Mariana Francisca was born in 1931 in Burgos, Spain, in a haven for mice known as the Colonia Ruiz para roedores. The environment was one of hope: The mice had attained the right of voice; the humans had attained the right to vote. It seemed like the end of the Great Depression was in sight. But when Mariana reached adulthood, disaster struck: The Spanish Civil war had broken out. Fearing for her life, she fled Spain, and got her first job in another mouse colony... ironically as an immigration officer.

Being party to many of the internal proceedings of her new home's government, and having an outsider's perspective, Mariana suggested how many things could be done better, effectively streamlining the bureaucratic process while continuing to hold a low-level position. In 1940, her contributions were celebrated by replacing the abstract personification in the Seal of the Department of Immigration and the Census with her image.

About the drawing:
It should be no secret by now that I've been creating a world with a mouse government. I had pretty well figured out what makes it tick from its formation in the 1820's to about the end of the US Civil War. But then  DSJoel asked me, "Well, what are they like today?"

When I had to answer that I didn't know, I set to work rectifying this problem, trying to build the timeline from then to the present. Along the way I realized I needed a document from the Department of Immigration and the Census. So I pulled out my notes for the 1820s-1860s for what one of those looked like, and there was one, with the seal of the department at the top. Supposedly, each seal was created with an abstract personification and, as time went on, each one was supposed to be replaced by a notable member of that department. If I was making something 80 years into the future, one was sure to have appeared. But what would they be like? And so was born Mariana Francisca de los Angeles Roes.

About the name:
Spanish names typically consist of four parts: first name, middle name, last name and "second" last name (in actuality, the mother's maiden name). The names are often compounds (for example, a valid first name could be "Jose-María", and a valid second last name could be "Hernandez-Perez") which can lead to really, really long names. Having decided the character was from Spain, I wanted a really, really long name mostly for the fun of it, but one that would still be plausible, even to people who didn't know about this.

- Although "Mary" and its related forms are the most common female names in the western world, when I had to decide on a name for the character, I realized I had a notorious lack of "Mary"-based names in my repertoire. However, I wanted to keep "María" in case I needed it for another character. Hence, Mariana.
- I wanted an F for the middle name, as a forceful reminder to myself that it was Franco that she was running from. "Franco" comes from "Francisco". Since I didn't want the middle name to be of the "wrong gender" (I don't care how common it is in Spanish) I went with the female form, "Francisca"
- I wanted one of the last names to have "de los" something, just to make it longer. I picked "Ángeles" pretty much at random.
- "Roes" is the one thing I made up. It comes from roere, the Latin root for "rodent". I try to keep my mouse last names mousey because I doubt mice would, if left to their own devices, choose the same name as the humans around them. "Roes" is an intentional grammatical aberration: it nouns the verb (something not at all allowed in Spanish) and puts it into plural form, just to make it sound like a last name. I made it the second last name so that it would stand out more.