Can I ask what Maria & Antonio’s relationship has been like through the ages? Like, Al & Arthur have Crown Prince vs Old King, but what’s the vibe with Maria & Antonio? She was Crown Jewel of Spanish Empire. Do Spain & Cuba view each other as Father-Son? What about the rest of Central & South America? Also, Brazil & Portugal? Sorry for so many questions.
hey! thanks for the question—i will focus just on Maria (Mexico) and Antonio here, whom i have the clearest headcanons for.
how i personally headcanon it: Antonio and Maria are somewhat similar, but also different from Arthur and Alfred— so, a father/daughter dynamic. he is her "father"—in the usual, loaded nation sense of 'his actions caused her to come into being' and/or 'he has shaped her culturally'. just as in human families, not all fathers are good ones: so father-daughter here doesn't mean 'this is a healthy, cosy domestic dynamic'. after all, imperialism also shapes people and families intimately; Antonio is her "father" similarly to how Arthur is to Alfred—it's the dynamic of imperial power, authority and lineage. from the POV of humans who saw them both in 16th century Mexico City, they read them as 'oh, a spanish lord and his mestiza daughter.' he does have her officially legitimised (as some conquistadores historically did with their multiracial children).
nonetheless, like all nations, she isn’t born the human way. and in reality, she has more than two "parents"— at the very least, from a young age she'd been aware also of her connection to Mexica (who headed the powerful Triple Alliance commonly referred to as the "Aztec Empire") and Tlaxcala (another Nahuatl-speaking state and Mexica's long-time enemy, who made an alliance with the Spanish and furnished most of the soldiers during the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica seat of power. Antonio's actions contributed to her being born—but so did Mexica and Tlaxcala's. thus, while Antonio tries to assert cultural dominance (speaking Spanish and religion for example), Maria always navigated it differently, rather than him being able to transplant his culture wholesale (such as with how cultural syncretism occurred re: religion in Mexico) because it was simply impossible for her not to be unaware of her non-European heritage. as i see it, from young, she was always fluent in Nahuatl (the language of both Mexica and Tlaxcala), not just Spanish.
