The *Official* Duchess Satine Kryze in The Clone Wars Discussion Thread

She was still on power, still act as the leader of her people.
Vizsla only won people's love by deception, if the people know he was behind those attacks will they still like him? No. Did she try to at least discover the truth and reveal it to her people? No.

She should have confidence, that's what a leader should have, she chose her path and she should take the responsibility. Even after she was captured, there was still chance.

As some ordinary individual, it's a bit of both, as a politician, a leader, it's obviously stupid.

 

I want to agree with this. I really do. And I think that if it was simply Satine face-to-face with Pre Vizsla or Maul or whoever, in a no-escape fight where only the winner leaves alive—then I could respect her decision to hold to her principles above all else and die with a clean conscience knowing she never betrayed what she believed in.

The problem is, she was a leader. She was responsible for the lives of every person in Sundari. And while she stood by her beliefs and peacefully stuck to her principles...people were dying. People were being shot while taking a walk in the park, people were being shot while running an errand at the bank, people were being shot while just walking down the street. And Satine did nothing. She sat there while this was happening, safe and peaceful in her palace while people were being slaughtered at random by offworld gangsters. And then she had the nerve to come out to address the people, telling them...what, exactly? Stay calm. Great advice. Be peaceful. Great advice. Are they just supposed to hope the gangsters will just get bored eventually and go away? She couldn't fight back because she's a pacifist, she couldn't ask the clans for help because they're too violent, she couldn't ask the Republic for help because Mandalore needed to stay neutral. And while she got everything she wanted, her people suffered the consequences.

I admire someone who sticks to their beliefs in dire situations. I really do. But when the choice comes down to your intangible principles versus the very tangible lives of the people you're responsible for, as a leader, it's your obligation to throw off that self-righteous idiocy keeping you sitting in your chair and do what's necessary to protect them. Your principles should never come before the greater good of thousands of people.

Corruption was the first example that Satine's administration, Satine's policies...they don't work. You can't turn your back on the people giving you food, then expect them to still feed you, and then expect your people to stay happy as they starve because they can still be peaceful. People don't work that way, and Satine fails to understand that. Ideals do not fills bellies. And that line from Shades of Reason made me want to punch her in the face. She straight up says outloud that it's okay that people were starving. Because they were starving for pacifism.

 

You're saying you have to change your ideology if the situation calls for it? So you now admit she didn't keep her beliefs alive, but agree with me that she changed them (temporarily in Corruption before awkwardly going back to her old ideology in much more extreme circumstances in S5)?

 

You make good points, and personally, even though I respect what Satine does and enjoy how it fits into the larger scope of the show, I don't think I would make the same decision she does if I was in her situation. That's why I don't consider myself a pacifist.

 

I'm saying her action in Corruption is quite understandable as a politician, but in season 5 she was ruined because she still kept that ideology in such situation.