Who’s Your Daddy?: Tasiele Shan and Her Lover(?)
Does Satele look more like her father? Or her mother, Tasiele Shan?
The relationship between Jace Malcom and Satele Shan is pretty epic: two great leaders of the Republic, the future Supreme Commander and the future Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Their son, Theron, is an obvious SWTOR fan favorite and a hero in his own right (though as a spy, his accomplishments can’t be as publicly acknowledged). Theron did not know who his father was until he was 26 years old, nor did he speak to his mother openly as her son until that age. This makes for complex, adult connections.
One thing that several people in fandom have discussed is Satele’s decision not to tell Theron about Jace or Jace about Theron. While I was ruminating over the question, I came across the point that Satele likely didn’t know who her father was. Satele had gone through life without a father; if you’ve never had it, how can you miss it? Jedi!Theron wouldn’t have the worst life if he didn’t know who his father was... but then he turned out to be not Force Sensitive, and there went all of Satele’s well-intended plans.
There are a lot of unknowns about Tasiele Shan, Satele’s mother. Nothing is known about her father. Tasiele first appeared in a sentence on Satele’s Holonet entry, coded in Aurbesh: ‘Jedi exiled her mother.’ In the SWTOR encyclopedia, it was revealed that Tasiele was a philosophical revolutionary who advocated for attachments among the Jedi. (Yes, in our world’s psychological sense, they do have positive attachments to those in the order, in the Galaxy, and at Temple; ‘attachments’ in the negative sense for the Jedi run along Buddhist lines, per George Lucas himself. Attachments lead to desire, which leads to suffering, which leads to the Dark Side, in a nutshell.) These teachings were disruptive enough that Tasiele was indeed exiled. When the Jedi went to retrieve her from the remote planet she’d been left on, Tasiele was gone, leaving her writings to Satele, who is describe as still “young.” I’ve speculated in my fics about how all that went down, but there’s no canon consensus.
Satele was born on Brentaal IV. Brentaal IV in Legends is a commerce-driven planet. It is an intergalactic marketplace, sitting at the crossroads of two major trading routes, the Perlemian Trade Route and the Hydian Way (which was still being created when Satele was born in 3699 BBY; it was complete in 3694). As a result, the Brentaal system has become increasingly war-torn, as it is highly desirable for both the Republic and the Empire. At the time of Satele’s birth, however, the Sith Empire was about 18 years from returning, so the planet was at peace and thriving, the Hydian Way being established right nearby.
Based on what we see in comics and mentioned in Legends novels, Brentaal IV was an active, bright planet with lots of entertainment and a grand variety of products. As a crossroads between two trading routes, if a person had the money, no desire could be left unfilled. Based on the description on Wookieepedia, I’m personally viewing this as almost a space Renaissance Venice; those with money run the government, and unhappy citizens make for bad sales -- the government still needs to keep the people happy. The buildings tend to be bland because of corporate interests, but then people insist upon trees and organic features in their environments.
That’s where Satele was born. That doesn’t mean it’s where Tasiele met Satele’s father or became pregnant.
Briefly, I considered whether Tasiele might have done Revan’s tradition of found family: whether with the Exile or Malak or with the crew of the Ebon Hawk, Revan created his family not by blood but by choice of association. Who says Tasiele didn’t adopt a baby girl, and then only later discovered that this child was Force-Sensitive?
Revan, that’s who. In Shadow of Revan, he identifies Satele and Theron as his bloodline; their biological connection enabled him to watch over them and their forebears for centuries while the Emperor’s prisoner. So as intriguing as the adoption angle is, Revan puts the kabosh on it.
Tasiele wrote about attachments in a positive way, but we don’t know what sort of experience Tasiele has had with them. We know Tasiele named Satele. However, beyond that, there is nothing explicitly said about the nature of their mother/daughter relationship. Depending on Satele’s age when her mother was exiled, she could have already been at the Temple; Satele was found to be Force Sensitive early, so her education as a Jedi may have started very early. Alternatively, she might have been removed from her mother’s custody if she was under a certain age or if Tasiele objected to her child being parted from her, based upon their attachments. Again, Tasiele’s ‘revolutionary’ stance adds a lot of baggage and complication to how we try to read the relationship -- if there was one. If Satele and Tasiele were close before Tasiele’s exile, then maybe all of Tasiele’s writings were rooted in her attachment to her daughter and how the daughter thrived.
That leaves the obvious biological question of how Tasiele became pregnant. Star Wars takes place long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Most writers in Star Wars are mute about getting pregnant and how not to get pregnant; it’s only recently that we have canon evidence that women menstruate in SW universe (a good Padme novel). Likewise, there’s not much about birth control other than “taking precautions.” Could Tasiele have just gone to a clinic and picked a specimen that had potential (assuming we have sperm donors in the Old Republic)? Would she have screened for potential Force Sensitivity? Or did Tasiele cruise the bar scene and have a one-night stand, purposefully? One does not need a relationship or a connection to someone to get pregnant; if Tasiele just wanted a child, there are a lot of ways to have a kid without getting into an involved relationship with someone.
Or did Tasiele get attached? Were her writings initially about someone she felt something for? Obviously, she would not name names, but speaking about attachments to individuals would have likely been in her journals. Did Tasiele Shan have a relationship that resulted in her pregnancy? If so....
Does Satele’s father know he is? Or did Tasiele hide it? Satele hiding it from Jace has a different context; Satele had signed onto the Jedi way, without her mother’s ‘deviant’ philosophy -- there was no room for Jace and a baby in her attachment-free life. In Satele’s mind, it was better for all parties to be unaware and parted from each other, especially if Theron became a Jedi himself. In contrast, if she was in an attached relationship, Tasiele may well have told her lover about his child.
So far, what I’ve written above sort of revolves around the idea that Tasiele was out in the galaxy, away from the Jedi Order, and that whoever the father was, he was not a Jedi. After I gave this to Spouse to read for the first time, he reacted positively and wondered aloud, “What if Tasiele got exiled because the father was a Jedi master?”
And that’s yet another scenario to consider (and this is technically the last paragraph I wrote, ha). Tasiele Shan was on the edge, philosophically, but there is no mention as to how powerful she was. We know Satele is very powerful; she’s actually been toned down in-game compared to some of the mind-reading/mind-control powers she had in novels. If a Jedi: was it a love affair? A passionate night? Something unsavory? Was it swept under the rug for him, but not for her (pregnancy as evidence of misconduct)? Or did Tasiele take the fall for someone she was very attached to?
If Tasiele was pro-attachments and she was in a relationship with the father of her child, Jedi or not, then what happened to him? Was it a hostile break-up? Did he die? Did Tasiele intend to tell Satele about her father when she was old enough? Was all of that thwarted when she was exiled? The exile itself sounds as if it was done against Tasiele’s will rather than mutually agreed upon, so it probably looked more like an arrest than an amicable “go sit on this planet, please.”
Again, where Satele was during this entire process is not known. There is no mention of her father in any of the information we have, so we assume he was either not involved ....or that what he did, said, wanted -- none of that ultimately mattered or affected what happened to his daughter.
How all of this affects Satele is not known. We know she does not inform Theron or Jace of their connections. That may be prompted by the situations discussed above.... or that might just be Jedi teachings about attachment at work and the perils for a Force-Sensitive child. We only know she’s reading her mother’s works after Zakuul. Satele was Grand Master of the Jedi Order; she was viewed as a paragon. However, when we dig a little bit into who Tasiele Shan was and why she is not around, this reveals, potentially, a far more complicated Satele with, maybe, a troubled childhood; Echoes of Oblivion feels even more hollow to me after writing this. This post offers no conclusions, only speculation and perhaps a springboard for other fanworks.
