Satine Kryze

Duchess Satine Kryze was the pacifistic leader of the New Mandalorians and the ruler of Mandalore during the Clone Wars. Born into Clan Kryze, Kryze left her homeworld of Kalevala to undergo diplomacy and statecraft training on Coruscant. Yet after her father, Duke Adonai Kryze of Clan Kryze, became a casualty of the ongoing Great Clan Wars, Kryze was determined to save the Mandalorians from ruination. She returned to Mandalore under the guard of two Jedi: Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who protected the young duchess from her many enemies. Kryze ended the civil war by convincing the Mandalorian chieftains to embrace peace, but though she and Kenobi developed feelings for each other, their clandestine romance was not to last. Kenobi left Mandalore with Jinn, while Kryze shouldered the burden of rebuilding her society alone. She and her regime cultivated a new age of prosperity for the Mandalorians, with her efforts turning her into a figure of controversy. Some lauded her as the Mandalore of times of old, while others criticized her nonviolent policies as too weak to stand the test of time.

At the dawn of the Clone Wars in 22 BBY, Kryze was granted leadership over the Council of Neutral Systems. She remained loyal to the Galactic Republic while officially keeping Mandalore Space unaligned with the Republic or the Confederacy of Independent Systems. However, she suffered an internal threat to her rule in the form of the Death Watch, a splinter group bent on overthrowing her peace-loving administration. After Kenobi, now a Jedi Master, came to Mandalore to investigate rumors of a Separatist plot, Kryze and her old flame discovered that the leader of the Death Watch was none other than Governor Pre Vizsla of Concordia, one of her own allies. When Kryze traveled on Coruscant to reassert her people's neutrality before the Republic Senate, she further became a target of assassination by the Death Watch. Ultimately, Kryze prevailed, and with the aid of Kenobi and Senator Padmé Amidala, she exposed a conspiracy that would have resulted in a Republic occupation of Mandalore.

Kryze's campaign for Mandalorian self-determination was not without consequences. The Clone Wars disrupted intergalactic trade, forcing her people to turn to the black market in order to survive. With the help of Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano; her own nephew, Korkie; and three other cadets from Sundari's Royal Academy of Government, Kryze unearthed a black market conspiracy, the mastermind of which turned out to be another of her most prominent supporters, Prime Minister Almec. Kryze's rule came to an end in 20 BBY, when Pre Vizsla entered into an alliance with the Sith Lord Darth Maul to seize Mandalore. After Maul's Shadow Collective army assaulted the planet, Vizsla and his Death Watch soldiers—including Kryze's estranged sister, Bo-Katan—swept in to quash the criminal invaders, garnering enough public support to depose Kryze and her colleagues. When Kenobi came to rescue Kryze from imprisonment in her own royal palace, Maul murdered her before Kenobi's eyes as retribution for his previous bisection of Maul. Kryze used her final breaths to reaffirm her decades-old love for Kenobi before passing on.