#maul is cunning; din is withholding but largely straightforward.

[loveoaths]

new rarepair concept: maul/din. maul and din are opposites in many ways, which is very fun and spicy, but one thing they share that makes their pairing intriguing is their commitment to faith, and their interplay with doubt.

din is the portrait of the devout man. he lives and breathes the Creed, tithes large portions of his pay to the covert’s operations and foundling care. being a true mandalorian, paying back the culture that saved him and raised him, is everything to him. weapons are his religion but children, foundlings, are his culture’s future. they are the way. and din, adherent to the Creed, is charged with escorting a child across the Galaxy, until the child becomes his child, his foundling, and part of his new clan. grogu becomes din’s present and his future. the season 3 trailer implies din will be questioning his faith and history at some point, with grogu and his new impromptu fatherhood as the catalysts.

meanwhile, maul is sith, through and through: raised in the dark side, molded by it, until he chose it. unlike other apprentices, maul’s commitment is to the sith ideology rather than to his master. maul believes in the sith mission — galactic supremacy, a new age of darkness, carnage giving way to utter chaos and then absolute control. he believes so ardently in the rule of two because it is, by design, a strict lineage: you take your lumps now, abase yourself to your master, slave away at their feet, because one day they will be dead or weak enough to kill, and you will kill them and usurp their throne, as is the sith way. the strong eat; the weak are meat. this belief keeps him loyal to the sith ideology even after sidious abandons him, even after dooku is gone and anakin takes his place at sidious’ side. maul’s desire to destroy anakin stems from many sources, but arguably chief among them is maul’s vision of a future without legacy. he realizes sidious has no intention of adhering to the sith rules: he doubts sidious ever intends to die or be killed, to let anakin take throne as the next high Sith Lord, and anakin will never take an apprentice and carry the faith. sidious’ empire is not sith, but his and his alone; the sith lineage will die with sidious. and THAT is what maul can’t stand: the destruction of his faith, his culture, his right to a legacy.

so maul takes it upon himself to secure a new lineage and carry the faith on his own, and becomes desperate for a protégé to serve him and continue his legacy.

so at the end of the day, you have a pairing of two competent and violent men who are shockingly soft spoken, who are responsible for a force-sensitive child (maul doesn’t have one yet, but listen, who is to say he doesn’t pass himself off as a Jedi and try to take grogu or something), who care about their legacy and lineages enough to die for them, who, in questioning their relationship to the faith that is their lifeline, wind up adjusting their view of and strengthening said faith and growing into a new understanding of themselves. and they have the whole “i wield the darksaber” thing in common.

tl;dr: maul/din would be a cool and hot pairing between two extremely guarded and violent men who are earnestly looking for/looking after a child, while grappling with their faith, their future, and, hopefully, one another.