Roxanak expands Medina’s present day world, while Edin actively advances Medina’s central lore.
