The Darksabre: The Lore and A New Dawn Breaks
Note: This post is basically my rough notes on understanding the Darksabre lore, and its mess, in Star Wars and then how I sorted through that to create the version that features in my fanfic A New Dawn Breaks. It’s mainly here because it would be too long to put in a note on AO3, but it’s spoiler free for the fic.
The Origin
Like a lot of Star Wars lore, the Darksabre is very much a case of ‘and they were making it up as they went along’. It came about because of an 11thish hour animation decision. In the Clone Wars arc where it’s introduced, Obi-Wan investigating shenanigans on Mandalore with Satine, the original plan had been for Pre Vizsla to fight Obi-Wan with a vibroblade. However, Lucas intervened and said he didn’t want a vibroblade to contend with a lightsabre. Which makes sense to me: if standard weapons in Star Wars can compete with a lightsabre then the lightsabre becomes less of a special weapon.
But pre viz was already done; if they got rid of the vibroblade the whole choreography of the fight, and possible the structure of the episode, would have to be redone. And deadlines being what they were it was too tight to scrap it. So they kept it, and did an overlay on the vibroblade tuning it into the dark lightsabre. And that’s also why it has the sword blade look rather than a conventional lightsabre blade.
And that was more or less how it stood. There wasn’t at that point a lot of lore added onto it, it was just a cool weapon that Pre Vizsla and then Maul used. It’s in Rebels that the lore gets properly fleshed out and deepened.
Rebels
It’s in Rebels where the lore starts to come out and it might be at this point where it’s officially named as the Darksabre. Here we learn of its creation by Tarre Vizla, how Clan Vizla stole it back and so on. What’s notable here, is that while Clan Vizla use it to conquer/unite Mandalore and it subsequently becomes a powerful symbol of it, the mystical aspect of it as a symbol is largely absent.
The other thing that’s noticeable different is the qualification on what it means to ‘claim’ it. When Ursa talks to Sabine about it she says something along the lines of ‘possessing it is not the same as claiming it’, with the implication that just because Sabine has it doesn’t mean she’s the rightful wielder of it, and thus the person to lead/unite Mandalore. By implication, the show suggests that ‘claiming’ it means to be able to wield it effectively, as seen through Sabine’s training.
So when Sabine defeats Gar Saxon using Ezra’s lightsabre, it’s not the act of beating him itself that it’s important for her claiming the sabre, but rather by doing that she demonstrated that she was a competent user of it.
This is further reinforced in how the sabre is passed on. Because Filoni didn’t want to do ‘Sabine Wren: Queen of Mandalore’, she passes the Darksabre onto Bo-Katan, declaring that she’s the right person to unite their people. The evidence for that is patchy, but hey, she was in Clone Wars, she smacked Ahsoka’s arse, flamethrower an innocent village and got her sister killed. Anyway, the point is Sabine passes on the sabre, declares Bo-Katan worthy of it, and everybody claps.
What’s notable, is that Bo-Katan doesn’t apologise to Ursa and beat the shit out of Sabine first. Nor does anyone in the audience start grumbling about how you can’t just hand it over. By implication, the rule that ‘you must defeat the previous wielder to claim the Darksabre’ does not exist. Bo-Katan can claim it because everyone knows that she can handle a sword, and is thus automatically qualified as a competent wielder of the blade and deserves the symbol.
Which is all fine, and matches with the warrior culture ethos. If you can wield the deadly super sword, then you are by proxy a good ruler and that’s all anyone cares about.
But then the Mandalorian comes along. And things get weird…
The Mandalorian
After the stunning success of The Mandalorian season one following the head first dive off a cliff that was The Rise of Skywalker, Disney decided that live-action TV Star Wars was the way to go. Season two of The Mandalorian thus expanded from the father and son adventures format to give us a series of ‘sorry Din, your Jedi is on another planet’ adventures that was a poorly disguised way of introducing us to the cast of characters that were going to fill out its expanded universe TV roster. And its here the new bit of Darksabre lore drops.
This is now that in order to claim the Darksabre you need to successfully defeat the previous wielder. Because Dave Filoni and Jon Faverue have read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so Elder Wand rules are what we’re going with. Its subsequently added that failure to comply with this rule will lead to disaster. Which brings in a plot hole because there’s no way a nerd like Bo-Katan would not know this.
Now, narratively it’s never made clear whether this is an actual Mandate of Heaven thing – that the sword will do some magical twist of fate to bring disaster – or is just a ideological Mandate of Heaven thing – that people priorities the cases where it fits and ignore the ones where it doesn’t.
[Side note: a deleted scene in And if we Fell Together had the Armourer and another Mando argue about whether this was true in the case of Satine, to Bo-Katan’s consternation. Still kind of regret dropping that one].
Within the narrative, the Armourer seems to believe it to be true. And so does Bo-Katan, but it’s not clear whether that’s because she really really believes it, or it’s because her PTSD after the Night of a Thousand Tears has made her incredibly nervous about not following the apparent rules, but the show doesn’t really explore that. Part of the trouble here, is that the show does something of a 180 on the Armourer, where in Season one and two it’s attitude is ‘look at these cultic weirdos’, whereas Season three is more ‘these lads are the true face of Mandalore; which is a helmet’.
In Book of Boba Fett we’re then get a new piece of lore, which is that if your are not worthy of the Darksabre, or believe yourself to not be, then it will feel heavy in your hands. And we physically see that this is the case, with Din having trouble wielding it. Again, it’s not clear whether this is an actual heaviness, or psychological (i.e. Din is having the perfectly normal trouble of not being confident wielding the deadliest health hazard in the galaxy without sufficient training or Force sensitivity).
The final confusion in this comes in Mando season 3, where because we’re not doing Din Djarin vs Bo-Katan for the throne of Mandalore and we need to clear the table for the upcoming movie, we get a chain of events that makes Bo-Katan the true wield. Which is: Din is defeated by some creature, despite having the Darksabre; Bo-Katan wields the Darksabre to defeat the creature; which means by proxy that Bo-Katan is the true possessor of the blade. Crucially, we get a semi-repeat of the handing over the sword from Rebels where Din explains this to Bo-Katan’s former gang as he names her the true wielder of it, and everyone claps.
So what’s introduced now is a addendum to the ‘defeat previous wielder’ rule, of revealed preferences (remember, we’re on Elder Wand rules). Which is to say that if B beats A, and C beats B, then we can say that C would beat A (or in mathematical terms A < B < C = A < C). Again, it’s not entirely clear whether this is a mystical/magical thing, or just an ideological thing, but again the show kind of leans towards the Armourer.
The trouble with the magical interpretation being correct though, is it causes a backwash of cascading plot holes through the thing; starting from Sabine was not and never was the true wielder of the Darksabre. That was Darth Sidious, the first person to defeat Maul after he beat Pre Vizsla. Which means, following the A < B < C = A < C rule, Luke Skywalker is the final, undefeated wielder of the sabre.
My point there, is just to illustrate that each new bit of lore causes problems for the other parts. So it’s a bit of a mess.
Sorting through it: Or how I came to the version in A New Dawn Breaks
Following the above, I was tempted to just say fuck it and make the Darksabre a proper eldritch abomination blade, where it would essentially be a black hole in sword form that produces a ton of environmental effects and space-time warping shenanigans. But that was impossible to square with the canon the fic runs with, so it was ditched. The new version kind of works to try and marry the various bits of the lore, while finding a way to keep it roughly consistent.
The first thing is that the Darksabre is a weird blade. It creates feelings in people who use it, even non-Force sensitives[1]. This is what both explains the heaviness feeling – the weird effect is doing something to you, even if you’re not sure what – and also the mystic associations that grow around it. It seems to be doing something and manipulating something, so by process of association and selective interpretation that gets canonised as history, it starts to build a reputation.
I’ve largely dismissed the ‘you need to beat the previous wielder’ part, as that part of the canon comes after my divergence point so I don’t feel bound to it; though it can be explained as one of the ‘rules’ that’s become common cultural knowledge about the weapon. Instead, the test is on whether you can wield it successfully, which resides on being able to overcome the weird feeling.
What is the weird feeling?
Kyber crystals are living things, and there’s bits in the Star Wars lore that imply they respond to the emotions of their wielder in some ways (most dramatically in the bleeding process that turns them red). We can assume the Darksabre has a crystal in it as well, but it has to be a fairly unique one given the way the blade is and the knowledge that the blades reflect the crystal colours.
So, my thinking is, following the black hole theme, that the Darksabre draws out the deepest parts of a person’s self and brings it to their consciousness. It’s not exactly, as explained in the chapter, showing the truth about the person, but it does force them to confront and see the bits of themselves their most afraid of, unsure of, even traumas they might have repressed. Overcome that, and you can then wield it. So it’s kind of equivalent with the Sword of Shannara, which is an otherwise ordinary sword except for the fact that anyone who touches it is forced to face the truth of themselves (which turns out to be the major weakness of Brona the Warlock Lord).
Is the Darksabre stronger than a conventional lightsabre? Yes and no. The lightsabre is a better all round weapon, but the Darksabre has some tricks to it. Defensivley, against blaster bolts, the Darksabre is worse. It’s thin edge means you can only really use the flat side to deflect, which will require contorting hand positions in a way a lightsabre doesn’t. But my head cannoning for why the Darksabre has the shape it does is because Tarre Vizsla designed it with fighting Mandalorians in mind – so it’s meant to be able to cut beskar. So offensively, the Darksabre’s penetrative power is higher than a lightsabre.
And that’s a wrap on why the Darksabre ended up being the way it is! Hopefully that was an engaging ramble, and if you made it this far thanks for reading!
[1] The headcanon my series runs on is that everyone in the Star Wars universe is Force sensitive to some degree, because they all have midichlorians, but it’s only over a certain threshold that you can manipulate the world. The divide of that threshold is covered by Force sensitive and non-Force sensitive for ease of terminology, but even non-Force sensitives will have a very minor connection to it.
