Maria

In my original writing of West World, I outlined the entire history of the character Maria, and how she ends up where she is.  I immediately threw all of this out, because I realized it might be more interesting if the reader was fed information about her a little at a time.

One thing that I thought would be important about Maria is that she had her childhood ripped away by the Latanian Civil War - a war between people on Latanus who wanted to preserve the planet, and those that wanted to sell the planet's resources out for economic advantages.  Used as a soldier from childhood, she would feel that her femininity was ripped away, as well.  In the West World stories, therefore, Maria is usually described as wearing frilly and extravagant dresses to overcompensate for these feelings that she has.  She actually feels more comfortable in a uniform and with a gun at her side.

Maria Castillo was one of the earliest characters created for West World.  As I was writing the outline for the story, though, I couldn't decide on something I wanted to do at the end of the story.  I solved my problem by splitting Maria Castillo into two characters, with Ms. Keym being formed out of one half of the original Maria Castillo character.