The bounty hunter named Boba Fett made his first appearance in Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back. He was on screen for under seven minutes and had four lines of dialogue. However, there was something about Fett that really made audiences wanting more. A cult following developed around him and George Lucas said that if he knew Boba Fett was going to be so popular, he might have had a different ending for Fett than the one he received in Return of the Jedi. Little did audiences know, Boba Fett would be some of the first exposure we would get to the culture of the Mandalorians. Boba Fett's armor was made of beskar and the color and design was that of Mandalorian warriors.
Mandalorians featured prominently in Star Wars literature as well as in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Just like Boba Fett, the Mandalorians were infamous for being bounty hunters and mercenaries for hire. They operated off of a strict warrior code and had a very liberal and accepting culture. They weren't comprised of one race, but many races, and their adventures shaped the destiny of the Star Wars universe. How much do you know about the Mandalorians? What is the origin of the Mandalorian symbol that is displayed on Boba Fett's left shoulder? Which Mandalorian became a Jedi and what was so special about their lightsaber? What was Jango Fett's relationship to the True Mandalorians and how did he bring down the group known as the Death Watch? These answers and more, coming right up!
20 MANDALORE THE FIRST
Most cultures have fantastic stories about their first leader and their amazing abilities. In Star Trek, Kahless the Unforgettable was the first Emperor of the Klingon Empire and united all of the Klingon tribes. In Star Wars, the first leader of the Mandalorians had achieved several spectacular feats.
Mandalore the First originated on the giant city-planet Coruscant and was of the Taung race. He arrived with his followers on the planet Roon. On the planet were giant creatures called mythosaurs. He formed the Mandalorian Crusaders, hunted the mythosaurs to extinction, then renamed the planet Mandalore. He then became known as Te Sol'yc Mand'alor and Mandalore the Conqueror.
19 MANDALORIANS HELPED BUILD A SPECIAL LIGHTSABER
As the story goes, Samuel L. Jackson would play Mace Windu under certain conditions. One of them was that he wanted his lightsaber to be purple, so that we would stand out in the giant Jedi battle on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones. Jackson also claims what's written on his saber was what was written on his wallet from Pulp Fiction. What's more awesome than a purple lightsaber?
The Jedi have been around for ages, and long ago the counted amongst their ranks a Mandalorian named Tarre Viszla. They were the first Mandalorian Jedi and they created a lightsaber called the Darksaber. It produced a shorter black blade that was more sword-shaped than other sabers. It became the weapon used by the Mandalorian leader of the group called Death Watch.
18 HUTTS IN MANDALORIAN CULTURE
Everyone knows J.R.R. Tolkien as the famous writer of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but raise your hand if you knew that he was a professional philologist of old Germanic languages? The only thing Tolkien loved more than languages were fake languages, and he constructed the Elvish language of Quenya when he was in his late teens.
The construction of the Mandalorian language, known as Mando'a, revealed interesting things about the Mandalorians themselves. The language had a colorful embrace of insults. Since Mandalorians were a warrior race, they found laziness and cowardice most egregious. The word for coward was hut'uun, specifically targeting the slowness and girth of the Hutt race.
17 MANDALORIAN ARMOR
Colors are very important visual markers in the Star Wars universe. In general, the lightsaber color of a Sith was red, whereas a Jedi might wield a green or blue lightsaber. Colors were also important when it came to the famous armor of the Mandalorians. It was known across the galaxy as being made from the extremely durable metal known as beskar, nicknamed Mandalorian iron.
Beskar was strong enough to withstand blaster fire as well as lightsaber slashes. Because Mandalorians consisted of different races, the unifying design of the armor was important to help create visual unity. It was tradition to color your armor as a way of visualizing your mission. Armor painted black meant you were out for justice, and gold meant you were avenging something or someone.
16 THE MANDALORIAN CULTURE
The Mandalorians were not bound to just one race; they were a collection of various species and genders. There were attempts to unite the Mandalorian people but initially they started out as being a collection of clans. To be a part of the Mandalorian culture, you were asked to follow the six actions known as the Resol'nare.
Resol'nare demanded that you spoke Mandalorian, wore Mandalorian armor, defended your family, made sure your clan was prosperous, answered a rally if called upon and had your children understand and follow the Mandalorian traditions. The word "hero" doesn't exist in the Mandalorian language because everyone is expected to be heroic in their everyday activities.
15 JEDI CATACLYSM
The Jedi are considered to be warrior monks. Although they focus on peaceful ways to be one with the Force, Jedi are willing to use violence if push comes to shove. In an event referred to as the Mandalorian Excision, the Galactic Republic, along with the Jedi, put a massive smackdown on the Mandalorians that was felt for generations after.
Jedi attacks and Republic bombings caused a cataclysm on Mandalore. The devastation was so profound that the Mandalorian homeworld was reduced to a desert, and any city created would have to be under the protection of a biodome. These attacks were later retconned, saying that only a portion of the planet was turned to ash but other parts of the planet had different ecosystems.
14 ADOPTION
Mandalorians had a very liberal and strong sense of family. Fighting and loss of life was a constant part of the Mandalorian lifestyle, and Mandalorians found themselves often adopting orphans into their family. A parent says "ni kry'tayl gai sa'ad" ("I know your name as my child") and they were now in the Mandalorian family.
Jango Fett's father was a casualty in the Mandalorian Civil War. After his dad's passing, Fett was adopted by Jaster Mereel, the leader of the True Mandalorians. Raised as his own child, Mereel taught Fett the ways of the Mandalorians. Fett would find himself the eventual leader of the True Mandalorians.
13 EQUALITY
Mandalorians were not a race but a collection of races. Mandalorians also had a very liberal adoption belief, and those that were adopted by Mandalorians automatically became Mandalorians themselves. Because of the eclectic composition of the group, there initially was great tolerance, understanding and equality amongst the Mandalorians.
Unlike other races, there were no caste systems or divisions based on birth and everything operated like a meritocracy. There was a clear leader but besides the Mand'alor such things as centralized government and bureaucracy were considered distasteful. Men and women also were considered equal with no divisions by gender occurring on the battlefield or in the home.
12 INFLUENCE ON STORMTROOPERS
There's a reason why the stormtrooper armor bares an uncanny resemblance to Mandalorian armor in appearance but not in strength, as it's often comically pointed out that stormtrooper armor is fairly useless against blasters. The Grand Army of the Republic initially started out as clones of the Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett.
Jedi Master Dooku used Jango Fett as the template for the clone army being constructed on Kamino. Besides borrowing from Fett's genetic code, they also borrowed from Fett's Mandalorian armor. Fett tried to instill in the first generation of clones a sense of their Mandalorian heritage, but that disappeared after Fett's passing and the moving of cloning facilities to Coruscant and Centax-2.
11 MANDALORIAN CIVIL WAR
The Mandalorians had a civil war in which The True Mandalorians, led by Jaster Mereel, wanted to see Mandalorians embrace a peaceful way of existence with other races in the galaxy. The Death Watch, led by Tor Visla, wanted to see the galaxy under the control of Mandalore, returning the Mandalorians to their conquering ways.
The True Mandalorians were defeated by The Death Watch with accidental help from the Jedi. However, the Death Watch leader was taken down by Jango Fett, who sought vengeance over the passing of his adoptive father. Fett opted not to be the new Mand'alor and Mandalore was now under control of Duchess Satine Kryze.
10 MANDALORIAN SYMBOL
What exactly is the Mandalorian symbol? It kind of looks like an alternate reality in which The Punisher was a wooly mammoth. The Mandalorian symbol has ties with the settlement of the Mandalorian homeworld, formerly known as Roon. On the planet were giant, magnificent creatures called mythosaurs. They were rumored to be the size of a small city and looked somewhat like dragons.
The Mandalorian Crusaders hunted the mythosaurs into extinction, yet the creatures still lived on in Mandalorian culture. The Mandalorian Crusaders wielded ceremonial weapons called mythosaur axes, made from the bones of mythosaurs. The Mandalorian symbol was modeled after the skull of a mythosaur.
9 FIGHT CLUB
Mandalorians were at one point united around their desire to fight. The first ruler, Mandalore the First, brought the Mandalorians together when, as a collective, they all fought to bring the mythosaurs to extinction upon settling their home planet. Mandalorians are also asked to fight to protect themselves and their families. A civil war was fought to decide if they should keep their culture of fighting and conquering alive.
In the Mandalorian culture, fighting was sometimes used to settle disputes (sometimes with only one person walking away from the fight). It was said that Mandalorians rarely wear jewelry, but if you do see a Mandalorian with jewelry and they're removing it from their body, it means that they're about to fight, so run for cover!
8 ANCIENT CELTS
When creating Star Wars, George Lucas borrowed from the traditions of a number of cultures. Lightsaber wielding Darth Vader loosely resembles in appearance a katana-wielding samurai warrior. Jedi Knights initially resembled a similar structure to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
When it came to the Mandalorians and their nomadic warrior culture, their lifestyle and history was loosely based on the Celts. Science fiction writer Karen Traviss contributed to Mandalorian history. Although initially thought to be based on Spartans, Traviss based the Mandalorians on the Celts, whose culture consisted of clans loosely allied with each other and suffered from infighting.
7 DEATH WATCH
The Mandalorians would eventually find themselves at a crossroads, in which a group of Mandalorians wanted to ultimately become rulers of the galaxy. This group was called Death Watch (Kyr'tsad in Mandalorian tongue) and was led by a man named Tor Vizsla. Death Watch suffered a setback after Vizsla was felled by Jango Fett, who was avenging the passing of his parents at the hands of Death Watch.
Death Watch was revived by Pre Vizsla, who wielded the infamous black-colored Darksaber. Vizsla had the Death Watch ally themselves with the Shadow Collective, a criminal organization led by Darth Maul. Vizsla would see his defeat at the hands of Maul, and many Death Watch members left after refusing to follow their new leader, an outsider in the eyes of some of the members.
6 OBI-WAN AND SATINE KRYZE
Mandalorians were clans brought together by a common goal, but once that common goal came into question the culture began to splinter and faction. The Mandalorians were in desperate need of direction and leadership which came in the form of Duchess Satine Kryze. She was a part of the New Mandalorian movement, one that embraced peace and co-operation with other races in the galaxy.
Satine was under the protection of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. During this time, Satine and Kenobi developed feelings for each other. Years later, Kryze was overthrown by the Death Watch, led by Pre Vizsla and Darth Maul. Maul ended Kryze's life to avenge the damage that Kenobi inflicted upon Maul in Phantom Menace. Before Kryze passed away, she told Kenobi she loved him.
5 MARRIAGE
At some Indian weddings, the bride and her friends will decorate their hands and feet with intricate designs called menhdi. Some Lebanese weddings have a zaffe, a collection of family members, singers and dancers that will escort the groom to the bride's house. When it comes to Mandalorian weddings, they are surprisingly much more simple to carry out.
If two people wish to be married, the two would verbally say a pledge between them. There is no need for a religious or legal entity to be present and a celebration afterwards was encouraged by not necessary. The best part? The Mandalorian wedding vows could be exchanged over a comlink; both people didn't need to be physically present in order to be married! That certainly saves on time and expenses!
4 MANDALORE
The Mandalore home planet, formerly called Roon, was a difficult place to live. Most major cities, such as the capital city of Sundari, were giant cube-shabed cities that were encased in biodomes due to the inclement desert that surrounded it. Although Mandalore was depicted as a desert planet due to years of wars on the surface, deserts were retconned as just an aspect of the ecology of the planet.
Mandalore had a series of underground tunnels connecting cities, and also under some cities were large deposits of beskar that were mined to create Mandalorian armor. Mandalore had a moon named Condordia that initially served as a mining base. During the reign of the New Mandalorians, enemies of the state were exiled to Concordia.
3 NON-HETERONORMATIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Mandalorian society had a strong code of honor, but otherwise seemed fairly liberal. Marriage between two people was done by saying six sentences (you didn't even need to be on the same planet for it to work), you could adopt anyone into the Mandalorian culture and as long as you could fight and defend your fellow Mandalorians, you were honored and welcome on Mandalore. This liberal attitude extended to marriage.
Non-heteronormative marriages were also a welcome part of Mandalorian culture. Goran Beviin, a bounty hunter, and Medrit Vasur, a blacksmith, were two male Mandalorians that were married. The two adopted a war orphan named Dinua Jeban. Vasur and Beviin are the first gay couple in Star Wars literature. Artwork by Delta2094
2 TRUE MANDALORIANS
The Mandalorians had a history of violence and there was a movement to change the ways and viewpoints of the Mandalorian people. The New Mandalorians were a political group that wanted Mandalorians to create a future of peace, but Tor Vizsla and the Death Watch thought otherwise. Jaster Mereel, leader of a group called the True Mandalorians, fought a Mandalorian Civil War to fight for what both sides envisioned as their people's direction.
Jaster Mereel had an adopted son named Jango Fett. Fett took over as leader of the True Mandalorians after Mereel was betrayed by a fellow soldier named Montross. the True Mandalorians were dealt a devastating blow when Death Watch tricked the Jedi into fighting Fett and his men, a battle that the True Mandalorians all but wiped out.
1 BOBA FETT: LEADER OF THE MANDALORIANS
In Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker returned to Tatooine to free Han Solo from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt. In the battle, Boba Fett is unceremoniously dispatched when Han hits Boba's rocket pack and he's shot into the mouth of the Sarlacc. Thanks to the Mandalorian armor he wore, he survived and escaped from the stomach of the Sarlacc.
Boba Fett went back to being a bounty hunter but eventually returned to his Mandalorian roots and joined a group called the Mandalorian Protectors. His life was saved by a fellow Mandalorian named Fenn Shysa who encouraged Fett to be the new Mandalore. After Shysa passed away, Boba Fett became the new Mandalorian leader.