Shan Family Tree

So with Satele Shan being officially named as Bastila's progeny, it begs the question did Revan have anything to do with the GROWTH of the Shan family tree? And that being said, is it overkill (from a story-telling standpoint) to keep milking 'family bloodlines'?

 

I don't have a problem with the idea of a bloodline or two cropping up back then, it always seemed like the rules in that regard were more relaxed anyway, and even if they were not, by the time the Order goes through its massive upheaval after KotOR II its entirely likely for Jedi to have kids.

What I do find strange is that the comic indicates they are interested in Satele's potential (presumably in regards to battle meditation), however TOR is set 300 years later and I kinda hope they don't just skip back to Bastilla when referring to it.

As far as Revan goes... well it would fit with what is canon, and would certainly make an interesting storyline within the game world - the decendant of Revan etc.

 

Well, if she is related to Revan, she has a ton of Force potential. That said though I really doubt she is.

But this particular bloodline doesn't really bother me. At the end of KOTOR 2 the Jedi were nearly extinct, with Bastila being one of the few remaining. It makes sense that the Shan bloodline would become an important one even 300 years later, almost akin to the Skywalkers.

 

honestly...it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they avoided linking Revan's lineage...as a token to the fans who played Revan female (yes, I know it's canon that he's a dude, but this is a game and that's a token they can make to gamers to keep it ambiguous without contradicting canon)

What wouldn't surprise me would be a Carth/Bastila family.

 

I sometimes find descendants feeling gratuitously shoved in off putting, but in TOR's case I don't mind at all. When a descendant shows up in the books or in Legacy it sometimes feels like a "Huh? Why should it matter?" moment. With TOR, it's basically KOTOR3 in all but name, so it feels perfectly fitting to tie the three stories together.

I'm curious about her ancestry. Something tells me it'll probably be that Bastila (re)married after Revan disappeared and had a son with someone else, simply to leave it open whether Revan and her were a couple or not. That said, I, personally, have no objection to them canonising the romance story and having it be Revan's descendant.

I just hope if she is Revan's descendent that it isn't shoved in your face too much. I can understand the family battle meditation trait, seems a bit like the Horn's telekinesis problems (only it's a positive hereditary thing for a change). I'm glad though that she's introduced as a Shan, so it seems she may have more in common with her great-great-great-[...]-great-grandmother than her great-[...]-grandfather.

Hmm... that's a point. Kind of does hint at it being Revan given any other bloke would probably have lent his own surname to Bastila's children. The family being Shans makes sense in the sense that "Revan didn't really have a name and didn't want to go by who he once was because it wasn't who had was now" or whatever. Or maybe if she was pregnant when he disappeared it'd mean the kid was, in a sense, born without a father, so maybe just inherited its mother's name instead.

Regardless, they said we'd see some descendants, so I can't say this surprises me. Think it would be nice though with some other descendants to see them have taken a different path to their ancestors. The Shans are Jedi, so that makes sense. If we see another Onasi or whatever, it'd be nice though if they had taken a different path in life. Kind of like how TOR seems to be reenvisioning some of the planets from what they're like in the ABY timeframe in a "this is what it was like 3000 years ago" kind of way.

Would be amusing to see an Onasi who had gone from a family of Republic soldiers to being a seedy pirate, or whatever.

What I'd like to see though? A Sunrider.

 

i think she is revan's descendant too. she doesn't look like bastila but she has one of the male revans eyes i forget which one has green eyes.

 

The green eyes could have come from anyone. They could have come from one of the fathers/mothers that married into the Shan line.

 

There is irony in knowing the real history of Bastila, being that she started out as a Sunrider.
And for the Shan-name to be passed down to a female directly from Bastila, that means she had a son out of wedlock, a la Shmi Skywalker. And to my eyes, that means Satele Shan is also Revan's living legacy.

And I think it will be hidden thing.
Something that Satele finds out later on.

Like when she stands face to face with the Sith Emperor and he peels back his mask to tell her that she reminds him of someone he once knew...



from like, 300 years ago.

 

I'm totally cool with the idea that Bastila was with child when Revan left. Since this comic is thirty years or so before the events of the game, I'm assuming that Satele is going to be either:

A) A very prominant Council member during the events of the game
B) A very prominant Sith Lord during the events of the game

And it makes sense that BioWare would want such a character (especially if she's very powerful) to be a throwback to their earlier ones. Also, the line "She must abide by the Jedi Code, regardless of her heritage" makes me think that the period Post-KotOR may have very well been the "Shan Epoch" for the Jedi, which would be helped in no small part by the line being Revan's also.

I mean, of course, it's a bit silly that this matters three hundred years down the line... but this is a fantasy.

 

Bah... I got through the first half of your post and was just about to jump on the reply button and go:

Sith Emperor: "No. I am your great-[...]-grandfather."

But then I finished your post and saw you got to it already.

 

Satele Shan as Revan and Bastila's legacy makes sense to me.

Assume conception occurs soon after the end of KOTOR 1, that's more than enough time for a child to be born before Revan leaves for the unknown regions one year later in KOTOR 2.

 

I rather like the idea that Revan left before he knew Bastila was pregnant. Makes their parting rather more tragic. Plus it would count toward explaining the lack of her father's name (though, admittedly, I don't see why Star Wars necessarily needs to follow real world familial customs, so I can't say them naming the kid after its mother would particularly bother me).

Anyway, my screwball theory of the day:

If Revan is the Sith Emperor, he waited for the day another Jedi with battle meditation was born, so that when his Empire invaded the Jedi were strong enough to destroy it.

Yeah, I know. Not going to happen. But I said it now so I can gloat if in the 0.01% chance that it does happen it comes true.

 

revan is not the sith emperor it's been said revan is long dead.

 

That is why such theories are called screwball.

Anyway, they said Anakin Skywalker was dead. I don't much see Revan being the Emperor because for narrative purposes I think it would be rather cliche, predictable and contrived; however, I also don't put much in them telling us that he's not because everything can be misleading. Until the game's out, nothings certain.

 

I'd almost rather Bastila remained childfree, since it raises all these other questions, but on the other hand, the TotJ purist in me would LOVE it if she somehow got hitched to some other dude, did the whole Andur Sunrider-thing, and all the rest of it. A way to strike a blow for the original "ancient SW" continuity.

Also, of course, she wasn't explicitly pregnant five years later in KotOR II, though if it were Revan's kid, she'd probably have had the kid placed in daycare when she went off with Carth to Telos. Still...I'd think it'd be better to either leave it vague as to whether Revan ever parked the porpoise with anyone, or else explicitly establish the daddy as a different dude altogether.

Even Andur once married a seemingly-inconsequential "mundane" who didn't have much to offer in the way of Force talents at the time, which serves to reinforce the distinctions between the TotJ period and the movies -- there were so many Jedi out there that some of them could actually get away with settling down with everyday Joes and Janes and leading two separate lives. Their "office job," serving as Jedi Knights, and their homebody life -- dinner around the table at five, the wife/husband tending to the house, the kids off at school, catching the game on the weekends, etc.

It's just that when the post-Ruusan era rolled around, all Jedi were effectively locked up in a monk-cloister, forced to tonsure themselves, swear celibacy, and go the sackcloth-and-ashes fashion route. Very, very different, and I'm praying that the game really drives this difference home the way Tom Veitch first did.

On the other hand, if Revan and Bastila did do this, and considering the big faff the comics are currently making over Satele, it makes me wonder if the True Sith will somehow take an interest in her the way Malak did Bastila, having learnt of her parentage at some point, etc. Still...having both her ancestors being those two particular characters is the obvious, contrived, fanboi-wanky route to take, and I'd want to credit BioWare with a bit more clever creativity than that.

Yeah...at this point, Revan having a kid, any kid, seems a tad too much for the credibility of the storyline, but if they keep it subtle...then maybe.

I quite like

 

Really? Link?

I was aware only of: "Revan left and never came back"

 

Yeah. It would be great to see the "we don't like relationships" attitude in the KOTOR games abandoned (what with the fact there were a grand total of... what... six or seven Jedi left?) and them go back to the TotJ model of Jedi dynasties. Maybe not so much out of want, but out of need: in a post war baby boomer kind of way, they'd just want to replenish the fallen.

The game has loads of film and prequel references... but Jedi bloodlines would give it something a bit different. Sure, it's been done in the post Endor EU, particularly with the Skywalkers; but I expect many game fans will be solely game fans, not necessarily book fans, so it'd be nice to see TOR evoke a different feel to the prequel order.

You know... the whole "Can Light and Dark coexist?" statement on the comic page actually makes me think of the Revan-Shans: the progeny of a Jedi heroine and a Sith Lord. Rather symbolic of the TOR era's underlying premise of the Jedi and Sith coexisting.

If any of the speculation about the game's storyline being "All on the Sith Emperor" even remotely turns out to be true, then a Shan would be a rather good rallying figure: descendant of Jedi Master Bastila Shan, descendant of the Dark Lord Darth Revan. Not a bad person to "unite" both orders and take to battle to the True Sith.

Vice-versa, if the storyline is dynamic enough, it'd be interesting if the game had the option of you either having Shan become the champion of the light, or the new Sith Empress.

 

A couple of points here.

1. It's entirely possible that Star Wars females can keep their last names if they choose to do so. It's been done in Alderaan (Idol Intentions) and it's done on planet Earth (Japan in particular). I don't see why a particularly famous Jedi can't keep her last name.

2. There's no need for it to be Bastila's direct descendant.

3. I actually note that the Sunrider lineage *ENDS* with Vima by the logic of everyone here. I swear, I can't believe people have forgotten that. It would be, at the earliest, the DA BODA family that theoretically survives til Nar Shadaa.

 

I can't see why they wouldn't.

This is the Post-Exilic Order, after all, rebuilt by the disciples of the (very relationship heavy) Exile. All the conservative Jedi that rose to prominance after the Exar Kun War got cleaned out by the Revanchist Sith and the Triumvirate. If anything, the strict interpretation of "no attachments" that arose following the Sith War will probably be viewed (in the context of the 21,500 year old Order) as a brief experiment.

I want a lot of references to the Exile's disciples, actually. It'd be great if characters we know primarily as mechanics, cocky pilots, bounty hunters and the like were now known as incredibly wise and revered Jedi Masters.

 

on the ign top 25 list it says revan died fighting for the jedi. and wookiepedia says the empereror is over 3000 years old.

 

Absolutely. And considering the massive hemorrhage of trained Knights and Masters the Order suffered in the wake of Nihilus's rampage at Katarr, etc. (and fewer than 100 Jedi left alive immediately following Malak's defeat), you just know that we'd almost be looking at a Maoist, "Great Leap Forward"-esque babymaking imperative amongst Force-sensitives, considering everything that just went down. Almost the diametric opposite of the prequel-era Order's attitude towards children and families.

And when you read the new SW:TOR comics, with their apparent legions of Jedi in existence just three centuries later, something evidently happened to repopulate their ranks, though of course we're possibly gonna be seeing the old TotJ model of multiple apprentices under one master once again, too.

Though given that roughly four thousand years separate the two periods, it's reasonable to assume that some specific family names will eventually alter and disappear, though their direct bloodlines remain strong (the Diaths and others notwithstanding). At any rate, Tom Veitch's intent was pretty much that Vima-Da-Boda was a straight descendant of Nomi and Vima through the matrilineal line, but it's still unknown where and when the original "Sunrider" name ceased to exist during those centuries (or, perhaps, if Da-Boda dumped it while fleeing from the Empire).

I might pull out the ol' evergreen Dark Empire Sourcebook, here, and see if it says anything more on this subject. I'd be interested in knowing.

My take exactly, too. Or, since roughly the summer of 2003 or thereabouts, my hope, considering where Bastila's attitudes in the game came from. That said, the games themselves (the first one in particular) do take very great pains to point out that even Bastila's outlook on Jedi attachment and families is something of an anomaly in the greater Order, since at that time the outlying enclaves frequently held more autonomy over their affairs than the Coruscanti High Council (as the KotOR CG also notes).

She mentions outright that not every single Jedi agrees with the notion of chaste singledom, and this seemed to be something of a compromise

 

I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to post some quotations, there. (Sorry to be a pain)

I've never come across anything in the games that painted Bastila as an anomaly. Everything from Bastila - to my knowledge - implies that the strict interpretation of 'no attachments' is the norm by 3956 BBY. Also, in KotOR2, it is clear that the public perception of the Jedi is that they do not have romantic relationships, too.

Mira calls the male exile out on that if he hits on her, after all.

You might be remembering what Alek said about the issue in the KotOR comics? (WTTE: Whenever two Jedi want to get it on, there's always another who thinks it isn't allowed" - though, again, in a roundabout way that actually implies that the strict rule is the standard, too)

It also reaffirms, though Jarael, that the public perception is that Jedi don't form romantic attachments.

 

It's cool. You're partially right, there -- it was the comics' dialogue I was superimposing earlier, and looking back over the dialog.tlk files, Bastila says that she was forbidden from having romance "as all Jedi do," but it was in the KotOR CG, I think, that this was retconned to become simply the central Coruscanti philosophy for a time (where Bastila was raised and trained), versus the attitudes of other enclaves/academies elsewhere in the galaxy prior to the Second Sith War.

Also, as you mention, Alek's dialogue alone pretty much confirms that other Jedi in the Order weren't above gettin' the stank on with significant others, and much of what JJM has established in the KotOR comics likewise seems to hugely undercut Bastila's dialogue about Order-wide zero family contact, though this was on Taris. Evidently Lucien was cool with going against the High Council's dictums here, too, just as he was virtually everywhere else.

This actually seems to reinforce a few things about Bastila's character, in a retroactive kinda way -- she was so sheltered and indoctrinated that she genuinely, sincerely believed that there weren't other Jedi out there who might've acted differently than she did. Or at least, she was just spouting the party line nonstop to Revan to keep him a good little brainwashed disciple of the One True Jedi Faith.

Man...getting their asses kicked back to Tython was probably the best thing to happen to the Order in centuries.

 

Ohh... that'd be cool.

More interesting too really than "And the great and wise Jedi Master Bastila Shan reigned as Grand Master for many a year" because, well, duh, we pretty much could guess as much. Whereas learning that brats like Mira and jerks like Atton turned into wise and prominent Jedi Masters would be rather sweet, as that's not quite as easily predictable as Bastila's end fate.

 

Arab and Muslim women often keep their family names rather than adopt their husband's.