Everything We Know About Maldonia
Ah, Maldonia. It's mentioned a few times in TPatF and despite Naveen literally being Maldonian, we know very little about it. Or do we? In this post I will summarise everything we know about Maldonia and I hope to, in follow -up posts, propose a location for it, as well as a cultural foundation for it, based on everything we currently know
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What Do We Actually Know
From the Movie:
-It's a "small yet golden kingdom in an obscure unheard of part of the globe" as stated in the newspaper we see. Also the same newspaper features a photo of Naveen on a background which perhaps could be Maldonian architecture
-Naveen "[comes] from two long lines of royalty" - Dr Facilier during Friends on the Other Side, it is unknown whether the union between the two lines created a brand new kingdom of Maldonia or Maldonia was a preexisting kingdom that became enlarged
-The (possibly simplified) royal crests for the two royal lines are as seen below, one with a teal wall with a red looking sky and perhaps red outlines of mountains, and the other with also a teal wall but with a grey sky and a grey outline of waves. Both as seen on Naveen’s first tarot card from Dr Facilier's reading
-The princes are named Naveen (a name common throughout all of India and its many languages) and Ralphie (a diminutive of Ralph which has a common usage in the Germanic languages)
-Naveen has a unique accent (in meta, a combination of his voice actor's natural Brazilian Portuguese accent with French), due to being a native speaker of Maldonian
-Naveen, in addition to Maldonian and English, also has a proficiency in French as seen in Ma Belle Evangeline
-"Across the sea" - Dr Facilier during Friends on the Other Side, so definitely not part of North America
-Here is a potential gross (not gross like ew gross) structure of the castle, also seen on Naveen’s first tarot card, this also potentially implies that Maldonia is on an island as it looks to be surrounded by water
-Lawrence, Naveen’s valet, is British
-Some Maldonian words eg Di Fraggi Pruto, a constructed language with strong surface level similarities to English and romance languages
-"East of the sun and west of the moon" as stated by one of the directors in the commentary, aka it could be anywhere
-Polished marble is part of the Maldonian castle's architecture
-In the Stop and Smell the Roses deleted scene, Naveen states that between 28 and 29 in Maldonia (referred to with its earlier name Maldakesh) there exist two numbers twenty-badini and twenty-caldonsez. However it is unknown whether this is actually true, still considered canon, or if Naveen was simply messing with Tiana
From the Books:
-In Tiana's Perfect Plan, a servant of Maldonia who aids Tiana is named Raha, which is an Arabic name
-In the Something Old, Something New, we see that the Queen's helpers are of various ethnicities
-In Tiana's Winter Blues, Naveen confirms that there isn't a cold winter season in Maldonia and we can see some Maldonian architecture in a photo
-" In Maldonia, we always left a little plate of cakesbout for Grandfather Frost" - Naveen in the Pocket Princesses comic In with the New
-In the Palace Pets story (yes, yes I am going to use Palace Pets) Bayou, the Little Pony Who Lovee to Rance, we can see what appears to be part of the Maldonian royal garden and hills of palm trees
From the Ride:
-In the Tiana's Bayou Adventure ride's queue, we can see a Maldonian cookbook Meals of Maldonia authored by someone called Nio/Nia/Nib Maldonado, a surname which seems very Portuguese/Spanish
-As confirmed by the ride's character model sheets, the Queen wears a sari and in other appearances such as the wii game she commonly wears a brooch
-The imagineering team refers to Maldonia as a "country of likely of mixed race"
From Miscellaneous Sources:
-According to Randy Haycock in an online interview, he looked at various South American, Mediterranean and Indian models to design Naveen’s appearance
-In the first and only concept art we publicly received from the now scrapped Disney+ Tiana series (rest in peace), in the reflections of the puddles on the ship that Tiana's on, we can see more of the aforementioned palm trees
...and that's all I've got!
If you're curious about any of the sources, be sure to message me however you want, and also be sure to add anything that I've missed!
