Examining Darth Krayt and his Evilosity

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Overall, I must say that I both enjoy and dislike Darth Krayt. He's a character that I've enjoyed probing into with "Claws of the Dragon" but I confess that we're not really seeing much in the way of the same 'Villain's Journey' that we got with Exar Kun. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that we never really got into the head of A'Sharad Hett like we did with Exar Kun or Ulic Qel Dromel.

With Exar Kun, we saw the increasingly eviler choices before he's fundamentally offered the choice between Godhood and living a life of mediocrity. In the end, we understand why Exar Kun chose Godhood even if we know that it'll end horrifically for him. Likewise, there's a certain mysteriousness about Dart Revan's fall that works. Darth Bane is perfect because he's a Thug and all he'll ever be his a Thug but he can dream he's something more thanks to the power of the Dark Side.

In A'Sharad Hett's case, we see him flee the destruction of the Jedi Knights and then he arrives on Korriban where he's positively eager to subsume the power of the Dark Side as offered by the Sith. When he leaves Korriban, there's never any question of rejoining the Jedi Order or facing down Luke Skywalker. There's never any inner turmoil that he spent the past 20+ years studying the Dark Side for what amounts to nothing.

Instead, it's just fleeing into the Unknown Regions. Even the Vong don't make Krayt evil, he's already a monster determined to conquer the universe. We never quite understand why he thinks that the Rule of One is better, other than he decided on it. It's rather strange that so many dramatic possibilities were missed but that may be simply the nature of so much being stuffed into one comic.

Overall, Krayt comes off as a bit more like Doctor Octopus than Othello.

 

We've only seens these things while Darth Krayt is trying to turn Cade. Of course he isn't going to talk about his reservations and doubts and inner-conflicts!

 

Honestly, I tend to think it's interesting to think of Darth Krayt as a fundamentally ironic figure. I don't know if it's too early to ask if Jon Ostrander has speculated on the fact that Darth Krayt is really an exercise in countless failures.

Darth Krayt is born in the sands of Tatooine, is raised by his father, and has him killed by Aurra Sing. He fails to gain revenge on her when he forms a massive Jedi posse to go after her.

As a Jedi Knight, well....we know how that goes out. I don't know if we're supposed to believe he was in a relationship with the OTHER Blue Twilek Jedi Girl in the Jedi Order, since that runs the risk of saturating the Jedi Order with more forbidden love affairs than a Catholic Boarding School.

But, we know that A'Sharad Hett didn't get any of the vengeance for her either.

When the Jedi Order was destroyed, A'Sharad Hett returned to Tatooine. I'm a little surprised we didn't see him attempt revenge against Darth Vader. However, if we retcon Tao then he fails in YET ANOTHER attempt at Revenge against Darth Vader while also adding the irony that Vader destroyed Hett's clan back on Tatooine.

Then, he takes up his father's mantle as the Avenger of the Tuskens and is unmasked. The ultimate shame.

So, A'Sharad Hett heads to Korriban and decides to become a Sith Lord. Except, the irony is the fact that he studies for as long as it takes to power him up to become equal to Darth Vader or Palpatine only to find that they are killed in his absence.

So he's cheated out of his revenge again.

To be honest, you have to wonder about what A'Sharad Hett was thinking when he didn't warn the galaxy about the Yuuzhan Vong. I'm inclined to think that he'd already lost it by that point since his "Mission of Bringing Order to the Galaxy" seems even less defined than Jacen Solo.

And though he's conquered the galaxy, he's got a massive set of Rebellions and failed to destroy the Jedi Order.

Thus, he's brought MORE chaos to the galaxy than existed at the start.

Is he remotely aware he's the most pathetic failure in history?

 

Darth Krayt is the Emperor, has ruled a big part of the galaxy for 7 years and has probably been a Dark Lord of the Sith for the longest time since Marka Ragnos. I think he's a very succesful in what he does, it's A'Sharad Hett who was a tragic figure, whose terrible experiences made him eventually stop being a Jedi and lead him to a fall to the Dark Side. Darth Krayt is just doing what A'Sharad Hett never could: He has taken his destiny - and the destiny of the galaxy - in his own hands. He's no longer the outcast, the betrayed, the tortured. Now he's doing it. Achieving that has of course made Darth Krayt similar to the persons that destroyed A'Sharad Hett's life: Palpatine, Vader, Kenobi, Xoxaan and Vergere.

It's interesting to note that both of the Sith Bird's victims have chosen to inflict the same suffering they went through to others using the Embrace of Pain. Earlier Sith seduced their victims to the Dark Side, tempted them with what it offered. After Vergere, it's all about breaking them with torture. Being Sith seems to be more about pain than power. Also, it seems that the Skywalkers are somehow above the rest by being able to withstand it, when everyone else, even their kinsman, fails.

 

As Hosk said recently, Krayt essentially is a broken A'Sharad. Pain drives Krayt, and he went evil to survive, and arguably was also driven mad somewhat by Vergere (since at the moment, canonically, she's always been an evil scheming Sith wannabe). He's sorta like an Anakin Skywalker, but with less of a temper, and far longer to prepare as well as less rawpower (as Anakin was easily one of the most powerful Force users of all time, so he needed far less time to learn skills than most other Jedi). He fell for what he thought was good purposes, but essentially its more that he gave up on the idea that the good guys would ever bring peace (or rather, order) to the galaxy, so he went for the evil way to bring order, which means taking it over.

Krayt's Rule of One is mainly copying the Jedi Order, of having thousands of Sith minions to enforce Krayt's will, just like how the Rule of Two sorta followed the Jedi's Master/Apprentice relationship, but far more evil and destructive. He's not evil because he wants to be evil, but because he wants to bring order to the galaxy, and if he has to slaughter a couple thousand/million/billion people to do it, so be it. Despite the chaos of the galaxy, he's still the dominant power in the galaxy at the moment, with the GA Core Forces wandering with no real aim, and Roan Fel struggling to build up enough forces to retake his Empire, and the Jedi scattered with no one to unite them or any base to gather at while slowly being hunted down.

I do wish we could see Krayt killing Aurra Sing, though or at least sending his minions after her, but I doubt the writers would ever let her die, unfortunately. Just like how Jacen couldn't get to kill Alema when he had the chance, as though he was evil by that point already, she had leverage on him.

I don't view Krayt that negatively, as seeing how the Vong War and the current GA-Confederation War play out doesn't really inspire confidence in the GA. The GA is probably still the best government, but... well, galactic governements don't tend to last long anyway, come to think of it. Krayt didn't bother to warn the galaxy about the Yuuzhan Vong as... well, even if he had, would the New Republic had done anything differently? They might never have heard of him, a regular Jedi Knight, and he was already planning galactic domination at that point so he doesn't want to reveal he's alive to anybody. The Jedi were warning the NR about the Vong for most of the war, but the NR didn't really take the Vong seriously until it was far too late. And even if the Vong won, or if/when the Vong were defeated, everybody would be weakened, strengthening Krayt's position. Just like how Cade doesn't see the point of being a Jedi when the Jedi keep getting purged. That kind of indifference isn't really right, but its understandable.

 

The problem inherent to Darth Krayt is one we were all dreading when the fact that he was Hett began to be more and more apparent: Hett's not a good candidate for galaxy-ruling Sith Lord.

He goes from being a very, very good Jedi, to a guy who, when the galaxy goes to hell, loses sight of things a bit - who didn't? And frankly we all saw the Tusken warlord thing coming, ever since we found out he survived, right? - and aims to liberate his people on Tatooine. He goes a bit nutty. He becomes a bounty hunter - essentially a person who looks out for number one. Suddenly, he adores the idea of becoming a Sith Lord to take revenge on the Empire. That in and of itself is a pretty impressive leap, but what's more, after he loses, let's say, fifteen plus years on Korriban, he's suddenly ready to RESTART THE SITH AND RULE THE GALAXY. Massive leap, a leap right out of character and into WTK territory.

The problem, however, seems to rest in the fact that we don't yet know the whole story. We don't know what he was like as a leader of the Tuskens, we don't know yet what he was like and what happened to him as a bounty hunter, and - perhaps most importantly - we know nothing about Xoxaan. I'd say the biggest missing piece here is Xoxaan - whatever she taught him is likely what's responsible for imbuing him with narcissism and making him believe he would be able to take over the galaxy and make an effective, awesome ruler.

As for warning the New Republic: it seems like the reasons he gives for not warning them are trivial - there are ways to go about it, particularly since A'sharad Hett is likely a name no one knows, without revealing himself. And even if he did, what's there to reveal? When Krayt justifies not warning anybody, it's because he wants to come off like a noble guy, when in reality it seems he's far gone enough in the dark side by the time he got back to the galaxy proper to either not care about the galaxy's destruction, or to figure a little bit of pain, death, chaos and destruction are probably a good thing for him.

 

I would so like to Examine your Skeletor, 2ndQuest, but his acting was actually pretty good, and admirably fortitude saves my temptation. But damn, that's a good collage there.

All we need is Cade to holler power of greyskull, and burst into light like Jacen, and that's it. Game over. I'll never stop laughing.

 

Well, when he left Korriban, he wasn't truly accepting the ways of the Sith. He "Used" Xoxaan to learn new ways to exact revenge on the jerks that took over the universe. Bear in mind, Kenobi is also dead at this point, another focus of his hate. Robbed of his immediate goals, he just flips and takes off randomly. At that point he meets the Vong. He learns to hate them and has a new enemy to face.

But now is not the time to face them. He learns the Jedi have been reborn, under the tutelage of the man who exiled him from his Tribe. He has a vision of the future apparently where he has a new Sith Order it seems likely that this Sith Order is in a non-Vong controlled galaxy. Since the galaxy will survive intact enough to be worth conquering, he sits back and waits....formulating a plan.

Years later he is able to conquer the galaxy by completely playing the two factions that he despises most for fools....the Jedi (Reformed under Luke by guidance from Kenobi) and the Vong that infected him with something that "Threatens to make him not himself." Palpatine had a harder time. He had to intricately formulate a plan that spanned several decades to destroy his enemies. The Ossus project handed Krayt an opportunity on a silver platter.

The Vong Terraforming project, if left untampered, would have been one of the greatest legacies of the NJO and a way for the Vong to truly give something back to the galaxy. Two enormous acts of healing...the healing of broken worlds and the healing of the relationship of the Vong and the rest of the galaxy....were absolutely thrwarted by Krayt. Palpatine came in and destroyed a Republic corrupt and rotten to the core that may have collapsed anyway. Krayt's sabotage took away a chance at a possible new golden age of peace and prosperity. I almost think Krayt is MORE evil than Palpatine....if one is to believe any of the propaganda suggesting Palpy was trying to bolster the galaxy for the coming "Attack from the unknown regions."

 

Darth Krayt, IMO, spends a little too much time in self introspection (probably a side effect of all that stasis pod use).

Perhaps his failures are motivating him to continue moving forward? Maybe he's just trying to finally get things right, and to Vader with the consequences for everyone else.

 

I think what's interesting about Darth Krayt is he's very different from Jacen Solo. Jacen Solo either whines he's making a sacrifice for the greater good or is utterly unaware he's being evil. Darth Krayt seems perfectly comfortable with the horrible, horrible, horribly evil things he's doing.

It's a nice contrast for two guys that seemed so similiar at the start.