nexusbeing:

TRANSIA AND THE POSSIBILITY OF MUSLIM MAXIMOFFS.

_{back again with another meta, this time on region and religion. aka me rambling about transia and, in turn, religion in the region. ***it should be noted that as it stands, wanda is pagan. she is even friends with hecate (yes, that hecate) and so her current religious beliefs won’t be disputed here. this is more based on her childhood. i first wrote about this a whopping three months ago and have finally gotten back to actually explain my basis for the headcanon as well as to provide some examples.} 

_{first, where are wanda and pietro from? they were born and raised in TRANSIA, a fictional balkan country. i am going to be taking a lot of my information on transia from the 2010 arc of iron man legacy, as it has pretty much the most well-developed idea of what the country is like. first — when iron man goes to transia, it is mentioned it shares a border with macedonia. this is such a clue! this dispels that popular idea that transia could share a border with romania (it was even once stated that romanian was the dominant language of transia, which i used as my canon as well … but now i don’t think that is quite right), because macedonia is a decent distance away from romania. *** in an older comic, transia is mentioned to share a border with slorenia (a stand-in for bosnia), which would be geographically impossible unless transia was actually a part of serbia. BUT…..if transia is being used as a stand-in for kosovo, which i think it is, that WOULD be possible. because kosovo was a disputed territory of serbia up until 2008, when it declared independence. so if that comic was written prior to kosovo’s independence (which it was), the idea makes sense. not to mention that the majority of kosovo’s romani population are muslim! so that is what i am going to go with.}TLDR; TRANSIA IS A STAND-IN FOR KOSOVO. 

_{so, in iron man legacy, tony stark is horrified to find out that his weapons are basically being used as genocidal tools on transian roms. iron man travels to transia and is hosted by a transian romani woman named nina, who tells him about her family being slaughtered by the transian slav paramilitaries when her neighbor sold them out. she actually describes it in pretty graphic detail –}

_{“he and the zmaj took them, and the other muslim men and boys in our village, to a field where a broken down school bus was propped-up on cinder blocks. inside the bus, that’s where they slit their throats. darko said they saved ammunition that way.”}

_{details. details. details. they are SO important. nina almost interchanges the words romani and muslim when she speaks, which alludes to the idea that most (if not all) roms in transia were muslim. here is another:}

_{“he and my husband grew up together, just as our sons did. slav and muslim. no one noticed the difference…not until the zmaj. i didn’t think a person could change that quickly. that means darko…all the other transian slavs. they always hated romani. all they needed was an excuse to show it.”}

_{if there is such a high percentage of muslim roms in transia, who’s to say that marya and django maximoff weren’t muslim? based on this evidence, it actually seems MORE likely that they would have been muslim than, say, orthodox christian. this gives an even richer perspective for wanda and pietro. ethnically romani and jewish, raised by roma muslims.} TLDR; CAMI JUST PROVED THAT WANDA AND PIETRO MAXIMOFF WERE RAISED MUSLIM. _{ok, not really, but it is a definite possibility. and it’s been folded into my canon, which is the only canon that matters. i was going to include more in this post BUT instead i think i am going to make an entire separate post on overlapping cultural customs, because i want input from a few different people and really want to spend a good chunk of time digging into it and making sure i have my facts straight.}