To Fall So Far, Part XII: Depa Billaba

Just in time to coincide with this month's discussion of Shatterpoint, we're going to take a detailed look at one of the more unique and interesting falls chronicled in the EU books: Depa Billaba.

Padawan to Mace Windu, staunch friend and ally to her old master, and a trusted operative of the Republic in the days preceding the Clone Wars. Sent on a mission to a world to help turn the tide for the Republic. And herself turned to the dark.

Or the jungle.

Or are they the same thing?

Discuss.

Part of To Fall So Far: A Lit Board Ongoing Project

 

I think the important thing to remember about Depa Billaba is that she's not a monster at the start of the Clone Wars. On the contrary, I think that she's the opposite of Joruus C'Boath and Count Dooku. Both men who were "great" Jedi Masters but also more than a little power hungry. There's even some evidence that Count Dooku is a chemical sociopath who is only a great Jedi Master because he's given the family and structure to guide his life by the Jedi Temple.

Depa, on the other hand, is an analogue to Colonel Kurtz/Ivory Trader Kurtz. She is a truly great and glorious example of humanity without any of the mental flaws that plague those two men. She's an enlightened holy woman, she's a wonderful student-daughter to Mace windu, and she's wise enough to be on the Jedi Council. She's one of those individuals that there are no warning signs about an imminent fall to the Dark Side, because there isn't one.

In real life, against all odds, most people aren't born into monsters. Idealogy, however, can transform a person into a monster. So can circumstance.

One of the themes of Apocalypse Now is the effect of the Vietnam War on numerous young men fighting in it. Colonel Kurtz exists at the polar end of the spectrum. Beneath him are a bunch of United States soldiers who have joined the Cambodian tribesmen who worship him as a god. Slightly more to the middle are people like Lieutenant Bill Kilgore who is pretty much equivalent to Nick Rostu.

Bill Kilgore says "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning." He goes surfing during an attack on a Vietnamese village. He holds a beach party on a battlefield shoreline. He kills a bunch of Vietnamese that may or may not be soldiers or may be not soldiers but are still killing his men. Yet, judging him for his actions out of context is ridiculous because he's trying to keep morale up and keeping his men from falling into total mental breakdown.

As Nick Rostu says, paraphrased. "You have to make war fun to survive it."

In the case of Depa, she's from the civilized world. In order to survive on Haruun Kal, she had to adapt to the conflict that was well beyond the scope of being peacekeepers in the Jedi Knighthood. To do that, she takes cues from Kar Vastor, a man who knows how to survive better than anyone else in the galaxy. Surrounded by death, destruction, and people who engage in monstrous behavior; Depa decides the key to victory is to be harder than the enemy and terrify them into submission. In real life, this is pretty much constantly the motivation for terrorism. Individuals repeatedly turn into extreme methods of psychological warfare when they cannot win against numerically or technologically superior foes.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt, sometimes it results in a total disaster for the terrorists as the enemy either hardens its resolves or adopts terrorist tactics of its own or both. In the case of the Balawai, her tactics weren't any real different from the ones the locals had been forced to adopt anyway but they drew the attention of Mace Windu. Her father figure. Depa didn't murder children to draw Mace's attention. She hadn't fallen that far, yet. However, it was increasingly easy to justify actions to bring victory when she was serving "her" side of the displaced and dying Korun people.

I'm going to also make a psychological speculation that Depa suffered from a serious Elektra complex as well. Kar Vastor is probably Mace Windu's cousin, if not outright nephew or brother. It doesn't really matter which. Kar Vastor's protectiveness and her attitude towards him imply to me that they could well be lovers and probably are given seeking companionship in the atmosphere is the most natural thing imaginable. Unfortunately, for Depa, Kar Vastor is insane. He's insane in the context that he comes off as sane because people look for someone who can provide a clarity to their situation.

In the case of Kar, it is "kill every adult" and "don't kill children but let the Jungle take care of it, so we don't have to get our hands di

 

It's interesting to compare it to Stover's Acts of Caine, where Caine ruminates that Kurtz was the only sane one in the Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, echoed in the introduction:

She sees war so close she loses grip on what she's fighting FOR rather than the fighting itself, and anyone who does that regardless of their background will fall just as she did. Also, no-one's said she's dead yet... she'd be a fun one of the unaccounted for Council to pop up again later.

 

As a haunted shadow of what she once was? As a villain? Or having recovered from the ordeal?

I agree that Depa's fall was certainly from seeing the war too closely, and seeing all of the damage and misery that was caused while fighting for a "cause." It was too much to take in, and so she stopped reasoning things out in the way Jedi are supposed to do in such a situation. It's also interesting that Stover chooses to emphasize how mentally/emotionally strong she is supposed to be, given that she apparently can't be broken through torture. But she was broken by the realities of war.

Have there been any parallels to Depa's situation elsewhere in the EU? It's a bit doubtful, since Shatterpoint was unusually dark. The only comparisons I can think of are Mace himself, who spent a lot less time on Haruun Kal in Shatterpoint than Depa did and never lost sight of his goal, and to a much lesser extent Luke in Mindor, who has seen war but still tries to hide the shadow so others won't lose hope. It's a theme authors other than Stover haven't really explored, I think, because it gets at something so fundamental to the Star Wars universe.

 

There's been a lot of less dark versions but Depa's fall reasoning isn't really all that unusual. Ulic Qel-Droma and Darth Malak both fell to the Dark Side because of the decision to fight fire with fire when it came to the Dark Side of the Force.

 

I think that any major war has done that to the Jedi. Charlemagne mentioned Ulic Qel-Droma and Darth Malak, who were taking on the Krath and Mandalorians, respectively. Anakin, Sora Bulq, Depa, and others had the Clone Wars. It's been argued that Jacen's fall came as a result of his experiences in the Yuuzhan Vong War (losing his brother, torture, wrestling with his beliefs, the threat of genocide, his endless visions of destruction, etc., etc.). Of course, Stover did a better job cataloging the horrors of war than the other ones, which might highlight how much the Summertime War affects Depa's own fall.

 

It's been a while since I read Shatterpoint, but IIRC I found Depa's fall to be particularly striking in that she seemed to have real clarity about it. She wasn't someone who started down a slippery slope and by the time she was full-on Darksider was too deluded to see it. She just realized that to be the warrior the Republic wanted her to be she had to be a monster and not a Jedi.