Few characters in Star Wars: The Clone Wars led a life quite as dramatic as Asajj Ventress. Asajj was actually created for Genndy Tartakovsky's non-canon animated short series, Star Wars: Clone Wars, based on unused concept art for a female Sith lord developed for 2002's Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. Interestingly, this early version of Asajj was dropped from the film in favor of Count Dooku, a character who would go on to play a major role in Asajj's journey from becoming a Jedi Padawan to Sith Disciple in the canon Clone Wars TV show.

Asajj was born on the planet Dathomir to a member of the Nightsisters, a Dark Side group who generated magic by tapping into the dark energies surrounding their world. At a young age, Asajj was given to the pirate Hal'Sted, a member of the hyper-intelligent species the Sinteen, to protect her coven. In the years that followed, she served as his slave on the planet Rattatak, until Hal'Sted was killed by Weequay pirates and Asajj was found by a Jedi Knight named Ky Narec. Narec subsequently became her guardian, teaching Asajj how to draw from the Light Side of the Force and protect Rattatak's civilians from outside forces.

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Asaaj Ventress and Count Dooku from Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Tragically, some ten years later, Narec was killed in a battle with pirates, which pushed Asajj to embrace her darker impulses and take control of Rattatak for herself. This, in turn, led to her being discovered by the former Jedi-turned-Sith Lord Count Dooku, who taught her the ways of the Dark Side and made her his apprentice. Later, as depicted in the 2019 audiobook Dooku: Jedi Lost, Asajj was haunted by a ghostly vision of Narec while carrying out a mission for Dooku. Gradually, though, Asajj pushed away Narec's pleas for her to return to the Light, and she fully embraced the Dark Side.

By the time the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars film picked up, Asajj had become Dooku's faithful servant and was carrying out his schemes to improve the Separatists' standing in their war against the Galactic Republic. However, over the course of the events that followed in the Clone Wars TV show, Dooku's master, Darth Sidious, came to view Asajj as a threat due to her growing powers and ordered Dooku to destroy her. Dooku then attempted to have Asajj killed at the Battle of Sullust, only for her to survive and conspire with the Nightsisters to have Nightbrother Savage Opress kill him.

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Star Wars Dark Disciple book cover with Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Voss

When Savage later turned against both Asajj and Dooku, the latter took revenge on his former apprentice by using his droid army to slaughter most of the Nightsisters. The trauma from losing yet another found family led to Asajj renouncing the Dark Side, instead adopting a far more flexible moral code, operating as a bounty hunter. Asajj even wound up working with some of her former enemies along the way, like when she helped rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi from Savage Opress and his brother Maul or aided Ahsoka Tano after she was framed for bombing the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

Asajj's story was concluded in 2015's Dark Disciple: A Clone Wars Novel, after the original plans for Clone Wars' final two seasons were scrapped. In the book, Asajj meets and falls in love with Quinlan Vos, a Jedi who's undercover as a bounty hunter as part of a mission to kill Dooku and end the Clone Wars. However, their subsequent attempts to assassinate Dooku fail, and Asajj ultimately sacrifices her life to save Vos from being killed by her former master. Still, thanks to her sacrifice, she is honored by the Jedi High Council and laid to rest in her clan's home village on Dathomir.

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