#markovia

Spoiler: very little. And we also need to separate what’s actually true from what’s just part of Tara’s cover.

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of LET’S OVERANALYZE EVERYTHING!

Am I dumb guys. Have we been knowing this???

Markovia mentioned in Superman 2025??? Guys she’s gonna be in the dcu omg.

Maybe if we use all the various places Markovia has been put on a map we can actually triangulate where it would be.

Idk how to triangulate but here they are on one map

I’m actually somewhat suprised by how western it seems I guess I just took BATO calling it “east Germany” as a fact and never actually considered where it was. But apparently on the wiki it’s been called west Europe more often than east

Bear in mind that everything I'm about to say is headcanon, based both on my interpretation of multiple continuities of comics, and on my own imagined history of Markovia which I've posted about before.

The picture we see of Markovia isn't a pretty one. Assuming that the few named Markovian characters are representative of the country's demographics, there appears to be strong ethnic stratification in the society. Markovia can be divided into these strata:

- the Markovs themselves, descendants of Slavic margraves elevated to royalty

- German lesser nobility and high-ranking officials. Wittings, Muller, the barons DeLamb, etc.. Some of these collaborated with the Axis in World War 2.

- a lower class composed of a mix of the above two with the country's pre-imperial Gallo-Romance substrate. Fleet Delmar is an example.

I think it's fair to call Markovia a semi-constitutional monarchy. The king exercises more power than you see in neighboring "crowned republics" like the Netherlands and Luxembourg. During the civil war, King Gregor commands troops on the field. The Outsiders are his agents, not answerable to anyone else in the government. In Outsiders Vol. 1 #21, Markovia's first elections are personally overseen by his majesty, and the most that the enthusiastic American reporter can say of the future prime minister is that he will "attend to many of the duties of state", implying that the new system still guarantees some power to the first and second estates. If Markovia existed IRL it wouldn't be allowed to join the European Union.

Through this lens, Bedlam's coup can be read as a grab for power by the second stratum against the first, something the Nazis likely promised Markovia's ethnic German elite in exchange for collaboration back in wartime. While I think Gregor's heart is probably in the right place (if only because I know he was written by Americans as the good guy), his democratization, such as it is, can be read cynically as an attempt to give the second estate some power and allow them to settle disputes with the government without resorting to arms. (It doesn't appear to me that Markovia has a movement of working-class neo-nazi skinheads like other countries - the only glimpse of the far-right we see in the comics comes from the aristocracy). Members of the third estate can attain some wealth and influence (as I think is evidenced by Martina Dementieva), but it's possible that they're still shut out of politics, de facto if not de jure; I remind the reader that besides known Nazi collaborator Frederick DeLamb, every Markovian politician we see in the comics has a German first and last name. Though he's a villain, you can see why Fleet Delmar felt Markovia needed a savior and a freedom fighter.

Now, on to Tara. Like many comic fans, I like to pick and choose from different canons to inform my "ideal" version of the character. For the most part, my take on Tara is informed by the events of Deathstroke Rebirth, with bits of New Earth thrown in. There is one lost character trait that I like to preserve from New Earth and the Dark Multiverse, though: Tara's bigotry. Tara is not a neo-nazi. Having spent most of her life in America, I doubt she cares much about the conflicts of Markovia's upper class that I describe above. The lesson she takes from the country is simpler:

Might makes right. Power ought to belong to the powerful. The Markovs and Bedlam can fight all they like over race and royalty, but looking in from outside the country's history and ideology, Tara can see clear as day that Markovia already is the world she thinks is ideal. Markovia is a country where superpower correlates with social power.

I want to be clear that I am describing a flaw in Tara's character. I like Tara, but I like her as a villain, and if my version of her were to be redeemed this is one of the things she'd have to give up. Still, while I don't endorse her ideology, I think it's useful to put yourself in her shoes. Tara spends her childhood in disgrace and her early adolescence on the street. But for a brief moment, she sees a world where it doesn't have to be that way. After she's experimented on, and especially after her brother's meta gene is activated, she can see and read about a world where powerful metahumans like her command armies, live in luxury, make laws and stand above them. She reads about her brother Brion putting down riots and being praised as a hero for it. And, being Viktor's daughter, she knows how easily it could have been her in that palace, rightly ruling the "zillions of maggots" who, in America's class society, were allowed to use, abuse, buy and sell her (and her mother, in my reading). She's misidentifying the source of her problems, of course, and is culpable for this belief - but you can see how it seduces her.

This aggrieved entitlement is a psychological engine for villainy, as it is in real bigots. Tara believes that the strong should do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. She counts herself among the strong. And yet, she has suffered much and done little. Tara might be right to believe that the world shortchanged her. She didn't deserve to be raised by a poor single mother because her father was a deadbeat. She didn't deserve to have her mother killed before she was old enough to take care of herself, or to be cast out onto the street. But because of her early exposure to this eighteenth-century dystopia and her pretension to royalty, she thinks she deserves not only the needs of any child, but to rule the weak. With this psychology, you can understand better why she hates the Titans so much. Not only are they defying the natural order by helping the weak, but they're also lifting up the people Tara hates for denying her her birthright. You can tell why she respects Brion when she doesn't respect the Titans - for all his efforts helping the weak, Brion is still a Markov, and still enjoys power over his subjects. She doesn't call herself Markov because she loves her father, but because she feels she deserves the power and status the Markovs enjoy in their kingdom.

This hate, by the way, is the only way I'm willing to accept this line from the end of the Judas Contract: