Star Wars universe headcanons, fanfics and fanarts, and related posts. Main blog (lbibliophile) is generic writing/fanfiction themed. Other themed sideblogs: Marvel Avengers (lbibliphile-mcu), Avatar the Last Airbender (lbibliophile-atla).
The idea that Mace Windu coming back would be the thing that makes death meaningless in Star Wars is so funny to me. Girl, come on, it’s Star Wars.
Ahsoka Tano just died and came back to life for the third time. Maul survived being cut in half, with no apparent repercussions. Cere Junda fell into lava and wasn’t even burned. If you’re stabbed straight through the stomach, you only have a 25% chance of dying.
Find me a single person who actually believes that Moff Gideon is dead. It would’ve been too unbelievable to kill Thrawn in Rebels, so they jetted him off to another galaxy instead. Bad Batch fans were absolutely convinced a character was Winter Soldiered because the writers don’t ever kill anyone off.
This is the Somehow Palpatine Returned franchise. Death has not meant anything since A New Hope.
re: nomadic mandalorians it makes a lot of sense if there isn't a mandalor all the time. lots of historical "nomadic warrior" cultures (Mongolians, Uighurs, Rourans, etc.) had many different tribes that were intermittently united by a charismatic leader from some hardcore ballstomping and moneymaking (raiding). afterwards they would just take over whatever country whose government they destroyed and set-up camp until they assimilated to the culture of that country (ex: Yuan and Qing Dynasty) 1/2
i could see the mandalorians working in the same way with their historical migration from courscant to mandalore, their openness to adoption, and how f*cking hard it is to become mandalore and get the clans to wear the get-along-shirt. the mandalore should be a title more like khan. you don't always have one but when you do you know you got one. 2/2
Aha! That's exactly what I was alluding to when I mentioned interesting implications for the role of Mand'alor-- with some caveats. I'm going to reference concepts I covered in this post a lot so hit this up if you don't understand what I mean by "mobility as a resource" or what autonomy means for nomadic cultures.
Social Structure of Nomadic Cultures
"Charismatic badass conquers the will of all the other tribes to steer them under one banner" is firmly a sedentary perspective. That is not how nomadic cultures think or work. It's more accurate to say "SO MANY TRIBES hate you that they found the one among themselves with the best ability to direct a collective war effort/ to wreak havoc on your ass and put them in charge of the fight". To illustrate this, we're gonna start with the smallest unit of nomadic culture and work our way up to the top to better understand how social structure dictates inter- and intra-cultural relationships. Points relating to the Mand'alor specifically will be at the end.
It is extremely difficult to find sources on leadership, structure, and self-governance of nomadic cultures. In the case of modern nomadic cultures [Romani, Irish Travelers, carnies] it is either entirely absent or implicitly assumed that they're governed by the sedentary nation they inhabit (strongly inaccurate). Historically, nomadic cultures practiced oral traditions and the majority of written documentation that survives are accounts by the sedentary populations they impacted or dealt with [Mongolian nomads, Sioux, and other Indigenous tribes around the world]. The few promising sources I could find were behind paywalls or logins (like JSTOR). If you happen to know of accounts/studies regarding nomadic social structure, especially first-hand ones, please let me know! [Again this is SUPER long]
Family
The most indivisible unit in nomadic cultures is the "family". Nomadic cultures usually have their own term in their own language, but the family is the community (group) that travels together. The reason families are the indivisible unit is because if an individual leaves a family, it is either to another family (even if it is one of their own creation) or to exit the culture entirely*. Family size and composition can vary greatly depending on the specific culture, as small as a parent and their child (eg Din and Grogu) or as large as a very extended family. Though it's typical, no one even needs to be related or married, but all members will personally know each other.
Specific dynamics and hierarchy will vary, but there is always a hierarchy, one with one person heading the family as determined by cultural custom. The family head will act as the executive when a decision has to be made, rather than the single source for all decisions. Why is it set up this way? Because a democratic process is a slow process and therefore hampers mobility. Discussion and input from the whole family is welcome, but Mobility is Prime and trying to argue until everyone is happy with a solution keeps you from moving. Similarly, all decisions being routed through a single individual means it's going to take a long time for each one to get the consideration it requires. This allows individuals or subgroups within a family to exercise their own judgement in cases where other members aren't affected, while keeping the efficiency of having a single group coordinator.
Conflict: there would have to be sustained displeasure from multiple family members to remove the family head from their role. Especially early in the leader's time as head, mild mistakes are expected and the family supports them through it. It would have to be an extreme decision that completely breaks from cultural norms to oust a family head after only one incident and even then the leader might get a second chance. If there's sustained displeasure from one individual, that individual may attempt to join another family if the situation is severe enough, but outside of marriage this is an extremely serious decision. I'm not exaggerating when I say someone might sooner consider murder rather than leave their family. (Exhibit A: Genghis Khan)
Family structure in action: Din makes decisions for himself all the time. Which jobs to take, where to go, etc, but he does it in the context of what his family needs and within the guidelines of his family head (the Armorer). It's not explicit whether the Armorer gives the order for the rest of the covert to help Din escape, but the heavy-Mandalorian's use of the phrase "This is the Way" certainly indicates that it was a group-approved decision.
Mandalorian Implications: Mando'a has a word specifically for when children disown their parents: dar'buir. Textually, it is described as the greatest possible shame for a Mandalorian and that only intensifies under a nomadic lens. It means it wasn't enough to leave the family (already a severe, stinging decision), the (adult) child legally divorces you.
Dar'manda, a Mando'a word that means "no longer of the Manda" or "the state of no longer being a Mandalorian", also gains clarity and intensity with a nomadic lens. Only if you exit the culture entirely and have no associations with any Mandalorian family are you dar'manda. In almost all cases, dar'manda is a voluntary state; if a given individual violated a rule or law so severely as to merit expulsion from a Mandalorian community, it's generally also severe enough to merit death. Therefore, being dar'manda is inherently tragic and borderline horrific in the eyes of Mandalorians, similar to but several magnitudes higher than being an orphan. In the EU continuity, Boba Fett is dar'manda for most of his life until he returns to his Mandalorian roots in the Legacy of the Force series.
*Traveling by yourself or doing your own thing for a while doesn't mean you've left the family or exited the culture. If you still check in with the family, are included in its dynamics, and accept the family head's leadership, you are part of the family.
Tribe/Clan
The next size unit is the tribe or clan. In Mando'a, clan and family are synonymous (aliit), so keep in mind that for the purpose of this post clan means one or more family units that enjoy an indefinite allyship. This is the larger community that will provide the resource self-sufficiency a single family might not (diversifying livestock or complimentary skillsets for example). A self-sufficient family is its own clan even though it's not sub-dividable. Because families within clans are codependent for resources, they're typically geographic "neighbors". The distance between them will be small enough to easily aide one another. Families operate independently, but in parallel. One family cannot order the other to do something. This equitable power dynamic perseveres even if one family is older/bigger/has more resources than the other, because the bigger family is still dependent on the smaller clan's minority resources. However, if the former family becomes large enough it will likely subsume the smaller one through marriage.
By default, clans do not have designated leaders. Clans often end up with leaders because they are part of a confederacy and/or they're interacting as one with other clans or sedentary cultures, but it's not a structural requirement and they're just as likely to represent themselves as individual families instead. At this level the principle of mobility is what prevents a leader, rather than demanding it like on the family level. Families within a clan are within helping distance, but there usually is a distance. The leader can't be in two places at once, so the other family would have to send someone any time there needs to be a joint decision, which would be hugely inefficient and hamper movement. The only time a clan must have a leader from a nomadic perspective is when unified resources and direction are critical, war being the preeminent example. In those instances, the families will choose someone among their own with the best capacity for the role. A leader for war could be completely different from a leader for trade. Who votes for the leader varies, but it often involves each family head and the families' elders. It may even involve the entirety of each family.
Conflict: Because of their codependency for resources, clan constituents usually take every effort to resolve conflict. Clans would generally prefer distancing themselves socially than dissolving the clan entirely. If a clan does dissolve, each family would need to find an alternate source for their needed resource or fight their former clan-mate to take the resource. For this reason, geographic neighbors tend to be either staunch allies or bitter enemies rather than neutral acquaintances.
Clan structure in action: The Skirata clan is composed of multiple families by the end of the Republic Commando series. Skirata is a family head, as is Vau, each with their contingent of clones and strays. Once Skirata's children grow up and especially once they marry, they could become their own families though they choose not (or more likely, aren't aware they can) to do so. Vau generally defers to Skirata's decisions that involves the clan as whole, though Vau retains complete primacy over his contingent.
Mandalorian Implications: As stated earlier, clans within close proximity are likely either eternal allies or sworn enemies as they draw from the same resource pool, which aligns very well with the general portrayal of Mandalorians as equally likely to fight each other as someone else. Neither Mandalorians nor nomadic cultures at large are unique in this respect, by the way. Just as otherwise-culturally-similar kingdoms or countries often went to war for the purpose of expansions, so too do nomadic peoples. While a funny image, using the "get-along-shirt" analogy exclusively (key word) for nomadic cultures or Mandalorians is as un-nuanced and patronizing as implying the entirety of any given continent should unite because they share the same landmass-- or that the Empire and the Rebellion should wear a get-along shirt, to keep it Star Wars related.
Confederacy
Uniting multiple self-sufficient clans or tribes results in a confederacy. In contrast, subjugation of other self-sufficient clans typically entails either total destruction, absorption into another clan(s), or a concession to join the confederacy. In a confederacy, clans retain their identities and sovereignty. In a way, confederacy is baked into every level of a nomadic culture because of the modularity that mobility encourages if not outright requires. When there is a single ruler/representative involved, a confederacy is distinguished from sedentary government styles of federalism and imperialism by a weak central government, governing by consensus (as opposed to majority), and an implicit right of secession. In addition to this, confederations are generally formed for a specific purpose or when the number of clans that are closely allied is so numerous that it is more practical to meet all at once rather than with each ally.
What specific purpose might prompt a confederacy? Well, predictably: war. Multiple nomadic confederacies might war with each other, with individual clans routinely seceding or trading confederacies as loyalties and profits shift. A nomadic confederacy might also war with sedentary cultures, generally to steal riches and resources, but especially if those sedentary cultures attempt to limit the nomadic lifestyle by settling in grazing/hunting lands. When subjugating sedentary cultures, nomadic cultures may impose rule or require tithes/tribute/taxes that would make them an Empire in the eyes of the sedentary population, but internally they still function as a confederacy. Otherwise, a nomadic culture may integrate with the sedentary culture and abandon their previous traditions. This usually takes multiple generations to occur, and the portion of the confederacy not involved with the sedentary population will return to their traditional routes/lands, as happened with the Mongol Empire.
Conflict: Nomadic confederacies formed as extended alliances tend to be very long lived once they're formed, though which clans compose a confederacy will change. At the point of confederating, there are so many families and clans that the personal/intimate relationships aren't as strong for clans on the fringe (either geographically or culturally) and it is usually those that are most likely to leave the confederacy for independence or to join another. Single-purpose confederations form and fade much quicker by design. The biggest exception of a long-lived, single-purpose confederation was the one that elected (you read that correctly) Genghis Khan. No sense dissolving a war confederation when you just can't seem to lose. (More on this in next section.)
Confederacy structure in action: In the Legacy of the Force series, Boba Fett (acting as Mand'alor) called a meeting of the clans to decide what course of action to take in the face of war. It is with their input and collective agreement that Boba Fett commits to aiding Coruscant in the fight against the Vong. One notable sentiment he expressed during this meeting was “You can’t rule Mandalorians. You just make sensible suggestions they want to follow.”
Mandalorian Implications: Obviously, this has a Lot of significance for the Mand'alor, but that gets its own section. An additional consideration is what this means for the Mandalorian Civil War. The New Mandalorians and the Old Mandalorians did not initially conflict in goals despite radically different ideals and were ultimately neutral to each other. It was not until the Old Mandalorians schismed into two, the True Mandalorians and Death Watch who did have directly conflicting goals as well as competed for the same resources, that the New Mandalorians eventually become pulled into conflict. These three main confederations continued to exist in some form for an extended period of galactic history, presumably with an ever-changing composition as at least the New Mandalorians and True Mandalorians exchanged power.
Mand'alor
Alright, here's the reason you read this god damn thesis. If nomadic cultures tend to form confederacies, how do you explain the nomadic empires and how do you explain the Mand'alor? The answer: for the exact reason that there are heads of families. It's MUCH faster and cleaner to have a single coordinator for a confederacy in the event of war or another single-purpose task. "Single rulers" are a recurring theme for many nomadic cultures and their purpose varies, but there's a few consistencies. Firstly, it's always determined by the community. Sometimes it's hereditary but the communities typically have no issue changing that the moment a leader doesn't live up to the role, either by swapping leaders or removing the role entirely.
Every Great Khan was voted in by a council of confederation leaders. The Sioux Nation voted on leaders every time the tribes gathered. Romani across the globe have had a variety of intermittent "kings". Sometimes, named "sole rulers" are temporary and they return to their usual life after the purpose they're elected for is complete. Sometimes they're so good no one asks them to retire. Sometimes it's not a ruler at all, but the individual designated to interface with sedentary communities who record them as the ruler. And in at least one instance, a community has said that the poor sucker the sedentary community just arrested is 100% their ruler, how dare you arrest our King give him back or this means war! Any of these could be Mand'alor. After millennia, maybe all of them are Mand'alor.
Conflict: If you have a problem with the Sole Ruler, you have a problem with EVERYONE who voted them in and that can be quite the extensive list. It requires a consensus to vote in a sole ruler, so it's very unlikely that any of the constituents would turn their back when they would have left before swearing in a sole ruler they didn't like. To have a change of heart later on would require there to be a "later on", eg it would require the confederacy to have a need for a sole ruler for an extended period of time. If one clan was no longer interested in the goal, they would leave the confederacy rather than take issue with the sole ruler.
Mand'alor in Action: Honestly any significant Mand'alor is good representation. Jango Fett and the random ass farmers before him with the title not so much, but as you've probably figured out by now canon Mandalorian culture is not nomadic even if individuals are.
Mandalorian Implications: Mand'alore (plural for Mand'alor) are functions of need and purpose, not tradition and ceremony. Don't need a Mand'alor? Cancel the position! Somebody pissed off a shit ton of clans and they all wanna retaliate? Excellent time for Mand'alor. What about the Mask of Mandalore and the Dark Saber? Significant cultural artifacts conferred to the Mand'alor as a symbol of widespread Mandalorian approval rather than objects that confer the title. Bonus points if they're in the custody of two clans that traditionally loathe each other because yeah, it'd be a BIG deal if both of them agreed to give it to the same person.
Conclusion
The "contradictions" of Mandalorians melt away under a nomadic lens. Conflicting clans are a natural, semi-stable state rather than evidence of "in-fighting". The intermittence of a Mand'alor is an indicator of just how extreme and unusual the situation was to merit broad coordination, rather than an indicator of lawlessness or un-governability of Mandalorians. Mandalorians' "flexibility" to be extremely independent but also hyper-cooperative in the right context is in reality a natural result of prizing mobility and baked into the culture at every level.
My brain was mush by the end of this monster, follow on questions and questions for clarity welcome!
In response to this ask but it got hella away from me and didn’t fit the tone anymore so I split it up! I put too much googling into this to not post it.
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I’m having a stressful time at work and I’m compensating by overdoing it with amateur speculation about food production on fake!homesteads. I’m about to go Deeper than I probably should, and I have only the barest bones of an idea of what I’m talking about, so if that’s not what you’re here for, Get Out Now. Save Yourself. Do Not Click Below The Link.
All the issues you marked out in this write-up is why I think it’s so fuckin weird that KT constantly wrote Mandalorians as farmers. A culture that allegedly is nomadic (though never actually portrayed that way) is reliant on farming? That takes so much sustained time, effort, and resources! The return is long-term only, so it also makes you incredibly vulnerable to attack! Even if you can bug out before the enemy shows up, you’re screwed because the first thing your enemy is gonna do is scorch your land and food.
You know what makes way more sense for “nomadic” warrior-people? 1) Stealing food from sedentary cultures, 2) fishing, and/or 3) hunting-gathering. They’ve already got the weapon loadouts, skills/experience, and transportation. Why in the star-studded galaxy would you waste time and resources building permanent structures on random planets when you can simply live on your ship full-time, pop down onto whatever planet has good prey, and park near whatever water source you want? You can pull up anchor and fly off at any time with zero requirement to pack and zero risk of leaving behind crucial survival resources. In comparison, farming/homesteading is wasteful and inefficient. The only potential downside is a reliance on fuel, but as the galaxy is broadly reliant on it anyways, it’s hardly a rare or difficult to acquire resource– especially if you’re hanging out in areas untouched or lightly regulated by the Empire.
This rant brought to you by Make Mandalorians Actually Nomadic You Cowards gang!
I don’t know what else Traviss wrote about Mandalorians, but an isolated homestead could make sense specifically for Kal because it limits outside influences and interactions its inhabitants have with anyone else. Nobody will challenge Kal’buir if nobody from outside that system (or who seriously opposes it) is allowed to live there and influence the residents. If Kyrimorut succeeds and goes down the path of the agricultural revolution, they should be able to support a lot of people through what they produce too, so they sacrifice cultural nomadism to maintain self-sufficient, isolated Cult Kal.
Again, I don’t know much about Mandalorians, but this all makes me wonder just how much of what we learn about them (or think we learn about them) from Republic Commando is just zooming in on one particular part of a bigger umbrella culture with a lot of different factions (some of which may not even recognize each other.) But then again since they seem very big on adopting people into the culture regardless of their origin, maybe that’s not a concern and various diverse subgroups are totally fine with not living a nomadic lifestyle that the parent culture comes from?
#Levet explaining the Mandalorian marriage vow to his daughter like #-We Will Raise Warriors- means warriors in the fight against jogan fruit blight; mad roba disease; and poor rainfall#It’s a metaphor adi'ka#meanwhile someone else is staring at him like he knows damn well that it isn’t lol#But seriously you *could* say that -we will raise warriors- does not literally have to mean you take up the profession of arms#instead you uphold certain values/principles/etc that are also important and commonly found among those who do choose that path ( @purgetroopercody)
I love these tags. Levet <3
I love this meta. @skierunner that’s fucking gold.
“…just zooming in on one particular part of a bigger umbrella culture with a lot of different factions (some of which may not even recognize each other.) But then again since they seem very big on adopting people into the culture regardless of their origin, maybe that’s not a concern and various diverse subgroups are totally fine with not living a nomadic lifestyle that the parent culture comes from”
@purgetroopercody I agree with this entirely. The only One True Thing we know about Mandalorians is that they will absolutely eat other Mandalorians alive in absence of an outside threat or the Mand’alor pointing a REALLY stern finger at them and going no…nO at all times. If they DON’T have majorly different ideas about how to live their lives, with only the creed tying them together, I’m going to be so disappointed.
Farming is not an unusual choice for Legends!Mandalorians, even the ones KT didn’t write, so I’m comfortable with it just being a (not universal, but still widespread) aspect of the culture, personally. Probably as part of a (relatively) recent cultural shift? At least since the last great Sith war or something, or back when Mandalore got the great idea to go Empire and they needed a way to reliably feed an actual army instead of just a clan at a time? I’m actually sort of interested in how modern (Clone Wars and Empire-era) Mandalorians all seem to engage in a sort of double think about their own culture, where they think nomadically, but are emphatically…not doing that, and still grappling with how to reconcile it. They have cities, old ones, and that bar they love has to be getting its stock from somewhere, not to mention their very powerful cultural attachment-that-they-refuse-to-admit-to to their planet, even after Revan (and like…everybody actually) fucking glassed it. I can actually see the whole plot point in the book of Mandalore still not really being ready for a full-on war after being decimated way back when (plus all the internal warring happening after that) being a motivator for the cultural shift here, too. They needed time to heal from that first major blow (especially after all their previous targets started banding together and being willing to attack on behalf of a raid done on someone else entirely, which, rude), probably no one was willing to hire them either on account of the whole fighting-for-the-Sith thing who were also the losers, so no way to pay for it legitimately, which means they needed a new way to feed themselves for awhile. So people who knew how to farm from their previous lives or who had learned to farm for the Mandalorian Empire or something started turning those skills to providing for their families, and a new cultural norm was founded! Etc.
But! That’s still only a portion of the population, and I desperately want to see these true!nomad Mandalorians roving about. I’m positive they exist now, I don’t see how they don’t exist, and that is SUCH an amazing mental image. Kal even really admired Altis’s ship in the books! There might even be some nomadic clans on-planet, and you can’t tell me the Nulls especially wouldn’t love that.
Okay, let me first say that I agree entirely that Mandalorians are extremely diverse and we should readily expect a dizzying range of lifestyles and subcultures and if we don’t I will personally sponsor and lead the riot. I also do not take a literal read on the Resol’nare on any tenet, but specifically for the bajur tenet that @purgetroopercody references: I see her “doesn’t literally mean warriors” and raise her “doesn’t literally mean raising children”. Bajur is “to educate” and it certainly includes raising children but it’s not exclusively that. It should include education on both personal and communal levels, both formal and informal. I also invite anyone who believes that you’re obligated to have/raise children to be Mandalorian to meet me at dawn for ritual unarmed combat. : )
Now to the part where I’ve tricked you into giving me an opening to talk about my nomadic headcanons! Up front– this is specifically about worldbuilding regarding Mandalorian culture as nomadic. Kal’s Cult at Kyrimorut definitely makes sense in the context of his individual goals and character. I want to look broader than that. I want to point out in what ways Mandalorians fail to exhibit traits typical of nomadic cultures and in what ways we can compensate for that in worldbuilding. Don’t feel obligated to read all this, it’s gonna get SUPER LONG, but if you do I hope it’s worthwhile!
5 (more) times Fox arrested a Jedi, and 1 time he arrested a Sith...
@corrieweek 2025 - day 6: “We’re gonna get you home”
Whumptober 2025 - day 15: Failed rescue attempt
This fic is inspired by Fox Can't Stop Arresting Jedi by Amity_Ax [4k], and continues directly from their work.
prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | AO3 [3k]
Sitting at the receiving desk in the Coruscant Guard holding cells, Fox looks around the room in despair, trying to understand how he’s ended up in this situation. His double shift was supposed to end a good two hours ago, but instead he just had to check on that minor break-in, which then turned into a scuffle with two excessively squirmy thieves, which then turned into a parkour chase across what felt like half of Coruscant, which then turned into not two, not three, but four Jedi stuck in his holding cells.
He glares at said Jedi from behind his bucket. Kenobi and Skywalker – the original source of his current misery – are clearly reviewing their performance during the altercation, the Shiny-scolding tone familiar. Meanwhile, Vos and Antilles are chatting from their adjacent cells about… something that Fox is probably better off not knowing.
He’d love to hand the whole mess over to Thorn, but unfortunately, anything involving Jedi – particularly arresting a Jedi, particularly arresting Jedi plural – is sensitive enough to fall under his responsibility as Marshal Commander.
But he has notified the Jedi Council – via the official line this time – so hopefully someone will be down sooner rather than later to sign the bail forms and take all four problems off his hands.