#in defense of satine kryze

[astrothii]

“star wars needs more flawed female characters” yall couldn’t even handle satine kryze

[short-wooloo]

So apparently the latest anti Satine bullshit is that she's not a mandalorian (and therefore is a colonizer) because she wasn't born on mandalore, but instead was born on Kalevala...

A world in the mandalore system, inhabited by mandalorians...

Ok first, y'all do realize that if being born on mandalore is the threshold for counting as a "real mandalorian" then that excludes a TON of characters from being mandalorian right? Like under this definition popular characters like Jango, Boba, and Din are not mandalorians

Second, this is some serious colonizer bullshit (that people use to call Satine a colonizer! Oh the irony)

"You're not a citizen/member of a culture if you were born outside the homeland" was a thing colonialists used to deny status and rights to people

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

In essence, the argument that Satine Kryze destroyed Mandalorian culture boils down to an overly simplistic perspective which reduces Mandalorian culture to violence and warmongering. The vitriol directed at Satine for “destroying” this stems from the fact that what she actually destroyed was the romanticised macho warrior fantasy which may be said to form the basis of many Star Wars fans’ obsession with Mandalorians. This fantasy is symptomatic of a wider obsession in Western media with romanticised representations of warrior societies, such as Japanese samurai, ancient Greek Spartans, mediaeval knights, and Roman legionaries. However, these representations are themselves oversimplified, and gloss over the real impact of the violence these groups participated in and perpetuated in favour of focusing on arbitrary ideals like honour and glory, much like how the impact of the violence in Mandalore’s history is frequently glossed over in attempts to make Satine into the bad guy. In this essay, I will-

[callmevexx]

Happy Valentine's day to them and only them💕❤️

[fellthemarvelous]

Satine Kryze said war isn't the answer to saving lives and people in fandom love to crucify her over her stance. She would know! She comes from a warrior society with a history of bloodshed and violence, but when she lost her family in the Mandalorian civil war, she rebuilt Mandalore alone and was chosen by the people to lead them through an age of peace, something she successfully did for almost 20 years.

She remained neutral during the Clone Wars because her own culture's history with war already knew war was always a game for power.

The war was even fought between manufactured soldiers.

Planets were forced to pick sides, and the ones who chose to remain neutral were strongarmed into the war one way or another.

Satine Kryze died refusing to pick sides. Everyone loses during a war.

She was the target of assassination attempts because she chose pacifism. She was a target because she chose peace. The Republic did not have access to Mandalore, a planet that would have ensured a victory for Palpatine much sooner.

She died not long before the end of the war and Mandalore fell into the clutches of the Empire when the Republic fell.

Palpatine hated her. Satine stood for everything he stood against.

And just to add to her awesomeness, Obi-Wan Kenobi almost left the Jedi Order to be with her.

[guildofscribes]

Okay, so I randomly had a Star Wars Thought and it has Overtaken my brain…

So in the last episodes of the Clone Wars, we all know how the galaxy is in chaos, Mandalore is in chaos, everything is in chaos, and somehow in all this Bo Katan has “seen the light” and wants to fix stuff.

So she appeals to the Jedi. Who are busy with a war they got conscripted into. But that’s all fine, really.

But when she doesn’t get the answer she wants, she tries guilt-tripping Obi-wan into helping using Satine. Her sister.

AS IF SHE HADN’T SPENT YEARS WORKING DIRECTLY WITH PEOPLE WHO WERE TRYING TO ASSASSINATE HER SISTER!!!

Like, woman!

The gall!

Obi-wan was the one who dropped everything to save Satine all those other times where you were trying to kill your sister! And now she’s dead! Because of your actions!

There are consequences for your decisions, my dear! Them’s the breaks!

You stripped the power out of your sister’s much wiser hands, and plopped it into the hands of insane wackos! What did you think was gonna’ happen? And it was Obi-wan who gave the best effort to save your sister from your bad choices!

Sorry, but that ship done sailed and sank, and you don’t get to trip any more guilt on that man, even on the (likely) chance he’d want to help your sorry carcass out of this mess you made.

But he can’t.

He can’t help you this time, so maybe you better pull on your Big Girl britches and figure it out yourself!

You made this mess, so maybe you get to clean it up too. I don’t know.

What you don’t get to do is drag the man through it on the one time he can’t drop everything and help you “for Satine’s sake”.

I don’t know.

That just seemed wrong to me.

Maybe I’m just sappy and tired.

Just a thought though, and I needed it out of my brain.

[duchess-of-mandalore]

I cannot tell you how over-the-two-moons-of-Mandalore I am about the Bo-Katan we got in “The Mines of Mandalore.” While I was hoping they’d treat her character with nuance and not make her a villain, I did expect that they’d immediately set her up as an antagonist to Din’s story. I also expected that we’d pick up in Season 3 with a Bo who was angry, frustrated, despondent, rude, and impulsive and I was ready to defend every one of those emotions.

I never expected the Bo we got in this episode.

She’s fierce and tough, depressed and hurting, but then we also get these sad smiles and longing looks and these beautiful moments where her gentler side comes through.

She’s wields the Darksaber with skill and precision and the expertise that comes with both practice and willingness to connect with the saber the way Kanan taught Sabine to do. That’s her sword.

But she’s honorable. She could have killed Din (or at least let him die) several times over. She could have taken the Darksaber. She could be bitter about the fact that he has it. 

Instead, we see her wield the Darksaber as an expert, and then place it back on the ground with the rest of Din’s weapons. 

I was scared we’d get a Bo that disregarded her character development in Rebels, but she’s proven that she’s still committed to fighting honorably for her people, just as she told Sabine to do.

And she’s just so ... beautifully soft.

We saw Bo be soft so rarely in TCW and Rebels, but Katee is leaning into giving Bo that gentle side.

Her immediate concern when Grogu shows up alone and willingness to go find his dad even though at first she’d been like “It’s Din Djarin. Let’s get rid of him once and for all.”

Each and every time she talks to Grogu, she’s so tender and calm. She encourages him when he’s scared and pushes his pram out of the way when she senses danger. She talks to him and knows he understands and tells him at least generally about the connection she’s had to Jedi in her life.

(In short, Bo loves babies!)

The way Grogu looks at her tells me he already likes and trusts her.

Plus she’s saved his dad several times now.

To be clear, I’m sure there’s going to be tension going forward, and I don’t expect Bo to always act as calmly and nobly as she did in this episode. She can be catty and rude and violent and I love that those are all parts of her character, too. 

But I also think it’s already clear that in terms of her desires for her people, this former terrorist is done fighting over petty differences. She doesn’t dismiss Din even though he’s a part of a group she considers a cult (and she would know) because he’s still her people. And she’s still has no higher desire than the reunification of her scattered people and for them to be able to live in peace in spite of their long history of (and her own participation in) civil wars. 

“I am not my sister.” 

No, but Bo-Katan is currently more like her than she ever has been.

[mrfandomwars]

There Is something to be said about Satine aka the Duchess of MANDALORE being chosen to lead and represent 1500 Neutral Systems.

Sure she started the whole thing but like, idk man, it seems like people trusted her And believed in Mandalore's strength enough to agree to join her neutral system council, when they could have well created it separately and simply invited the Mandalorian Sector to be a member and yet she was chosen to lead it, she made it and she led it and 1500 believed in her and followed her example

[azurecanary]

So if the Jedi's practice of zero attachment was what led Anakin to the Dark Side, then why didn't Obi-Wan go all Vader-y when Satine died?

Is it maybe that Obi-Wan understood the Jedi Way? And wasn't into committing genocide?

[direwolfrules]

Here, have some random Satine Rambles

I like to take a lot of the fandom misconceptions about Satine and the New Mandalorians and headcanon them as in-universe Death Watch propaganda.

Like the idea that Satine banned Mando'a. This is a weird one to me. So, Mando'a script is all over the place in Sundari. It's on the police speeders, it's on signs, it's on the wall of the Cadet Squad's dorm room, all of which is official government property and would have been some of the first places to have Mando'a removed if the ban was an actual thing. Also, Satine speaks Mando'a and Concordian (the dialect from Concordia and in Legends Concord Dawn). We as the audience don't see her speak Mando'a often because when she appears she's usually either:

1) Talking to someone whose primary language is Basic.

or

2) In a setting where slipping into Mando'a to talk to one person would be seen as undiplomatic at best.

Also, we as the audience don't primarily speak Mando'a, a fictional language with massive gaps in the canon vocabulary, and why would the Clone Wars crew put effort into translating a bunch of conversations into Mando'a for a kids show. They barely had an animation budget, you really think they had the money and time to translate politics into kid/teen-friendly language and then translate that into Mando'a?

Also, Pre Vizsla doesn't speak Mando'a in the show. I don't think he even says a single Mando'a word, which is less than what Satine says.

Or, the idea that Satine banned beskar armor. Here's the thing about armor, based a bit on real-life history. Armor is expensive. Especially well-forged armor. Especially well-forged armor made of a rare, extremely valuable metal with important cultural significance. And if centuries of strip mining depleted the supply of that already very rare metal, and damaged the ecosystem enough that mining it was banned? Well, now the price is at a point where anyone who isn't a noble or exceedingly wealthy can't afford new beskar. Even then, most noble families passed on their beskar through the generations, partly because of legacy and religion and also partly because obtaining new beskar was already ruinously expensive unless you took it from an enemy in war, which would have been ruinously expensive in other ways.

The fact that we barely see anyone wear beskar in Sundari isn't indicative of a ban on beskar armor, it means armor isn't a practical or attainable expense for the average citizen of Sundari. Sundari was a city at peace, before Sidious' plots and Vizsla's attacks. There was no need for anyone but the Mandalorian Guard to wear armor. Does a midlevel office worker need to wear armor to go about his job? Does a retail employee need the weight of beskar plate in addition to whatever stock they have to shelve? Unless you were a member of the warrior caste, which was primarily made up of nobles who either already had or could afford new beskar, you didn't need to be constantly armored.

And since we're talking about armor, the next logical misconception to discuss is the "weapons ban" that keeps getting brought up in every single "Satine Bad" fanfiction ever. When we first meet Satine, there is no weapons ban. Carrying weapons in a city at peace like Sundari is probably frowned on the same way carrying weapons on Coruscant's upper levels is frowned upon (if you're not Padme "Constantly-dodging-assassination-attempts" Amidala that is). It's a case of why would the average citizen need to carry a weapon, not them not being allowed to.

The first and only mention of a weapons ban in the show is when Ahsoka is welcomed to Sundari in "The Academy". Everyone's least favorite corrupt worm-man Almec says that after the trouble surrounding Master Kenobi's last visit, offworlders can't bring weapons into Sundari. It's literally just a ban for offworlders, which is reasonable when you figure out most of the terrorist group threatening to destroy your hard-fought peace and overthrow your government is based off-world.

And like, we see Mandalorians carry weapons. Satine has her deactivator, which we know from the actions of Rush Clovis and Lolo Purs can be a lethal weapon if used against organics. We see the Mandalorian Guards carry stun batons and shields, and some, like Captain Patrok Ru-Saxon, carried blasters to use as a last resort option. The Protectors, who at this point were Satine's bodyguards, had blunt-tipped spears that, judging by how they could be used to block blaster bolts during the warehouse raid in "Corruption", were probably made of beskar. Also in that same warehouse raid we see the Guard use flamethrowers.

Another common misconception is that Satine is opposed to any kind of violence, even in self-defense. This is not true.

As stated above, Satine carries a deactivator, a weapon primarily used to disable droids, but by its very nature of being a weapon designed to output high-level energy blasts can be lethal to organics. When she's using her deactivator she tells Obi-Wan, "Just because I'm a pacifist doesn't mean I won't defend myself".

And this is true. If Satine was so opposed to violence that she wouldn't fight back if threatened, she either would have died on the Coronet or been taken captive by the Separatists. She would have been killed back during the first confrontation with Vizsla, or during the arc on Coruscant. She would not have taken part in the warehouse raid. Satine was not opposed to violence in self-defense, she was opposed to violence as the first option and lethal violence as anything but a last resort.

One of the only times Satine doesn't fight back is when Pre Vizsla and his Death Watch soldiers invade the palace during the coup. If she had fought back, she would have given Vizsla exactly what he wanted: evidence of her betraying her ideals just when her people needed them the most, and an excuse to kill everyone on her side of the throne room. Satine made a choice to let herself be captured in order to spare as many lives as she could. And the minute she has a chance to escape, she takes it.

Then there's the common fandom idea that Satine is destroying Mandalorian culture, which is just ridiculous. Culture is more than just martial abilities and rigid clan hierarchies. It's food, art, clothing, language, etc. Satine telling her people they're not allowed to kill and bomb each other indiscriminately and empowering a central government over the hereditary clan-based caste system is not destroying Mandalorian culture, it's trying to save Mandalorian culture. After all, who'll be left to practice their traditions, to speak their language and sing their songs, if they wipe themselves off the face of the galaxy?

Mandalore had been jumping from one massive civil war to the next for generations, not to mention the wars against outside powers like the Republic. These are massive depopulating events. Each successive war does more and more damage to the planets in the Mandalorian sector. Mandalore went from a lush jungle to a desert. Concordia was nearly entirely deforested. A third of Concord Dawn is rubble drifting through space.

Satine made decisions that, until the machinations of the Sith, brought a level of prosperity and growth to Mandalore that it hadn't seen in living memory. The forests of Concordia were growing again. Trade was beginning to flow. Her people were happy and not constantly fearing war if one of the Houses took offense to something another one did.

Satine encouraged and promoted the aspects of Mandalorian culture outside of the martial domain. She was a patron of Mandalorian artists, and favored geometric designs and art styles, something that most Mandalorians also enjoyed. Her personal yacht was designed to display Mandalorian goods to representatives of other sectors/governments/galactic powers in order to promote trade and encourage a demand for Mandalorian goods. Her iconic dress with the massive headdress is meant to look like a mythosaur, with her earrings serving as the tusks.

She had that classic Mandalorian love for children. The only times we've ever seen her come close to compromising her principles was when children were threatened. When Mandalorian children were being poisoned by black market tea, she threatened the school's superintendent with violence. She was so enraged by the senseless deaths of many of the poisoned children she ordered the warehouse the black market goons had set up in burned down. When Almec went to torture Korkie and his friends she almost gave in to his demands, despite not cracking when she herself was under torture.

And New Mandalore in general was not a society built on cultural genocide like so many people in this fandom like to claim. In New Mandalorian Society a traditional kar'ta was present on many buildings, clothing (there are like five on the Academy's uniforms), and even hairstyles. Sundari's architecture was filled with geometric buildings that only really differed from the Clan Wren stronghold in height and number of turrets.

The real major difference between New Mandalorian culture and the old ways is those not of the noble, warrior caste had much less political power under the old system. New Mandalorian society is committed to peace, because many New Mandalorians are everyday individuals who now get a say in a diplomatic government instead of watching their system get crushed under leaders who only need to know how to fight well. Farmers don't have to worry about their local lord and his dumbass kid pissing off the neighboring lord, leading to a war that burns their fields and orphans their children. Business owners and employees don't have to worry about losing their shops/factories/office spaces in constant bombings.

Speaking of New Mandalorian society, another common misconception I see is people claiming Satine/New Mandalore was racist because it's all white blondes and brunettes. So like, that was a bad design decision by the Clone Wars crew, who wanted to make Mandalore look like space Scandinavia, and it's compounded by the reuse of models and assets. Korkie's class at the Academy has three groups of identical triplets. The crowds of Mandalorian citizens have so many repeated models, hairstyles, and the like, that there are more identical individuals there than on Kamino. The explanation there isn't "Satine is racist", it's "Cartoon Network gave them zero animation budget". Mandalore only got more diverse after Filoni got called out for it and had the budget and opportunity to fix it, which happened after Satine's rule ended.

Also, I see a lot of people taking the word of Death Watch members, children of Death Watch members, and Death Watch-aligned groups as gospel when it comes to Satine. Like, holy unreliable narrator Batman! If the person criticizing Satine is a member of the terrorist group dedicated to her death, a child of one of those terrorists who has probably been indoctrinated in Satine hate from day one, or a member of one of the splinter factions of that terrorist group, they're probably just a little bit biased, ya know? Satine's people genuinely loved her, Pre Vizsla had to stage elaborate schemes with Sith backing to sway the people's support away from her.

Oh, and people like to say that Satine was a bad leader/bad politician because she "left Mandalore weak" and "wouldn't join the Clone Wars". Which is just— did we watch the same show?

Joining the Clone Wars would have been Bad with a capital B. Palpatine wanted a Grand Army of the Republic presence on all the major worlds to facilitate his takeover when the time for Order 66 came. Mandalore was a priority target, remember when he doctored that footage of Satine's Deputy Minister to get the Senate to vote on sending troops?

Mandalore was along the Hydian Way, a major hyperspace route that was the site of frequent conflict. Mandalore's place on the Hydian Way, if they had joined either the Republic or the Separatists, would have made it and its vassal worlds battlefields. It would have devastated the hesitantly recovering Mandalorian people and the even more hesitantly recovering ecosystems of the planets.

Mandalore's position along the Hydian Way also meant that for some trade goods it depended on the CIS and for others it depended on the Republic, so committing to one side or the other would have made the already dangerous black market situation during the war even worse. What Satine did by declaring Neutrality and forming the Council of Neutral Systems was protect the interests of her people and form a voting block to prevent those interests from being trampled over.

Even with all its problems, Mandalore under Satine was strong, just going through issues many other worlds underwent during the war. Death Watch was a relatively new problem, as Pre Vizsla and his followers only got up the guts to act when their Sugar Daddy Dooku gave them Separatist backing. The food shortages were directly tied to the war disrupting the major trade route Mandalore depended on. Corruption amongst members of the government was a plot point in half the episodes of the show.

Mandalore only fell because Satine fell. Satine kept the war away from Mandalore as much as she could. Sideous couldn't get troops onto Mandalore while Satine was alive. With the exception of the very vocal Death Watch minority, the people were united behind her. It was only by running false flag operations with Maul's Shadow Collective that Death Watch was able to generate enough support to stage a coup. A coup that involved killing any government officials and trained warriors who refused to forswear their loyalty to the Duchess, thus robbing Mandalore of a considerable number of possible defenders and the people who knew how things ran and where the paperwork was filed.

If it wasn't for Vizsla's coup, and Maul's second secret coup, there would have been no need for Republic troops at the Seige of Mandalore, because there would have been no Seige of Mandalore. But there was, and Mandalore fell to the Empire. Which led to more internal Mandalorian on Mandalorian violence, which killed even more warriors. Which paved the way for the Night of a Thousand Tears.

[evaarade]

One thing that helps me deal with people who insist on hating on Satine for kicking out the traditionalists...

... Is that while people keep insisting that Satine exiled 'those poor warriors' they forget that One, the people she kicked out weren't the poor or anything, they were basically the rich guys.

We know the following:

There are clans that are warrior focused clans like the Vizsla's, meaning that Satine didn't exile warriors (aka the whole population) in general but a specific group of clans

Said clans we know were in power and had literally Nobility and Royal Tiles (Duchess, Princess, Countess...) + pieces of land (See, Krownest)!

Said clans were also the minority of traditionalists who wanted to keep the power in the warrior clans

... So basically she kicked the rich guys, even specifically only the minority of rich guys who refused to change their ways if you want to go with that interpretations

And so, every time someone tries to insist Satine was horrible for exiling warriors all I can think of is dude bros getting angry that the Elon Musk equivalent in Mandalorian culture was kicked out.

[maulfucker]

they made Satine the antithesis of mandalorian culture, when they should've made her wear the armor but forego the blasters

[short-wooloo]

Mandostans: "sAtInE bAnNeD aLl ThE wArRiOrS"

The Mandalorian Protectors: "we are literally standing right here"

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

The thing about Duchess Satine is that, if she was really as bad a leader as people make her out to be, her political opponents wouldn't have had to keep making up things that she was doing wrong.

Like, they wouldn't have had to rely on a doctored recording to make her seem incompetent. Death Watch wouldn't have had to go through that whole performance with the Shadow Collective to make her seem weak. Almec wouldn't have had to pin Pre Vizsla's death on her.

If she was actually a terrible leader, they wouldn't have had to rely on lies and manipulation to turn the population against her and remove her from power.

[callmevexx]

Mand'alor Satine❤️

(Based on a cosplay post by ariii.mai on insta)

[fellthemarvelous]

I wonder where we've heard that before!!!

Hmmmm....

Every time I see someone demonize Satine Kryze, I find myself one day closer to my supervillain origin story.

Side note: This isn't the post to air your anti-Jedi bullshit either. A lot of y'all demonize the Jedi just as badly as you do Satine. We don't do either of those things on this blog.