Obitine's Year on the Run: What We Know About the Timeline
I can't believe that I've never made a masterpost for this issue. But I've seen several posts about it recently, so it's time.
It's always been difficult to sus out when what year Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Satine spent on the run (and whether or not a certain "nephew" could actually be Obitine's secret child) ... made even more difficult because currently the CANON explanation (originating in a 2021 reference books) is simply wrong.
So let's figure out what the most reasonable answer is AND where the reference book authors erred.
Let's start with the timeline as it applies to Obi-Wan's life, and then we'll see how it compares to the Mandalorian context:
I got into The Clone Wars during 2020. At that time, we didn't have a canon year for the Year on the Run. All we knew from the show is this ...
So starting off, our date range for the Year on the Run is between 44 BBY and 32 BBY. Those are the years Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon's padawan.
Claudia Gray's Master and Apprentice (2019) also gave us a little more clarity. This book takes place in 40 BBY when Obi-Wan is 17 years old. The fact that Mandalore is not mentioned in the book is a mark in favor of the idea that the Year on the Run hasn't happened yet (as are Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's character and relationship dynamics: for example, Qui-Gon says that Obi-Wan needs to see more of the world).
This assumption was accepted by Kiersten White, who later wrote Padawan (2022), which takes place in 41 BBY, when Obi-Wan is 16.
Timeline of Obi-Wan Kenobi's Early Life:
- Born: 57 BBY
- Becomes Qui-Gon's Padawan: 44 BBY [13 years old]
- Padawan: 41 BBY [16 years old]
- Master and Apprentice: 40 BBY [17 years old]
- The Year on the Run: [???]
- Becomes knight (TPM): 32 BBY [25 years old]
So far, so good, right? It makes sense that Obi-Wan (and Satine, who must be around his same age) were young adults when they met.
In 2020, most people (especially Korkie Kenobists) put the Year on the Run when Obi-Wan and Satine were around 18-20 years of age, though you could have pushed it further, to when they are in their early-20s.
But then, in 2021, there was a reference book that came out that chilled Obitine/Korkie Kenobi fans to the core. It established that Obi-Wan was only 15 years old when he protected Satine.
(On the Obitine Discord server, we dubbed this scandal "Teengate", lol.)
Whether it was Pablo Hidalgo or another one of his lore crew, whoever was in charge of this page neglected to consider the impact that Master and Apprentice had on this timeline.
Obitine fans got criticized for saying the book was wrong. We were told that we didn't know as much as the people who wrote the book (even though they make mistakes in these books alllllll the time) and that we just needed to accept that Obi-Wan and Satine were only in their mid-teens when they fell in love.
(During this time, anti-Korkie-Kenobists even started to say that people who still held to the Korkie Kenobi theory were pedophiles, as if it hadn't already been a widely accepted theory for over a decade before that dumb book came out. It was ... a time.)
However, I couldn't let it go. I did some sleuthing in order to figure out why the writers of this book would have come to the conclusion that Obi-Wan was 15 when he first met Satine. I believe that it can be (mis)attributed to a single piece of vague information that we know about the Mandalorian context during this time.
To understand this, we need to talk about Satine and Bo-Katan's father, Duke Adoniram* Kryze and the Mandalorian Civil War/Great Clan War:
[Note: I use the name Adoniram because Duke Kryze's canon name is a name of God considered very sacred by many people.]
Duke Kryze was a great warlord (and likely the equivalent of Mand'alor) who eventually realized that the endless wars on Mandalore would only be stopped through peace and diplomacy. His death was what kicked off the Year on the Run.
So how do we narrow down when the Year on the Run happened? The best way would be if we could establish a death date for Duke Kryze, because that is what kicks of the year on the run.
Unfortunately, we don't have a specific date, for this, but we know he died during the Great Clan Wars
[Note: The Great Clan War(s) was a Mandalorian civil war. The problem is that off and on, "Great Clan War(s)" and "Mandalorian Civil War" are used interchangeably, even though there are a number of conflicts throughout Mandalorian history that are called "the Mandalorian Civil War(s)." It's frustrating, I know, but we have to work with what we're given.]
So imagine that you are the person in charge of creating Obi-Wan's timeline in that reference book. You know that the Year on the Run started with Satine's father's death, so you think, "I'll go to Wookieepedia to confirm which year that was."
[Note: This is what the Wookieepedia page looked like for Satine's father on May 26, 2021 (around the time the "Teengate" reference book came out). It looks different today, but the logic they use to determine dates is no better now, unfortunately.]
See the date? 42 BBY is the exact year that Obi-Wan would have been 15 years old. It's very likely whoever wrote Obi-Wan's timeline in the "Teengate" reference book saw the date on this page, took it as hard fact, and called it good.
But was that a good assumption for them to make? NO. And here's why.
The date is "CIRCA 42 BBY" and that "circa" is doing a LOT of work.
Look at the note below to see why the Wookieepedia editors used that number. A magazine article established that "the Mandalorian Civil War [Great Clan Wars] took place around 20 years before the Clone Wars."
The Clone Wars started in 22 BBY, so 22 + 20 = 42.
Not exactly precise dating, right?
Because that date marks the START of the Mandalorian Civil War.
Not the end. And definitely not Adoniram’s death date.
Which we know is a problem, right?
Because Obi-Wan and Satine were on the run for an entire YEAR after Duke Kryze's death. If Duke Kryze died on Day 1 of the war, the war still would have had to last longer than one calendar year.
And that makes sense. Mandalore's wars were described as ENDLESS. Over and over, we are told that the Mandalorians were exhausted from war. It would be ridiculous if the war that killed "most of Satine's people" (as "Voyage of Temptation" says) only happened in a single year. That's not usually how wars work.
But whoever created that reference book timeline doesn't seem to have thought about that.
THAT'S how we got this "canon" explanation that Obi-Wan and Satine were only in their mid-teens.
I've tried to explain this to people at Wookieepedia in the past, but they've been hesitant to change anything on the site as long as that "canon" reference book still exists.
All this to say, we cannot rely on canon to establish this timeline for us. The lore "experts" aren't perfect, but there's no way for me, a lowly fan, to convince them that they used faulty logic to determine when the Great Clan War took place.
Here's my Non-Canon-But-More-Accurate-Than-Canon Timeline (featuring my giant whiteboard):
This is the timeline I created as I was working on my fanfic, The Peacefighters (on hiatus, but I'm feeling the urge to write again!). There's stuff on here related to the Republic, but focus on the top two registers, which are related to the Mandalorian context (Register #1) and the Kryze family (Register #2).
So let's say the Great Clan War does indeed begin in 42 BBY (the same year I believe Adoniram Kryze takes the throne as Mand'alor). Unlike what the "canon" explanation says, the fighting goes on for several years. Duke Kryze sends Satine to Coruscant to get her degree in statecraft and diplomacy. She's there for several years (probably between the ages of 15 and 18).
Duke Kryze dies in 38 BBY (four years into the war). Satine, Adoniram's heir apparent and the person most likely to lead the New Mandalorians, is still on Coruscant and is entrusted to the protection of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi (It's my headcanon that Adoniram and Satine were both pursuing diplomatic relations with the Jedi, whom most Mandalorians saw as their enemies, before Adoniram's death, which is why they knew Satine and knew she needed protection).
The Year on the Run takes place between 38 BBY and 37 BBY, starting when Obi-Wan and Satine are around 19 years old and ending when they are 20 years old. The Great Clan War ends, Satine is confirmed by the clans as the new Duchess/Mand'alor, and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon leave. Korkie Kryze is born 9 months later, just around the start of 36 BBY.
So, for my Korkie Kenobists, does this timeline work?
Korkie's age has never been explicitly confirmed, and it's difficult to determine based on his appearance alone.
However, Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy establishes that in Season 5, Korkie is in his late teens ...
… but that he and his friends haven't yet graduated from the Academy, which would be their equivalent of high school.
I think the best estimate is that Korkie is about 17 years old in Season 5.
There are about 1.5 years that elapse between his Season 3 appearance (21 BBY) and Season 5 appearance (19 BBY), which means that he's about 15-ish years in Season 3.
If Korkie is 17 years old in 19 BBY, then he was born in 36 BBY, exactly where I have it listed on the timeline, less than a year after the end of the Year on the Run.
So yeah ... this issue is never going to be fixed unless there's a retraction in the reference books. I wish I could get Pablo Hidalgo to look at this more closely and recognize that the Great Clan Wars must have taken place over more than one year.
But I hope this is at least a helpful resource to other people to see how logically, the timeline still works for Obi-Wan and Satine to fall in love when they're young adults, not in their mid-teens, and why Korkie Kenobi is still a valid theory.
And remember the words of Dave Filoni: "I have a joke about Korkie['s parentage] that would set the fanworld ablaze.
Feel free to let me know what you think and if anything is confusing (I know this post is a monster i'm sorry!) or if there are other questions you'd like to have answered!
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