New Mandalorians

Sundari, the capital city of the New Mandalorians.

Peace exists only in the minds of the faithful.

— Duchess Satine Kryze

The New Mandalorians were a pacifistic movement of Mandalorians who ruled the planet of Mandalore from approximately 42 BBY until they were overthrown by Death Watch in 19 BBY.

Government & Institutions

Satine of Clan Kryze, Duchess of Mandalore and a devout pacifist, was the ruler of the New Mandalorians.

The ruler of the New Mandalorians was the Duchess of Mandalore, Satine Kryze. Their capital was Sundari. Satine presided over a Council of Ministers which included a Prime Minister, a Minister of Finance, and a Minister of the Interior, among others. The personal guard of the Duchess was made up of Mandalorian Protectors, who were an independent organization loyal to whoever sat upon Mandalore’s throne.They also carried out certain police functions at the request of the Duchess, such as investigating the poisoning of Mandalorian children in schools and enforcing Mandalore’s laws, like when they took Ahsoka’s lightsabers after foreigners were prohibited from carrying arms on the planet.

The Mandalorian Police were the formal police force of the New Mandalorians. They regulated incoming ship traffic and trade into the city and enforced tariffs. They were often bribed by black market dealers in exchange for overlooking the smuggling of goods into Sundari, a process uncovered by Duchess Satine with the help of Senator Padme Amidala. The Mandalorian Police answered to the Duchess and Prime Minister Almec, wore armor similar to traditional designs, and carried various weapons, including stun batons and blasters.

Mandalore's moon, Concordia, was semi-autonomous from Mandalore and was ruled by a Governor. Little is known about how this relationship between the New Mandalorian and Concordian governments functioned.

Culture & Beliefs

The New Mandalorians rejected the violent warrior ways of their ancestors while still preserving other aspects of Mandalorian culture, like their language, their style of dress, and armor, though the majority of New Mandalorians did not wear it. The common language of the New Mandalorians was Mando’a, as seen in their signage and at the Royal Academy of Sundari. However, the New Mandalorians were also bilingual, as Ahsoka instructed her students in Basic.

The architecture of the Palace of Sundari incorporated traditional Mandalorian elements like the Beskar diamond.

The New Mandalorians believed that war was a social ill that did not resolve but rather worsened conflicts, all of which could ultimately be resolved through diplomacy. During the Clone Wars the New Mandalorian government declared its neutrality, refusing to provide ideological or material aid to the Republic or the Confederacy of Independent Systems. As a result, Mandalore suffered attempted economic sanctions from both parties, leading to a shortage of food and other materials during the later years of the war, as well as attempts to subvert their independence. The New Mandalorians pushed strongly for a diplomatic solution to the Clone Wars, including hosting a peace summit in Sundari in 20 BBY.

New Mandalorians also preserved the ancient art style of their warrior ancestors, a form of cubism. At least two of the murals in the city of Sundari depict Mandalorian conquests and victories in battle against the Jedi Order in millennia past.

History

Due to the continuity change and The Clone Wars overlapping between Legends and New Canon, the New Mandalorians have two separate and very different origin stories.

Pre-Clone Wars

Legends

According to Death Watch, the origins of the New Mandalorians goes back over seven hundred years before the rule of Satine Kryze, to a war between the Republic and the Mandalorian Empire which ended in a Republic bombardment that laid waste to Mandalore's surface and led to its ecological collapse, reducing it to the dustball seen in The Clone Wars. This event, known as the Annihilation, or Dral'Han in Mando'a, crippled the Mandalorians and left them at the mercy of the Republic. The warriors were swiftly expelled from the planet, and a dummy government favorable to the Republic was installed on Mandalore in place of the traditional rulership system. These were the first New Mandalorians, who ruled from Sundari for over seven hundred years.

The warriors of Mandalore, however, had survived in exile on Concordia as well as on planets like Kalevala and Concord Dawn. Though all clans found themselves divided between the New Mandalorians and the "Mandalorian Faithful" who had maintained the warrior ways, as the centuries passed some clans came to be seen as the true leaders of the warriors in exile. The Faithful were thus divided into several factions, chief among them Death Watch and Jaster Mereel's True Mandalorians. Satine Kryze's father, the Duke of Kalevala, was a "mighty clan warlord" who was cut down in the Great Clan Wars, a civil war which erupted after Jaster Mereel's end at the hands of Death Watch (which ended an entirely different civil war, unhelpfully called the Madalorian Civil War). When he was killed in 42 BBY, Satine betrayed her upbringing to become the next leader of the New Mandalorians. Many of the former Faithful, exhausted by the war, laid down their weapons to join the movement. Those who did not were once more exiled to Concordia, or simply fled to continue to live their traditional ways in secret.

New Canon

In both continuities, the surface of Mandalore was destroyed by the wars waged upon it.

The New Mandalorians were founded sometime before or during the Mandalorian Civil War (also known as the Great Clan Wars), which began in 42 BBY and ended some time before 32 BBY. Who precisely founded it is unclear, as well as when it was founded. Despite being raised in the traditional warrior ways, the horrors that Satine Kryze witnessed during this civil war pushed her to abandon the pursuit of war in favor of the pursuit of peace. Though most of Mandalore's population was killed in the war and its surface was destroyed, Satine united the survivors under the banner of the New Mandalorians and ruled from the same city her father had ruled from, Sundari. The warriors who resisted peace were exiled to Mandalore's moon, Concordia, which was not under direct New Mandalorian rule.

The Clone Wars

During the final years of the Galactic Republic, New Mandalore became the leader of the Council of Neutral Systems, a collection of planetary systems who had declared their neutrality in the Clone Wars. On at least one occasion, Satine Kryze traveled to Coruscant to testify on behalf of the Council of Neutral Systems in the Senate. Mandalore's refusal to get involved in the war greatly angered Palpatine; through his proxy of Count Dooku, Palpatine orchestrated the dissemination of a doctored recording by a New Mandalorian official saying that Mandalore was not equipped to handle the treat of a Separatist-backed Death Watch in order to justify a military occupation of Mandalore. Satine unveiled the plot and successfully defended Mandalore's sovereignty, at which point Mandalore was put under trade sanctions by the Separatists and Republic alike. These sanctions led to a shortage of basic necessities on Mandalore, such as food. As a result of the shortages, there was an explosion of corruption on Mandalore that involved the highest levels of New Mandalorian government.

Mandalore was also known to host peace summits between the Republic and the Separatists, such as the one in 20 BBY which was interrupted by Lux Bonteri. It is unknown how extensive Mandalore's mediation between the two parties was, or if the rest of the Council of Neutral Systems was involved. By 19 BBY, the strain of corruption and shortages had significantly weakened the New Mandalorian government. Pre Vizsla, the leader of Death Watch, allied himself with all of the most powerful crime lords of the Outer Rim, including the Hutt cartel, to overthrow the Duchess and reinstate the traditional warrior ways. However, he was promptly killed by Maul. Maul then killed Satine and for the duration of the Clone Wars Mandalore was used as a home base for Maul's criminal enterprise, the Shadow Collective, until he was overthrown by an alliance of Bo-Katan Kryze's Mandalorian forces and Republic Clone Troopers.

Imperial Era and Beyond

It is unknown what happened to the New Mandalorians after the rise of the Empire. Sometime between 19 BBY and 1 BBY, Mandalore came under total Imperial rule after Mandalore Bo-Katan Kryze was overthrown. The Empire converted the Royal Academy of Sundari into an Imperial Academy to indoctrinate Mandalorian youth into remaining loyal to the Empire. They also developed weapon systems that were used to subjugate the Mandalorian warriors who resisted Imperial rule, like the Arc Pulse Generator built by Sabine Wren. In a sort of cruel irony, the weapon which was built in the same Academy that educated Satine's nephew in the art of peace was nicknamed "the Duchess". At some point between 1 BBY and 9 ABY, the Empire glassed the surface of Mandalore, destroying Sundari and killing the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants. As no New Mandalorians are depicted in this era, it can be assumed that they are extinct.

Common Misconceptions

This section covers a few common misconceptions that are prevalent in fanon interpretations.

The New Mandalorians banned Mando'a

• The language of the New Mandalorians was Mando'a, as is visible throughout their capital city, from the labels on the Mandalorian Police speeders to the dorm rooms of the cadets at the Royal Academy of Government. The origins of this misconception remains a mystery considering it can be refuted by rewatching just about any of the episodes of The Clone Wars which take place on Mandalore.

The New Mandalorians banned armor/weapons

• The Mandalorian Royal Guard wore armor while serving Satine, as well as the Mandalorian Police, who additionally carried real blasters that can and did kill. The only reference to weapons being banned is when Ahsoka's lightsaber is confiscated in accordance to a law forbidding foreigners from carrying weapons in the wake of Obi-Wan Kenobi's little "incident" on Mandalore. If all weaponry was banned, it doesn't make sense that they would specifically ban foreigners from carrying them when they could simply say that weaponry on Mandalore was banned except for planetary security forces. While the New Mandalorians did exile the unrepentant warriors to Concordia at the end of the civil war, there is no evidence that they confiscated or banned armor. The New Mandalorians, as far as we know, simply chose not to wear it, which is not exclusive to the New Mandalorians either: Alrich of Clan Wren, husband to a former Death Watch member, doesn't wear armor either, even though he describes beskar as making Mandalorians "who we are".

Satine is a colonizer

• This misconception seems to stem from the fact that Satine was born on Kalevala. In fact, Kalevala is in the same solar system as Mandalore and was inhabited by Mandalorians for likely millennia prior to Satine's birth. In Legends, Tor Vizsla describes her as his "kinswoman" and explicitly states that she was raised Mandalorian and rejected her traditional upbringing as a member of the so-called "Mandalorian Faithful". Her sister Bo-Katan's status as a full Mandalorian is also never questioned in any of her appearances, except by Children of the Watch, who don't think anyone is Mandalorian except them. In other words, if Satine's greatest ideological enemies viewed her as Mandalorian, the most likely intended reading of her character is that she is Mandalorian.

The New Mandalorians are a satellite government of the Republic

• This reading is directly lifted from the Death Watch Handbook included at the end of the Legends Bounty Hunter Code. No other text in Legends (or New Canon) describes the time period prior to New Mandalore's appearances in television, but by the time of the Clone Wars, some decades after Tor Vizsla had died, the New Mandalorian government was at direct odds with the Republic due to their declaration of neutrality. After failing to control Mandalore by orchestrating a military occupation, the Republic resorted to economic sanctions to attempt to punish Mandalore into siding with the Republic. Their neutrality even meant that the Jedi could not get involved when Satine was overthrown and the entire planet was turned into Maul's criminal command center. In other words, while there's no proof either way about this claim as far as New Mandalore's Legends origin, calling New Mandalore a satellite of the Republic in the Clone Wars era is a stretch.
• Another note about this: this handbook is implied to have been written by Pre Vizsla, who allied himself with the Separatists to try to overthrow Satine, which would have made Death Watch a satellite paramilitary force of the Confederacy of Independent Systems during this time. Perhaps this is a case of throwing stones in glass houses.

The New Mandalorians are white supremacist and human supremacist

New Mandalorians have different hair colours now!

• This likely stems from the fact that the vast majority of New Mandalorians we see in The Clone Wars are humans who are white and blond (like the so-called "Aryan" racist ideal), while the only on-screen Mandalorians pre-TCW were Jango Fett (Māori actor Temuera Morrison) and Boba Fett (portrayed in Attack of the Clones by Daniel Logan, also of Māori descent). However, the situation isn't one where all-white "civilized" New Mandalorians are contrasted with only Brown "warrior/savage" representatives for all other Mandalorians. TCW introduces New Mandalorians alongside the "traditional" Death Watch and its members use the same models and designs as the New Mandalorians. The in-universe conflict is mostly-white people versus mostly-white people, not white people versus Brown people.
• The homogenous appearances of the New Mandalorians may be for purely out-of-universe reasons; for instance, animation models are reused due to TV animation budget contraints, and this may be a failure by animators to create or by producers to approve designs that include Brown and Black people. Regardless of intention, the result is racist. However, OOU failures don't mean that New Mandalorians are established in-universe as racists discriminating based on skin color.
• There's a (lacklustre) OOU attempt in season 7 to fix things by having slightly more visual diversity among the animation models, such as the Asian-modeled Ursa Wren from Rebels as a Nite Owl. (OOU, sometimes The Clone Wars does bad things, like Ahsoka's tube top in Season 1 through mid-Season 3 or (Spoilers for s05e20 "The Wrong Jedi") having the Muslim-coded Barriss bomb the Temple.)
• As far as human supremacy, insufficient data? Books and comic books preceding TCW portrayed Mandalorians with species diversity, but Mandalorians seem to be a human culture in TCW and in the New Canon TV series Rebels and The Mandalorian. Being human doesn't seem specific to New Mandalorians.