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been thinking about how din's religion doesn't seem to be very... religious. there is no deity that we know of, no afterlife, no legends. it's a code of conduct, not a belief system, and furthermore it's a code based on practicality rather than morals. when the armorer talks about the importance of helmets or foundlings, she talks about how they help mandalorians survive. neither aspect of the code has anything to do with belief or morality. is it really true that mandalorian isn't a race, but a creed? or is "the creed" just a set of rules designed to preserve a dwindling race?
Din’s covert could conceivably be the direct legacy of the true mandalorians and i can make it make sense without even being that convoluted: an essay
oh absolutely. i’d say it’s a near-certainty. we know bo-katan is planning a revolution and she’s a pretty polarizing figure. i’m sure there are lots of mandalorians out there who Will Not Like That. there also seems to be some sort of (possibly one-sided) preexisting rivalry between bo-katan’s political faction and din’s religious faction which i’m sure is going to come up later.
a civil war would basically be the culmination of the recurring question of what makes a mandalorian (do they have to wear the helmet? be ethnically mandalorian? is it a religous, political, or racial group or a combination?) because any contender for mand’alor has to prove to the others that they’re truly mandalorian. which makes din as a (reluctant) contender quite interesting because not only is he a foundling, now that he’s taken off his helmet he probably doesn’t consider himself mandalorian anymore.
this is pure speculation but they could POTENTIALLY be gearing up for another mando civil war with bobf and mando s3, because we now have A) a claim to the throne by Din that is definitely going to be contested by a lot of people, himself included, B) a historically very politically powerful and ambitious leader who represents a “scorned” faction of Mandalorians in Bo-Katan, and C) Boba Fett, who presumably now controls Hutt Space (? or is it just outer rim territory? I can’t remember) and will probably be roped into the conflict purely based on the fact that he has resources, people, and territory at his disposal regardless of how he feels about Mandalore itself. Add all of that onto the fact that afaik Mandalore has no current ruler now that the Empire is gone and a huge diaspora that is probably eager to return home now that they’re not under the thumb of imperial rule. This would also follow the eternal cycle of “it’s like poetry, it rhymes” Star Wars is obsessed with following, so a capstone civil war is probably gonna happen soon-ish. also lends itself to lots of entertaining action scenes, rule of cool, etc
yeah, i agree that was definitely the main reason he was upset. i think in bo-katan's case there was also an element of anger that she didn't follow the creed, but most of what set him off there was her attitude towards his beliefs rather than the things she herself believed.
(i'll make sure to tag you in my prejudice post once i get around to writing it!)
i don’t think we should be quick to trust anything bo-katan says about the children of the watch.
the main thing i’m suspicious of is her claim that they’re a fringe group. maybe they were in the clone wars era, but they’re clearly the dominant mandalorian faction right now. we know this because literally everyone in the show, not just din, thinks all mandalorians never take off their helmets. that perception wouldn’t be so widespread if the helmet thing were only practiced by a small group of religious zealots. i mean, this is galaxy-wide common knowledge. it’s not just din being sheltered by a cult.
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absolutely. bo-katan’s clear prejudice against the followers of the ancient way calls into question anything she says about them. there’s little to no evidence so far that din’s beliefs are hurting anyone. any time someone says the word “cult” they really just mean “religion i don’t like”.
mandalorians can definitely be compared to different groups of people in our world. “you’re not really mandalorian because you don’t do xyz” is a lot like “you’re not really christian/progressive/muslim/american because you don’t believe xyz”. in reality, there’s no such thing as a “real” or “fake” mandalorian. (now you’ve gotten me thinking about all the parallels between prejudice against mandalorians and prejudice against people in our world... i’ll have to post about that at some point.)
yeah, could be a geographical thing. i think mandalore proper actually is in the outer rim, but i’m not sure how close it is to all the planets din’s been to. the outer rim is a big place.
i don’t think we should be quick to trust anything bo-katan says about the children of the watch.
the main thing i’m suspicious of is her claim that they’re a fringe group. maybe they were in the clone wars era, but they’re clearly the dominant mandalorian faction right now. we know this because literally everyone in the show, not just din, thinks all mandalorians never take off their helmets. that perception wouldn’t be so widespread if the helmet thing were only practiced by a small group of religious zealots. i mean, this is galaxy-wide common knowledge. it’s not just din being sheltered by a cult.
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questions about the children of the watch:
why do they never speak in mando’a?
why are they the only type of mandalorian that the average person has heard of?
how are they connected to death watch?
if they’re a split-off group from death watch, how did they transform from a terrorist group into a religion?
and how did it go from a race to a creed?
why doesn’t din recognize bo-katan’s name or know what the darksaber is?
do the other members of din’s tribe know as little about mandalorian history as he does? if not, are they intentionally concealing information from him? and if so, is that unique to him or something that happens to all foundlings?
is “the watch” death watch, or is it something else?
how many coverts are there?
what are the specific tenets of the way?
when were the children of the watch founded?
are there children of the watch who actually call themselves that, or is it a term only used by non-believers?
food for thought.
i don’t think we should be quick to trust anything bo-katan says about the children of the watch.
the main thing i’m suspicious of is her claim that they’re a fringe group. maybe they were in the clone wars era, but they’re clearly the dominant mandalorian faction right now. we know this because literally everyone in the show, not just din, thinks all mandalorians never take off their helmets. that perception wouldn’t be so widespread if the helmet thing were only practiced by a small group of religious zealots. i mean, this is galaxy-wide common knowledge. it’s not just din being sheltered by a cult.
clearly something changed between clone wars and the fall of the empire. i’m guessing most of the mainstream mandalorians were wiped out after the great purge, leaving the children of the watch as the largest group. one reason for that may have been a cultural shift towards the ancient way because the anonymity aspect of it gave them a definite survival advantage. however, the main reason was probably the practice of adopting foundlings.
the mainstream mandalorian culture prior to the purge seemed to view itself as a race rather than a creed. this meant that when the ethnic mandalorians were killed off, the children of the watch kept growing because they adopted outsiders into their group. the armorer alludes to this when she says that “foundlings are the future.”
this is why din getting upset about boba and bo-katan wearing beskar armor doesn’t necessarily mean he’s being sheltered by a cult, as bo-katan claims. notice that he’s okay with them keeping their armor once he knows they’re mandalorian in heritage, if not in creed. he just didn’t consider that was a possibility because if you’re mandalorian and never swore the creed, you’re probably dead.
basically: i don’t think bo-katan is as representative of mandalorians as a whole as she makes herself out to be, and i don’t think din’s tribe is as cultish as she claims.
but anyway, that’s my take. thanks for reading my ramblings. i’ve only just started clone wars so like... let me know if i’m wildly missing the mark in my ignorance.
Hey! I feel a little dumb for asking but in the Mando S3 Trailer Bo says that "your (Din's) cult fractured our people" … was Bo not part of the cult aka Death Watch herself? I’m a bit murky on her story line and when she left DW and when in that timeline Mandalore fell. Is she just being an ass here because Din still tries to follow the DW rules and she got out?
Hi! It's not dumb at all, because the connection between Death Watch and Children of the Watch is unclear--they must be connected in some way, but they can't be the same thing because: - Din was rescued by Mandalorians with Death Watch on their armor, but we don't know that he was raised by them, he says he was raised in the "Fighting Corp" and doesn't recognize the name "Children of the Watch" when Bo-Katan says it to him - Pre Vizsla and the other Mandalorians who refused to give up the violent warrior ways were living on Concordia and he was the leader of Death Watch, so it's probably safe to assume they had a strong presence there. The Children of the Watch were living on Concordia at the time of the Empire glassing Mandalore, which is why they weren't killed along with everyone else. - Death Watch does not live by the rule of never being able to take off your helmet, so it can't be the exact same thing as the Children of the Watch. (Further, the way Bo-Katan says it, while you can argue that she is kind of a hypocrite--girl, YOU were part of the group that brought Maul to Mandalore, you don't get to be high and mighty about him being a problem there--I don't think the show meant for us to assume she was once part of COTW.) - It's unclear how much of a presence COTW had in the galaxy or how hidden they were--Paz Vizsla says that the Empire is why they're hiding like rats in sewers, but Din is extremely unaware of any other kind of Mandalorian, so were they just running around Concordia? Or is it bad writing that wanted to ignore there were other types of Mandalorians running around? Or is it just that Din doesn't know shit about fuck when it comes to Mandalore? - There may be more context to Bo-Katan's line of "your cult fractured our people" that we don't have yet--did something happen with COTW after she got the Darksaber? Is she referring to them being hidden when they needed them? Is she lumping them in with Death Watch or blaming them for the shitshow with Maul and not fighting back against him? Too many questions without an answer yet! tl;dr: While I think Death Watch and COTW are related somehow (perhaps an offshoot of Death Watch?), they're not the same thing and Bo-Katan never was part of Children of the Watch. Anything else, I'm not sure we have enough info on!