A Brief Cultural History of the Mandalorians

 Hello and good to see you all again, its been a while. I've been a bit busy what with, well, *gestures broadly at everything*.

I probably won't be hitting anywhere near what had been my intention of weekly posts, as I've found that that sort of pressure is difficult. So for now I'll just post when I have something interesting to say or I'm inspired to write.

But today, I'm very inspired, and in my excitement for season 2 of the Mandalorian, I figured I would share a brief overview of the history of the Mandalorians in canon. What we know, what puzzle pieces have yet to be provided, and what the narrative I think our limited amount of information might point to. I'll try to keep a solid division between what we know to be true from canon about Mandalorian History and Culture, and the overarching historical narrative that those individual snippets point to. A lot of this will be conjecture, but if I'm doing my job it's well substantiated conjecture. With all that out of the way, let's get going.

What We Know

    We know very little of Mandalorian society before the Clone Wars. We do know they had a strong warrior culture, as exemplified by their iconic armor. We also know that Mandalorians and Jedi have a long history of conflict and war. After centuries of conflict, the surface of  the planet of Mandalore was scorched into a desert, and the inhabitants driven into domed cities.

 

    We also know that an early Mandalorian leader, Tarre Vizsla, was at one point inducted into the Jedi Order. He constructed the Mandalorian Darksaber, which became a symbol of both his rulership, and the leadership of later holders of the title of Mandalore (The Mandalorian Ruler). Following Vizsla's death, the Dark Saber was taken back to the Jedi temple on Cosrucant. The saber was then stolen from the temple by members of Clan Vizsla during the fall of the Old Republic, as mentioned by Pre Vizsla in the Clone Wars show.

    Ten years before the Clone Wars, Mandalore experienced a great civil war, which led to the rise of the New Mandalorians under Duchess Satine of clan Kryze. Living through the war turned Satine into a strict pacifist, and under her rulership Mandalore saw a turn away from it's old warrior culture. But the terrorist group death watch maintained the warrior ways of the past, and constantly skirmished with Satine's government.

    Eventually, the Death Watch, under Pre Vizsla's leadership, schemed with former Sith Lord Darth Maul to take control of Mandalore and return it to the old ways. Maul eventually supplanted Vizsla as Mandalore, before being himself deposed by an alliance between the Galactic Republic and Bo Katan Kryze, a Mandalorian Loyalist who opposed maul, and sister of the former Duchess Satine.

    Following the Siege of Mandalore, and the transition between the Republic and the Empire, the Empire took direct control of the Mandalorian government, appointing former ally of Maul, Gar Saxon, as Imperial Viceroy. Gar Saxon came into conflict with the crew of the Ghost, specifically the Mandalorian Sabine of Clan Wren. After Sabine reclaimed the Darksaber from Maul, she brought it to Mandalore and delivered it into the hands of Bo Katan, in order to lead a rebellion against the Empire and drive them off of Mandalore.

    We see a large gap in Mandalorian history, between the beginnings of the Mandalorian rebellion in 1BBY/ 7976CRC and the first season of the TV show, The Mandalorian, set in 9ABY or 7986CRC. By the time of the show, however, we see a very different culture for Mandalorians. They have been driven underground, the Darksaber is now in the hands of Moff Gideon, and Mandalorians are much more strict about their rules, such as forbidding removal of helmets. Suffice to say, it seems as though the Mandalorian insurgency did not go as planned.

Questions to Answer

    From here on out, we're going to be entering the realm of speculation on my part, but I sought to construct a narrative for Mandalorian history which was relatively cohesive across the various media. To this end, I had a couple important questions to answer

- Obi Wan claims in the Clone Wars that the republic has treaties with Mandalore going back "a hundred years". If the Mandalorian Cataclysm occurred a thousand years ago (coinciding with the Republic's "Age of Peace"), and the New Mandalorians only came into power a decade before, why specifically around a hundred years old. 

- Why did the New Mandalorians take power so fast, and why did it seem so easy for the majority of Mandalorians to abandon their traditions, while still being able to return to it so quickly after the Empire's subjugation. It seems to imply that most people willingly ceased to live according to the Mandalorian culture, but kept elements like their armor rather then destroying them.

- Din Djarin says he has not removed his helmet since child hood. He was adopted by Mandalorians as a child during the clone wars, in an era where we see many people, even strict Mandalorians like Pre Vizsla, removing their helmets at will.

    

    With the interest of answering those questions, and providing an overarching narrative of Mandalorian history, I now present my understanding of the different phases of Mandalorian culture. 

A Theoretical History of the People of Mandalore

    Mandalorian history begins thousands of years before the movies. Originally, the Mandalorians lived as a nomadic people, living in individual Clans. They lived a life similar to Medieval Scandinavians, where the people were farmers, blacksmiths, or other simplistic folk, who also went out to raid. Their culture stressed martial prowess, and individuals were encouraged to wear armor and bear weapons at all times. This was referred to as "The Way of Mandalore". Their martial prowess earned them great renown as mercenaries and bounty hunters within the larger Galaxy. Eventually, these people came into contact with the sith, and having built up a rivalry with the Jedi order over time, ally with them.

   

    The Mandalorians gradually became more centralized, but never wholly united. At some point, the Jedi Tarre Vizsla became one of these rulers, but when he died the Jedi took his Lightsaber back to the Jedi Temple of Coruscant. However, in time, when the Sith sacked the planet of Coruscant, (possibly around 3000BBY/7600CRC in accordance with it's legends setting) members of Clan Vizsla stole the Darksaber from the temple. Clan Vizsla then used the association of the saber with the ancient rulers of Mandalore to establish a much more centralized and unified empire. 

    This centralization under Clan Vizsla led to the system we know from the Shows, where each Clan is placed under a House, such as Clan Wren being Vassals of House Vizsla. Such a stratification suggests a larger level of executive control under the Mandalore, as well as a greater amount of social inequality. This leads to essentially a system of Nobility, and the division of Mandalorian society into classes, the noble ruling class, the heads of houses and clans and of course the Mandalore, the warrior and soldier classes who may be members of Clans, but without station, and the Mandalorian middle classes, whose clans hold no land or political power. It seems likely as well that through their contact with the Sith, the Mandalorian empire would amass a fairly substantial foreign born slave population, some of whom may join the Mandalorian culture, but the majority of whom would be born on Mandalore without being a part of Mandalorian culture.

    Given the close proximity of the Mandalorians and the Sith, it seems likely that the end of the Mandalorian Wars, and ultimately the Mandalorian Cataclysm, occured in association with the fall of the Sith Empire around 1032 BBY/6945 CRC. Following the defeat of the Sith, the Jedi and republic turn their eye to the Mandalorians, removing them as a threat. This causes the Mandalorian Cataclysm, and for a time the effective extinction of the Mandalorian Empire. Rapid urbanization occurs as Mandalorian society fractures into civil war, with Mandalorian warlords building hermetically sealed fortress cities and warring for resources and limited land.

    After centuries of war, Mandalorian society restructures, with one Warlord able to take power over the various warlords and becoming a new Mandalore. This new political order then turns it's sights on the republic once more as vengeance for past dishonor, and is heartily trounced by a republic in the gold age of the end of the High Republic. This is a hundred years before the movies, and the new Mandalorian regime signs treaties with the Republic, and officially joins, gaining it's representation.

    What follows is a century of decline in the warrior class. With the civil wars ended, and outside expansion forbidden by the treaties, the warrior class becomes largely redundant. Purposeless infighting becomes rampant, and both the native born "non Mandalorian" class, the descendants of captives brought to Mandalore during the Mandalorian Wars who never wholly embraced The Way of Mandalore, and the Mandalorian middle class who held no land or titles, began to question the need for a warrior noble class. After decades of decline, an opposition to the warrior nobility, and the old ways in general, sprung up, led by Satine Kryze. The New Mandalorian ascension was not a sudden abolishing of the old ways within a decade, but rather the final sweeping away of a cultural order which had become irrelevant. However many Mandalorians kept their ancestral armor as heirlooms, even if they did not wear it anymore.

    Following this, history proceeds precisely as we see it in the TV shows, with the fall of the New Mandalorian regime and the beginnings of the Mandalorian revolt against the Empire. But as we can reasonably conclude, the Mandalorians are defeated in their revolt, and are thrust into diaspora. Following this diaspora, there's a return not to the Pre New Mandalorian ways of the Mandalorian Empire, but rather a return to the more nomadic, strictly orthodox way of the ancient Mandalorians. Some orthodox Mandalorians existed, such as Din Djarin, but strict orthodoxy became much more commonplace in response to the Diaspora, explaining the discrepancy in helmet wearing.

And with that, we have a broad overview of Mandalorian history, both what we know and my understanding of how it all fits together. Thanks so much for reading with me today.