Daala, you are such a pain: Why We Don't Take Daala Seriously (Invincible Spoilers)

So, she's Padme, then? (zing!)

Renatasia and Naboo dos hare a common origin... maybe it's a genetic thing.

 

I think that we can't judge the galaxy's reaction to Daala's appointment by the speech she gave. Politicians always give their speeches in crowds of their supporters, not violent opponents. Another thing, she was surrounded by the military and GA officials, who have been portrayed as very gullible concerning tyrants in this series.

 

Like I said, I think the plausibility depends on the degree to which the Galactic citizenry is aware of her war crimes. If people don't know about something, than it isn't all that relevant in-universe. If the perception of her is of just another military leader than it's more believable. More Karl Donitz than Goering.

And not to bring this up again, but I wouldn't be surprised if the most notorious war crime from that time period was the destruction of Carida.

 

You're probably right on that last point.

The bombardment of the Mon Calamari was pretty much par for the course as part of the GCW, and not really on anyone's list of major atrocities of that war. It was a relatively brief assault, totally paling in comparison to the original Imperial occupation or the attack of the clone Emperor.

There's also been a LOT of water under the bridge since then, namely the Vong War. Daala's atrocities are pretty minor on the scale of the YV, and anything prior to the Vong invasion might as well have happened in a different galaxy. It basically wiped the slate clean.

It's also worth mentioning that there's been a certain amount of Imperial nostalgia since the Vong War, and Daala's record as a reformer and a unifier within the Empire plays well to that.

In the real world, plenty of war criminals and tyrants are eventually lauded as great statesmen and heroes, especially when they're politically convenient. People have short memories and, frankly, little or no concern about atrocities committed against people one doesn't strongly identify with. Dac is pretty remote, it happened a long time ago, and it wasn't that big a deal when it happened. Furthermore, she helped end the current conflict, and in politics, you're usually only as good or as bad as your most recent actions.

I think it's entirely plausible that Daala's war crimes would be swept under the carpet as she really is a very sound compromise candidate. Thirty years ago, she was very briefly the leader of the Empire during a fairly minor winding-down phase of the war, during which some regrettable bombing of civilian targets took place. She also drastically improved the lot of women and nonhumans in the Empire, quashed warlordism and kept the Empire together, and put the highly popular and respected Pellaeon in place. Since then, she came out of retirement and played a key role in settling a destructive galactic conflict. Her resume is actually surprisingly sound, all things considered.

Your usual peaceniks and hippies on the fringe would protest, but I doubt that the sentient on the street would object strenuously.

Dramatically, it's kind of irritating that she popped up out of nowhere at the end of the penultimate book and then becomes the deus ex machina COS at the end of the series, but in-universe she's actually a really good choice.

 

Sal-Solo makes much more sense. He's local, and he has a local power base. But it's a big galaxy, and there are plenty of people much more qualified with administrative experience. Putting a random pirate queen/psychopath with no connection to the existing power structures in charge is just silly.

 

Which was thanks to Kyp Durron and the Sun Crusher...which was stolen from Daala's facility. Which she indended to use to destroy many of the worlds she now represents. You also don't see Kyp Durron as the Chief of State...but we have seen him publicly serving the galaxy ever since Carida was destroyed. Daala fell off the map.

TC

 

Who? If there's a real world example of a war criminal even remotely comperable to Daala who has been appointed to an international office, I'd love to hear it.

TC

 

Well, we don't have a ton of truly international offices comparable to the CoS in the GFFA, the aforementioned Kurt Waldheim was Secretary-General of the UN, and more recently Paul Wolfowitz was head of the World Bank.

In any case, what I said was "plenty of war criminals and tyrants are eventually lauded as great statesmen and heroes," not "plenty of war criminals and tyrants are appointed to international office." That list would be longer.

 

One Q: Doesn't the Chief of State have the power to direct the military? Because if that's so, then the comparison to the UN doesn't fly because the UN doesn't have a military, so you'd have to look to major presidencies/states say the US as a better match.

On Daala, it's interesting to note that without Kyp nuking the nebula she was in, she would have carried out that plan to ram a Star Destroyer into Corusant. Hmm, there's a fan-fic story right there.

 

Waldheim may have been a Nazi officer, but there was never any actual evidence of any alleged "war crimes". This was supported by Simon Wiesenthal, so I'll take his word for who is and isn't a Nazi war criminal.

and more recently Paul Wolfowitz was head of the World Bank.

Oh, please. You have now lost all credibility with me as a serious poster.

 

Wolfowitz has lot of blood in his hands, like most members of the gung-ho administrations that participated in the attack against Iraq. Why pointing this out would mean losing one's credibility in your eyes?

 

Loss of credibility as serious poster has been confirmed. I repeat, loss of credibility as a serious poster has been confirmed...

 

Carrie's as much a war criminal as Daala.

 

So being a serious poster means that one has to be a politically gullible and naive individual?

 

That would seem to be how you're trying to go about doing it.

 

QM, that's uncalled for, off-topic... and untrue.

 

If you want to talk uncalled for, off-topic and untrue, you'd best start with Mr. Rouge there.

 

So this has hit the point where the line:

I didn't do anything wrong because he did first and he was worse!

Is now being used, is it?

 

No.

 

Oh, noes! My reputation on this board is terribly fragile and totally dependent on your opinion! Whatever will I do?

 

Give Wolfie your job.

 

This tangent is now over. Go directly to Daala. Do not collect 200 credits.

 

It's been said countless times, but in reality, it's the most reasonable point for why Daala's promotion to CoS is utterly ridiculous: the fact that it happened "off screen", with no build up, and no time spent on describing why it makes sense.

Maybe, if they'd spent as much time on Daala in this series as they did on Fett, and we saw her POV that she's changed, as well as from those around her remarking about how much she's changed, this promotion would make sense. But as it is, we have a character who's been MIA for years (both in our terms, and in universe terms), suddenly return and be placed as CoS, and everyone is, for some reason, fine with this.

 

At any rate, all these real-life comparisons are hugely inaccurate. There's really no remotely accurate real-life parallel we can look at... I mean, maybe if Himmler had a mistress who he secretly promoted to admiral and sent away to command a four-battleship (but no support craft) fleet guarding a secret nuclear research facility in Antarctica, and then ten years after WWII ended she was discovered by... I dunno. Mamie Eisenhower? Who was on a secret diplomatic mission to an ex-Nazi prison in the Falklands that had been taken over by prisoners after the war ended and when the prisoners double-crossed her she escaped in a speedboat and stumbled right into the Secret Nazi Base, where she was tortured before escaping in a state-of-the-art doomsday-nuke carrying U-boat that had been manufactured right there in Antarctica and on the way out she rammed and sank one of Himmler's Mistress's battleships, so Himmler's Mistress (we'll call her Elsa) then pursued Mamie Eisenhower out of Antarctica with her entire 'fleet' and smack into a ragtag bunch of armed skiffs and yachts and the like assembled by the Falkland ex-prisoners which managed to heavily damage one of her battleships causing her to flee to the open ocean to conduct repairs.

And THEN after Elsa had pondered her options she decided to go pirate so she attacked a cargo ship carrying goods bound for some minuscule settlement on the ass-end of nowhere (let's say... maybe some far-flung Pacific atoll) so she sank the cargo ship and declared it vengeance for her lost battleship and then proceeded to lay waste to the podunk pacific colony by launching a tank attack instead of shelling it from offshore, and then after that she wasn't sure what to do next but CONVENIENTLY she got a transmission beaming from a sunken Nazi U-boat that had been spying on Norfolk back during the war which gave her the idea to attack Hampton Roads so she headed there (it took awhile) and when she got there she started randomly shelling the place wrecking most of Newport News and Virginia Beach but luckily was thwarted by Admiral Nimitz who was hiding in Suffolk because he'd crashed his personal fighter plane into the Notre Dam cathedral a few weeks ago (don't ask) and he felt really bad about it so anyway he heroically rammed one of her battleships with a cruiser that was under construction at the yards, so Elsa burst into tears and sailed off with her two remaining battleships for the open ocean to plot her next move.

MEANWHILE some kid that Mamie Eisenhower had found imprisoned in the Falklands and rescued had gotten a hair up his ass about something-or-other and stolen the Nazi U-boat of Doom which he promptly piloted out to where Elsa was chilling catching her just as she was about to carry out her next attack (which involved blowing up a nuke on one of her battleships in New York Harbor) and used it to shoot a mega-Nuke at her which she was just barely able to escape with her remaining ship.

So then she headed down to Argentina where she called a bunch of ex-Nazi bigwigs together (they had each constructed a private military force, you see) and then GASSED them and stole their armies and fleets, the bulk of which she sent a random raid-around-the-world to hit targets that included things of such strategic importance as an art museum in Singapore, a fighter factory in Australia and a gypsy caravan in... let's say Kazakstan, while she sent the remainder of her fleet to the newly-formed state of Israel to DESTROY THE JEWS ONCE AND FOR ALL but they got shoved BACK to the Strait of Gibraltar by some kind of funky Jewish Psionic Power so when she arrived to mop up in her mega-ultra-super-duper nuclear-armed battleship (these were well funded ex-Nazis, okay?) the fleet she'd already sent was all gone, so then instead of just launching a nuke at Jerusalem she settled for randomly shooting at the shore and luckily an Israeli soldier had snuck on board and BLEW A HOLE IN THE SHIP and it sank but not before Elsa escaped and fled for parts unknown.

So then everyone thought she was dead until a