“Perhaps there will be no new age, Mandalore, no great Mandalorian crusade. Perhaps your people fought their last battle at Malachor V, and you have been dying ever since, a quiet death that will last centuries. And perhaps all that remains will be what I see before me: a man, wounded by a Jedi, encased in a Mandalorian shell, haunted by the thought of being the last of the Mandalorians.”
—Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
The concept of the Mandalorians dates back to the original Star Wars trilogy, specifically the character of Boba Fett. A 1979 issue of Bantha Tracks, the official Star Wars Fan Club newsletter, identified Fett’s armor as that of the Imperial Shocktroopers, mysterious warriors who hailed from the far side of the galaxy and were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars. The following year’s novelization of The Empire Strikes Back dropped the term “Imperial Shocktrooper” but kept the description.
Note that prior to the release of Attack of the Clones in 2002, with one exception, Boba Fett himself was never identified as a Mandalorian, but merely as an unaffiliated bounty hunter who wore their armor. The exception was a 1982 story arc from Marvel’s Star Wars comic, in which Princess Leia encounters two Mandalorian Supercommandos named Fenn Shysa and Tobbi Dala. In issue #68, “The Search Begins,” Fenn Shysa not only claims that Boba Fett led the Mandalorians during the Clone Wars, but also describes the wars as taking place when Leia was already a young adult.
This comic soon became an outlier source and was mostly ignored by later lore for more than two decades (although Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction referenced Fett’s past with Shysa and Dala in 1996), though it was eventually reincorporated into EU canon by “The History of the Mandalorians,” an article in Star Wars Insider #80 (2005).
Otherwise, most sources from the ’80s and ’90s were largely in agreement on these basic points:
A) The Mandalorians were a mysterious group of warriors who fought the Jedi during the Clone Wars and lost.
B) By the time of the movies all that remained of the Mandalorians was battered pieces of their armor.
C) This armor was a rare and expensive commodity, worn only by a handful of underworld figures that included Boba Fett (Star Wars Holiday Special, 1978), Jodo Kast (Tatooine Manhunt, 1988), Alfreda Goot (Scoundrel’s Luck, 1990), and Feskitt Bobb (Star Wars Miniatures Battles, 1991).
In 1995, the Mandalorians finally appeared in their full glory in Tales of the Jedi: The Sith War, a comic set almost 4,000 years before the movies. Following Tales of the Jedi’s incongruously primitive technological aesthetic, these Mandalorians more closely resembled a barbarian horde than an elite force of supercommandos. A race of gray-skinned aliens reminiscent of the Predator, they wore mismatched, almost organic-looking armor covered in spikes, but the mask of their leader, known only as Mandalore, still bore the unmistakable T-slit visor made famous by Boba Fett’s helmet.
And for a long time, that was basically it for the Mandalorians. They were enigmatic and extinct, and the fact that we knew almost nothing about them was what made them awesome. All we had to go by was Boba Fett (and three Boba Fett cosplayers from obscure RPG books), who was extremely popular despite only dressing like a Mandalorian. How awesome, then, must the real thing have been?
Of course, we eventually got our answer, and that was where it all went wrong.
Mandalorian history began with an alien race called the Taungs, one of two sentient species indigenous to the planet Notron, known millennia later as Coruscant. The other species was the Battalions of Zhell, the prehistoric ancestors of humans. The Taungs and the Zhell warred for hundreds of years, but eventually the Taungs were defeated and expelled from Notron. They limped to the planet Roon in the Outer Rim, where they stayed for several thousand years for some reason.
Eventually, however, they were led by their great warrior-king, Mandalore the First, to a lush jungle world populated by giant dinosaurs. Under Mandalore’s leadership, the Taungs drove these “mythosaurs” to extinction and named the newly conquered planet Mandalore in their leader’s honor. Adopting the image of a mythosaur skull as their insignia, the Taungs reorganized as the Mandalorian Crusaders, a roving band of space barbarians who lived for battle and conquest.
Whenever the ruling Mandalore died, a Mandalorian warrior would take up his mask and rename him- or herself as the new Mandalore. Among them were Mandalore the Conqueror, Mandalore the Destroyer, Mandalore the Binder, and Mandalore the Hammerborn. At the time of the Great Sith War, however, it was Mandalore the Indomitable who led the marauding horde, and we already saw how his story turned out.
The reign of his immediate successor was short-lived, as “Mandalore the Unknown” was quickly supplanted by a usurper who took the name Mandalore the Ultimate. Secretly a pawn of the Sith Empire-in-exile in Unknown Space, Ultimate was responsible for starting the Mandalorian Wars, which saw the extinction of the Taung species and the dawn of a multi-species Mandalorian people united by culture instead of race. Thus the time of the Mandalorian Crusaders came to an end, replaced by the more formally regimented, multi-species Neo-Crusaders.
The Mandalorian Wars, the Neo-Crusaders’ great campaign to conquer the entire galaxy, dragged on for several long years, but it finally came to an end when the Mandalorian forces were lured into a trap at the ancient Sith world of Malachor V. Mandalore the Ultimate was slain in personal combat with Revan, the leader of the Jedi war effort, and the bulk of his fleet and soldiers were destroyed by the Mass Shadow Generator, a superweapon activated by the Jedi Exile, the player character from Knights of the Old Republic II.
Thoroughly defeated, stripped of their weapons, armor, and Basilisk war droids, the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders went into diaspora. Most hired themselves out to the highest bidder as bodyguards or assassins, becoming known as the Mandalorian Mercs. The Taung species was all but extinct, with the only known survivor being the former Mandalore the Unknown. In the power vacuum that existed after the war, he tried to reclaim his rightful place as Mandalore, but because Revan had taken Mandalore’s traditional mask when he killed Ultimate, Unknown was unable to rally the full support of the Mandalorian clans.
He sent warriors to the Kashyyyk Shadowlands to test a new personal cloaking device, and survived an assassination attempt by HK-47, Revan’s personal assassin droid, when the droid was reprogrammed by one of his own disloyal followers, but ultimately his accomplishments were few. Ailing and near death after the Jedi Civil War, Unknown was visited by Canderous Ordo, a former Neo-Crusader, during his quest to reunite the clans. Seeing that Canderous had already reclaimed the mask of Mandalore, Unknown bequeathed him his armor and his clan, asking him to preserve the old Mandalorian ways before he died.
Taking the name Mandalore the Preserver, Canderous successfully reunited the Mandalorians during the Dark Wars, when they fought alongside the Jedi and the Republic against a resurgent Sith threat.
—Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
The concept of the Mandalorians dates back to the original Star Wars trilogy, specifically the character of Boba Fett. A 1979 issue of Bantha Tracks, the official Star Wars Fan Club newsletter, identified Fett’s armor as that of the Imperial Shocktroopers, mysterious warriors who hailed from the far side of the galaxy and were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars. The following year’s novelization of The Empire Strikes Back dropped the term “Imperial Shocktrooper” but kept the description.
Note that prior to the release of Attack of the Clones in 2002, with one exception, Boba Fett himself was never identified as a Mandalorian, but merely as an unaffiliated bounty hunter who wore their armor. The exception was a 1982 story arc from Marvel’s Star Wars comic, in which Princess Leia encounters two Mandalorian Supercommandos named Fenn Shysa and Tobbi Dala. In issue #68, “The Search Begins,” Fenn Shysa not only claims that Boba Fett led the Mandalorians during the Clone Wars, but also describes the wars as taking place when Leia was already a young adult.
This comic soon became an outlier source and was mostly ignored by later lore for more than two decades (although Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction referenced Fett’s past with Shysa and Dala in 1996), though it was eventually reincorporated into EU canon by “The History of the Mandalorians,” an article in Star Wars Insider #80 (2005).
Otherwise, most sources from the ’80s and ’90s were largely in agreement on these basic points:
A) The Mandalorians were a mysterious group of warriors who fought the Jedi during the Clone Wars and lost.
B) By the time of the movies all that remained of the Mandalorians was battered pieces of their armor.
C) This armor was a rare and expensive commodity, worn only by a handful of underworld figures that included Boba Fett (Star Wars Holiday Special, 1978), Jodo Kast (Tatooine Manhunt, 1988), Alfreda Goot (Scoundrel’s Luck, 1990), and Feskitt Bobb (Star Wars Miniatures Battles, 1991).
In 1995, the Mandalorians finally appeared in their full glory in Tales of the Jedi: The Sith War, a comic set almost 4,000 years before the movies. Following Tales of the Jedi’s incongruously primitive technological aesthetic, these Mandalorians more closely resembled a barbarian horde than an elite force of supercommandos. A race of gray-skinned aliens reminiscent of the Predator, they wore mismatched, almost organic-looking armor covered in spikes, but the mask of their leader, known only as Mandalore, still bore the unmistakable T-slit visor made famous by Boba Fett’s helmet.
And for a long time, that was basically it for the Mandalorians. They were enigmatic and extinct, and the fact that we knew almost nothing about them was what made them awesome. All we had to go by was Boba Fett (and three Boba Fett cosplayers from obscure RPG books), who was extremely popular despite only dressing like a Mandalorian. How awesome, then, must the real thing have been?
Of course, we eventually got our answer, and that was where it all went wrong.
Mandalorian history began with an alien race called the Taungs, one of two sentient species indigenous to the planet Notron, known millennia later as Coruscant. The other species was the Battalions of Zhell, the prehistoric ancestors of humans. The Taungs and the Zhell warred for hundreds of years, but eventually the Taungs were defeated and expelled from Notron. They limped to the planet Roon in the Outer Rim, where they stayed for several thousand years for some reason.
Eventually, however, they were led by their great warrior-king, Mandalore the First, to a lush jungle world populated by giant dinosaurs. Under Mandalore’s leadership, the Taungs drove these “mythosaurs” to extinction and named the newly conquered planet Mandalore in their leader’s honor. Adopting the image of a mythosaur skull as their insignia, the Taungs reorganized as the Mandalorian Crusaders, a roving band of space barbarians who lived for battle and conquest.
Whenever the ruling Mandalore died, a Mandalorian warrior would take up his mask and rename him- or herself as the new Mandalore. Among them were Mandalore the Conqueror, Mandalore the Destroyer, Mandalore the Binder, and Mandalore the Hammerborn. At the time of the Great Sith War, however, it was Mandalore the Indomitable who led the marauding horde, and we already saw how his story turned out.
The reign of his immediate successor was short-lived, as “Mandalore the Unknown” was quickly supplanted by a usurper who took the name Mandalore the Ultimate. Secretly a pawn of the Sith Empire-in-exile in Unknown Space, Ultimate was responsible for starting the Mandalorian Wars, which saw the extinction of the Taung species and the dawn of a multi-species Mandalorian people united by culture instead of race. Thus the time of the Mandalorian Crusaders came to an end, replaced by the more formally regimented, multi-species Neo-Crusaders.
The Mandalorian Wars, the Neo-Crusaders’ great campaign to conquer the entire galaxy, dragged on for several long years, but it finally came to an end when the Mandalorian forces were lured into a trap at the ancient Sith world of Malachor V. Mandalore the Ultimate was slain in personal combat with Revan, the leader of the Jedi war effort, and the bulk of his fleet and soldiers were destroyed by the Mass Shadow Generator, a superweapon activated by the Jedi Exile, the player character from Knights of the Old Republic II.
Thoroughly defeated, stripped of their weapons, armor, and Basilisk war droids, the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders went into diaspora. Most hired themselves out to the highest bidder as bodyguards or assassins, becoming known as the Mandalorian Mercs. The Taung species was all but extinct, with the only known survivor being the former Mandalore the Unknown. In the power vacuum that existed after the war, he tried to reclaim his rightful place as Mandalore, but because Revan had taken Mandalore’s traditional mask when he killed Ultimate, Unknown was unable to rally the full support of the Mandalorian clans.
He sent warriors to the Kashyyyk Shadowlands to test a new personal cloaking device, and survived an assassination attempt by HK-47, Revan’s personal assassin droid, when the droid was reprogrammed by one of his own disloyal followers, but ultimately his accomplishments were few. Ailing and near death after the Jedi Civil War, Unknown was visited by Canderous Ordo, a former Neo-Crusader, during his quest to reunite the clans. Seeing that Canderous had already reclaimed the mask of Mandalore, Unknown bequeathed him his armor and his clan, asking him to preserve the old Mandalorian ways before he died.
Taking the name Mandalore the Preserver, Canderous successfully reunited the Mandalorians during the Dark Wars, when they fought alongside the Jedi and the Republic against a resurgent Sith threat.
Later, some other things happened.
