Satine says “we are a people of tradition” in season 3, and in this behind the scenes featurette from 2010, when lead designer Kilian Plunkett discusses the design process behind Satine (at the 16: 44 mark), he says that they tried to “make it feel that she was definitely part of this culture”. This proves that Satine hated everything about Mandalorian culture and was ashamed of her Mandalorian heritage and tried to deny it.
Mandalore joined the Republic after Satine become the leader, which is obviously inherently a bad thing because All Government Automatically Bad Always. Despite being loyal to the Republic and its core principles, she was often very vocally critical of them when she disagreed with their decisions, and she chose to stay neutral in the war and was upset at the prospect of a Republic occupation of Mandalore. This proves that she was a total shill and sell-out for the Republic who forced her people to assimilate into Republic culture. (Even though the Republic, not unlike the United Nations in the real world, is a largely symbolic organization that consists of thousands of planets with different cultures and thus there really is no one singular “Republic culture”)
In the aforementioned behind the scenes featurette, (at 7:12) Dave Filoni, Kilian Plunkett and Joel Aron discuss how the shapes in Mandalorian armor inspired the design direction of the New Mandalorians (including Satine herself as previously stated) so as to give them a uniquely Mandalorian aesthetic, from the architecture to the clothing to the artwork to the ship design to the goddamn hair textures. In Rebels, when we meet a prominent warrior clan in the form of Clan Wren, the design of their ancestral home, the artwork on the wall, and the clothing worn by non-warrior Alrich Wren all generally follow similar design cues as the New Mandalorians. These design choices were clearly not done for a reason and this only further proves that Satine stripped Mandalore of their unique identity and Made Them Assimilate Into Republic Culture™. They’re now totally interchangeable with core worlds like Coruscant because Mandalorian culture is WAR KILL DEATH CARNAGE only and none of that other stuff matters. Also, the royal palace has a giant ass mural of Mandalorians fighting Jedi in ancient times right on the front of it for all to see, which clearly shows that she was erasing history and that the New Mandalorians Forgot About Their Roots.
It’s an important plot point in both season 2 and season 5 of The Clone Wars that Death Watch cannot take Mandalore by force because they are too small in numbers and Satine has the will of the people on her side, which is why they have to ally themselves with outside forces (first the Separatists, then Maul and the criminal syndicates) and must come up with super elaborate schemes for the express purpose of painting themselves as heroes and making her look bad, and it is only by doing this that they are able to win the people over to their side, at which point she surrenders the throne. But BEFORE she lost the throne, members of the Protectors, an ancient group of elite warriors dedicated to serving as royal guards to Mandalore’s leader, made up Satine’s royal guard during the Clone Wars, as stated in this Rebels Recon episode (10:30). In Rebels, Fenn Rau, the leader of the aforementioned Protectors, says that many Mandalorians by that time regard Bo-Katan as Mandalore’s rightful ruler in part because of her relation to Satine. Also if we go by the novelization for the Shadow Collective arc in season 5 (said novelization is technically Legends now but it’s one of the few sources in either continuity that gives any specifics on how her rise to power went down and this specific detail has not been contradicted by current canon) it claims that the warriors who supported her rule did so willingly because even they were tired of the constant fighting. All of this clearly demonstrates that Satine did not respect the will of the people at all and did not have the majority on her side for the bulk of her time as ruler and her rule was definitely not recognized as legitimate by anyone.
As also mentioned in the aforementioned Rebels Recon episode, the Protectors who served as Satine’s royal guard wore armor that was essentially just a more ceremonial version of their traditional combat armor, as worn by the aforementioned Fenn Rau. Also, Sundari’s police wear armor too. Also also, Satine’s own former Prime Minister Almec has his own armor that he pulls out during the Siege of Mandalore, and since it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the other Maul loyalists it’s safe to say it’s most likely his family’s armor passed down to him. This clearly proves without a doubt that Satine flat out banned wearing armor even though that’s never stated anywhere, that’s clearly the only logical explanation as to why the average citizens don’t wear it. Certainly not because their society was actually peaceful for about 20 years give or take and they didn’t need it or anything like that.
Satine speaks Mando’a (specifically the Concordian dialect) in the literal first episode she appeared in. Mando’a can also be seen in written form on the police speeders and in the royal academy. This shows us that she suppressed the language, further destroying Mandalorian culture.
The lack of racial diversity on Mandalore in The Clone Wars was definitely NOT an out-of-universe character design problem, but rather an in-universe problem that only applies to Satine and the New Mandalorians specifically (even though their opponents in Death Watch are just as white), as opposed to, say, the True Mandalorians in Legends who are so much more racially diverse. And season 7 definitely did NOT add more New Mandalorians with darker skin-tones as a direct result of the criticisms regarding how white the planet was in the previous seasons (and because Star Wars in general became much more diverse after the Disney buyout).
Also she’s a colonizer despite literally being born on a Mandalorian colony planet. And she can’t be the leader specifically because she wasn’t born on Mandalore and is thus not a real Mandalorian, but this same logic doesn’t extend to any other Mandalorian characters who weren’t born on Mandalore, such as Jango Fett, Boba Fett, Din Djarin, Fenn Rau, Ursa Wren, Ketsu Onyo, Jaster Mereel (assuming the broad strokes of his Legends history still hold true in canon), etc.
In conclusion, if you can’t see how Satine was OBVIOUSLY meant to be seen as a villain who committed cultural genocide by telling her people to maybe stop doing imperialism in favor of focusing on productive things like art and education, and also implementing gun control, then you CLEARLY haven’t been paying enough attention. Hashtag Make Mandalore Great Again.
