Going a little crazy thinking about Thrawn right now. Because he is just a guy filled to the brim with contradictions.
Like here is a man who has SHOWN himself to have a preference for the preservation of life over profit. Who has REPEATEDLY favoured the perspectives of disadvantaged groups rather than the narratives of their oppressors. Who has shown disdain for cruelty and corruption and inaction, and who embodies the very notion of loyalty. And YET he spends the majority of the time that we know him doing heinous shit as part of a heinous system! What the hell makes a person like that tick????
I mean, just as an example to start with: we’re given the impression at various times that he dislikes slavery and see slavers as immoral, and yet when he and Eli discover that the Empire is trafficking Wookiee slaves, he’s able to put that aside in favour of treating them as “imperial assets” who “must be treated as such”.
That ability to compartmentalise his own morals and resolve cognitive dissonance is (I would argue) key to understanding how he can be a card-carrying, uniform-wearing fascist without actually being an ideological fascist himself. Like, he’s certainly a militarist, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not a political authoritarian the way that someone like Anakin “if it works it works” Skywalker is — even though he’s manipulative and controlling on an interpersonal level, those behaviours are utilitarian and limited in scale. And crucially, they don’t seem to be reflected in a belief in autocracy or the inherent necessity of forced social homogeneity. Instead, in both the books and in Rebels, we see multiple occasions of him displaying respect and reverence for cultural diversity (see: *hiss* “i forget that not everyone appreciates art as i do”), which is actually fundamentally antifascist.
Circling back around to what I said earlier about loyalty, I’m starting to think that perhaps that’s the crux of his whole issue.
Because if you think about Thrawn as a classical tragic character, his whole deal starts to make a lot more sense. He cycles through these arcs of stability, then peripeteia (reversal of fortunes), and then downfall. It happens to him in the Ascendancy, it happens to him in the Empire. And it’s always with this sense of the results having been predetermined by either his own nature or by narrative necessity. The Bendu literally prophesies his defeat!! That’s some Oedipus Rex shit.
So if we can think about him as a tragic hero (which is not the same as a hero in the “good guy” sense — the aforementioned Oedipus was very much a questionable dude, as are most classical tragic protagonists) we’re led to the question that lies at the heart of all such characters: their hamartia, their fatal flaw. What is it about them that makes their fate inevitable?
I think that for Thrawn, his fatal flaw is loyalty. He is a man uniquely capable of boxing up everything that he is and wants for the sake of serving a cause, and remaining resolute no matter where that cause leads him. He’s indefatigable — he doesn’t stop, not if his intellect reveals any viable path to success, even if that path cuts narrowly through the absolute depths of depravity. He has very little by way of a life outside of the military, and what little he has he willingly sets aside in order to submit himself completely and utterly to the mission of serving the Ascendancy and the Empire by proxy. And because he sees that cause as more important than his own personal morals, he permits immorality as a means to that end!. He is not more important than the success of that goal, so his moral preferences cannot be either!
And we can extend it outward!! Why is he so blind to politics? Because he struggles to understand actions which are self interested, rather than motivated by loyalty or duty. Why does he manipulate and mistreat Eli, but also care for and uplift him? Because at the beginning of their relationship, Eli’s autonomy was mutually exclusive with the needs of Thrawn’s mission. But as he starts to feel a degree of loyalty to Eli himself, he prioritises finding ways to support him that are compatible with his duty.
And finally, why why why does he get so completely lost in the shits with the Empire after he sends Eli away?? Because without any strong personal relationship where he can express his own thoughts, beliefs or personality as an individual separate from his duty; he hollows out. There’s nothing to fill his mind or motivate his actions other than the pursuit of success. Because he is now without allies, his mission has never mattered more, and because he is deeply alone, he has never mattered less.
Hence, the inevitable downfall. Which in case you hadn’t guessed makes me feel insane
(2017 and Ascendancy) Thrawn is just the spitting image of Twelfth Patriarch of the Mitth, Thomoro the Tragic.
She lost her own kin to starflash, forced to live with the loss of those closest to her who sacrificed themselves for the good of the Ascendancy.
And Thrawn.
First he lost his sister to the Navigator Program, for the good of the Ascendancy.
Then he lost his brother in the Outbound Flight incident, for the good of the humans aboard the vessel, which alligned with that of the Ascendancy.
And finally, he sent away the one who acted as his moral compass since the beginning of his exile, because his mission was to take what was valuable from the Empire and give it up even if it happened to have been his only friend for the past decade, for the good of the Ascendancy.
His self has been shapedy by loss, just like Mitth'omo'rossodo.
Yea, I know, weird choice of topics to pair together. But I’ve been thinking about the new Thrawn books and (my fave topic ever) SW:TOR and I’ve had some thoughts™ that I wanted to discuss. Namely around a certain reveal near the end of the first Thrawn novel. Under a cut for discussion of spoilers for BOTH the first Thrawn novel (of the new series that is) AND for spoilers of p much all the swtor content post the base game so like if you haven’t experienced one of those yet and you wanna go in blind stop reading here. :D
So I guess I’ll start with why I’m talking about the Thrawn books on my old republic blog. No it’s NOT just because there’s Chiss in swtor (have i mentioned you can play as a chiss in swtor. because you totally can. it’s great!). Shameless plugs for my fave game aside, it’s because of a conversation Thrawn has near the end of the book with Nightswan, just before Pryce fucks over Batonn. Specifically, about Thrawn’s motives for joining the Empire. Now YMMV about exactly how honest he was being at that point, but this post is gonna operate under the assumption that he was at least telling the truth that there’s something out there in the Unknown Regions scaring the Chiss shitless. And like, the Chiss are fuckin COLD (pun intended), so whatever that is... it’s not smth good.
But Arden, what about the Yuuzhan Vong aka ya kno ‘the thing that was ALREADY in the unknown regions in the old canon’. Yea um sure, I guess Timothy Zahn could bring them back. But like.... that doesn’t mean he HAS to. No offence to hardcore Vong fans, but I tried to get into that era of star wars and well, failed. And sure, he could bring them back, and maybe he will, but imho there are much more interesting things out in the unknown regions for our heroes to face off against in the cinematic era. Such as Zakuul.
Because, and please don’t take away my swtor fan card for this, I think kotfetet was the weakest part of swtor. I also think that Zakuul was a wasted concept. Like, at it’s heart it’s actually kinda cool. It’s a society completely separate from anything the Empire or the Republic. It’s one of those paradises where everything is done by droids, including most of the military work while the citizens live in luxury, sitting above the shitty swamp area where dissidents flee to. It’s got an organisation of force users who don’t subscribe to either the light or the dark, and a fleet powerful enough to kick both the Empire and the Republic’s asses. It’s a genuinely neat concept. It was just... somewhat butchered by it’s introduction.
SoR (controversial for its treatment of Revan in and of itself) and Ziost after were both setting up a major plotline where the Emperor has separated himself from the Empire and is full on eating planets. (not in a ‘nom nom cronchy rocks’ sense more a ‘murder death leaving a desolate wasteland behind’ sense fyi). It was Going Places. And then kotfetet came outta left field, did a total 180 plotwise where “actually the emperor ISNT trying to eat everyone he’s gone off and started ANOTHER empire because reasons? and got married and had kids also because reasons? and now he’s dead but also hanging around in your head telling you to use his power? Oh and this game that was built around being able to play your own character has suddenly picked up this storyline that railroads you into playing either a Very Specific Light Side Character or a Very Specific Dark Side Character.
What I’m saying is. Come thru for us Timothy Zahn. Give us a Zakuul that we have a chance to explore in full as an interesting and complex threat rather than being a stupidly introduced excuse for a basic 1 fits all power fantasy plot. Because, and I recognize that I might be alone in this, I think there could be something really cool to salvage from the somewhat mess that was kotfetet.
Thing #153 I like about the Ahsoka series: staying true to Thrawns original appearance. (All caps from Heir to the Empire).
Baylan isn't quite like mad Jedi clone C'baoth, but they both have a disagreement with Thrawn about true power. And both old and new Thrawn is perfectly willing to work with dark Force users as the need arises.
I keep seeing people commenting that new canon Thrawn would never [some cruel command]. But then again, Zahn has been very clear he wrote the new books to fit as seamlessly with the old as possible, making them part of the same story. So even if Thrawn was a less cold and ruthless person in his youth, by the time old Thrawn returns from his long exile to restore the Empire he has no qualms about killing either individuals (RIP Pieterson) or an entire species.
(Btw: whether or not Thrawns ambition to use the Empires resources to protect his people from an external threat was always there, or added after the fact, to my recall he only ever admitted the extent of his ambition to being For The Empire unless alone among his closest confidants. We can't really speculate one way or the other about his true goals based on what little screen time he had in Ahsoka.).
