Lit Chief of State Daala

Jar-Jar would stop all threats by going himself to meet their leader in good faith and then somehow by his clumsiness stop them and their war machine while they try to kill him

 

Plooz would have been the best option, to be frank.

 

Entirely honestly I would have preferred Jar Jar as Chief of State. It would still have been an idiotic, nonsensical and out of left field move, but still infinitely preferable to Daala.

 

For maximum drama, they should have had Leia as chief of state but otherwise have her act the same as Daala. Family squabble with galactic ramifications part two! And just as plausible as Darth Caedus! You see, Leia had post-traumatic stress disorder from having her two sons die young, and she blames Luke and the Jedi for it! It writes itself!

 

Unfortunately, this is completely true.

 

Which shows just how ridiculous the notion of Natasi Daala being a reasonable choice for Chief of State in any way, shape, or form really is.

 

I think by the time Daala made it to chief of state I'd already become soured enough on the post-NJO universe that I'd stopped reading, but when I heard about it I was still like "wait, really? WTF? Why rescue HER from the scrappy heap after all these years, of all people?" The first Star Wars books I ever read were the Jedi Academy Trilogy ones, with Darksaber a couple years later, so that really took me back, too.

Facepalm? More like Gibbs-dope-slap, to whichever author made her chief of state. (PLEASE tell me it wasn't Aaron Allston. I love Aaron Allston).

 

Denning wrote it Traviss must have come up with the idea, since she also brought her back and rewrote her backstory in... well surprise, surprise Revelation

 

I kinda want to see this now; hell, I want to see Jar Jar post-RotS in any form.

 

Threads like these make me so happy I stopped reading the post ROTJ EU after the New Jedi Order.

 

No, Traviss just wanted a female Imperial military leader who would back Pellaeon at Fondor. Daala was just supposed to be crazy pirate* queen, which is why she's not exactly very statesman like in Revelation.

IIRC, Traviss has even said she would have liked to have seen a non-human as CoS, and I think her choice was Cha Niathal.

(or crazy mercenary queen if you don't think she's enough of a pirate...I mean, she has an eyepatch for goodness sake!)

She's a crazy military leader who somehow manages not to get killed and whose hobbies include gassing her own side's commanders...that's kinda all she was meant to be.

I guess they decided they liked the idea of having someone who didn't like Jedi in power but didn't want to use an existing character or invent a new one.

 

I know I'm alone in this, but I really like the idea of Daala as just a slightly crazy person (although she did reorganize the Imperial Starfleet and made it a force to be reckoned with again...however, she did do that by gassing all of her commanders and then losing every battle they fought...so...moving on...) who just has a fleet at her disposal and is somewhat good at the art of war in terms of being a brutal pirate/merc and who happens to have her own twisted code that leads her to actually save planets and people but essentially be a loaded gun that could backfire on you at any moment.

Used sparsely, I think the idea of the Maw Fleet just showing up on random sides (or whatever side fits Daala's twisted ethics) is an interesting idea...and could be used just to keep people on their toes.

Are there private military contractors in the GFFA? Because that's essentially what I thought Daala would be best as, combined with someone who actually was running around behind the scenes fighting the small battles that no one had time for in the Vong War. Hence her still holding onto a fleet. Plus having sold all the family silver (secrets from the Maw she downloaded before blowing it up) to finance said fleet.

I know...call me crazy... but I like one-eyed pirate ladies.

 

There are enough other candidates for that, including a Female Imperial Moff that is one of the Remnant leaders, which from to look of it Traviss happened to want to ignore in Revelation.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crowal

Even here there is a so much better candidate, who also happens to actually be a Female Imperial Moff (in a somewhat round about way, but still)

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Leonia_Tavira

Insane thing is as others have mentioned there is even a perfect candidate for that who was very prominent in the NJO and even shows up in LOTF.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fyor_Rodan

 

Loads. Although the Maw Irregular Fleet would be one of the larger forces.



I figured (or, more truly, hoped), for the longest time, that there was a grand design behind Fate of the Jedi which would reveal Daala to have been manipulated or brainwashed or quasi-possessed or something by Abeloth during her decade in the Maw, and that this would explain

1. how there was such a disparity between her claimed military brilliance and her demonstrated incompetence in Anderson's books,
2. possibly why she mellowed out substantially with Planet of Twilight - after a couple years away from Abeloth her influence had waned,
3. possibly why she conveniently came roaring back into the Galactic limelight shortly after Centrepoint was destroyed - although that's a bit trickier to tie in - Pellaeon did summon her -
4. OR DID HE???
5. how and why she became Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance,
6. why she sometimes seems to swing between mostly sympathetic, well-meaning leader and insane, bloodthirsty dictatrix,
7. possibly why Daala and Tahiri were being set up to have a particular personal enmity - Tahiri's dealing with Riina Kwaad would grant her especial insight into Daala's Abeloth-scrambled brains,
8. and, with a later book (I forget which), why Daala had vast secret warehouses of frozen people.

All of which is to say, I see Daala-as-Chief-of-State as a one-time potentially salvageable concept, if some attempt had only been made to explain it beyond 'no-one else wanted the job'.

 

Not ignored...she was well aware of Leonia. Although ISRT Leonia having an Admiral's rank as well, so she had potential, but no one has the same kind of history with Pellaeon as Daala (whether or not you hate her...that's another kettle of fish).

It's just that Daala worked for everything that was needed and it brought the Chimera back into the fold as well as the potential to have the sort of ex-Imperials following Daala from her time as leader of the Fleet who would back Pelly. I wouldn't have minded Yage reappearing...but she just didn't have the history. Daala has heavy history with the GFFA and Pelly, much more than any of the others. Leonia might have worked...but you don't have the history with Pelly. Remember that it wasn't supposed to be someone with a chance at office, just someone with a history with Pellaeon and who could field a spoiler fleet to sow confusion.

As far as CoS, Daala didn't originate as any sort of serious option (because why would she be...she'd kicking dead Moffs and haggling prices in Revelation) and was supposed to ride off into the sunset after Revelation after showing up to see Pellaeon out, and in a weird way her being in Revelation gains an unfortunate weight that wasn't intended by virtue of what happens in the final book of LoTF and FoTJ.

I think you probably look at different things when looking for a one off kinda villain who is crazy enough and has resources enough to thrown the numbers off in a battle than if you're thinking long term crafting that character into a leader of the GFFA.

I don't really see Leonia working as CoS either...unless we're just talking about someone who would help Pelly, but that still brings us back to Daala being a fair choice. I don't know that the current female Moff would have broken ranks...and it's harder to have her having a separate armed forces. IIRC, that's the female Moff from the NJO, and it was implied that the Moffs were not exactly the same as the ones who'd been on during the Vong War. Pellaeon had lost a lot of his political supporters and a new generation of officers and crew had come up who didn't have the attachment to him that the Fleet once had.

 

Thanks for pointing out the mercenary unit thing.

And I like your idea of a brainwashed Daala and how it fits with the different versions we've seen over the years.

Did they just drop her plot point? I never got to reading the last two books and just know Jag won.

The frozen people thing just sounds a bit weird.

It's things like Planet of Twilight that make her interesting, imo, and the way she shook up the fleet by letting aliens into it and building it back up into a fighting force that was united under one banner.

 

Warlords pick their ranks themselves

Maybe she should have read Darksabre to get the relationship down better and remember how mynock dirt insane Daala actually is.

Nothing in Revelation was needed

Pellaeon would have turned it into a museum ship or kept it as command ship before he just gave it away.

Or given her track record follow anyone but her

Any Imperial would have done.

Exactly, she did not have a history of insanity and incompetence.

Yeah one renegade wanted for genocide Warlord

She does not need one. Pellaeon has the support of his own troops if he did not simply go insane in this book and get himself killed in such a silly way.

No need to drag Daala out for that. Yage, the Empire of the Hand, the Chiss, Talon Karrde, Bel Iblis, Terrik etc literally anyone would have done, they all have history with Pellaeon and a much bigger stake in the Remnant.

At which she once again failed.

Who knows, Traviss has a history of going into ultra weird directions.

More then Daala at least, because she actually has diplomatic skills.

No, they all have their own Sector Forces but then that is another thing Traviss seemed to want to forget from Hand of Thrawn, just like the Pellaeon really being in charge thing.

Who else would they be, they vote each other into office.

Yeah no, another thing that Revelation just pulls out from left field, because Traviss just liked writing characters and settings the way she wants them to be, not the way they were established to be.

 

Stackpole changed them all between HoT and NJO.

Yeah, because when we last saw Pellaeon interacting with the Moffs before LOTF they all got along so well with him.

Of course she did. Why let reality cloud a good witch hunt.

 

Diden't it just have a scene of them mucking up a little and Pellaeon basically just telling them to shut up and get back to work?

Nep but he was clearly in charge and handled military things, in Revelation they go to the front line with him, which is insane all in itself, it would be like the US President bringing all the State Governors into an active war zone.

She brought her out of left field, seems just as likely it was Traviss that wanted it, as Denning or Allston. One of the problems of writing in committee, everyone gets blamed for the stupid ideas of the others.

 

Traviss clearly has had such an influence on what Troy Denning does or doesn't write. She likely wanted him to write Mandalorians getting owned by the Jedi left, right and center as well. Nevermind the Fett nano killer thing, no doubt it was all her ideas.

 

At minimum a joined outline, though they have mentioned they would phone or e-mail each other so who knows.

Nep that was probably just him getting as fed up with her as many readers

 

Meh, get back to me when you have facts instead of conspiracy theories.

 

Are there any interview transcripts of Allston or Denning, after Invincible, saying where which ideas came from? The round-robin interview in Inferno, taking place halfway through, was as a result less informative than the one in The Unifying Force.