#contacts.

Kal is an easier one. I see you’re also not a Kal fan, so I won’t rehash the entire thing about how Kal isn’t as good as he is framed to be. But for any third parties, it is my view that Kal fails as a guardian and, while he is well-meaning, he is controlling, manipulative, disregarding of his children’s needs, and emotionally abusive. I’ve written about it extensively here, but I can stand to do it a little more—anyone wanting to know more, my ask is open.

Though I basically disregard a lot of what Legacy of the Force did with Clan Skirata and dismiss entirely out of hand everything Traviss planned for Imperial Commando 2, I do retain one thing: Kal seeks to destroy the aging cure.

The exact details on his motivations are still a little fuzzy, but I’m certain he does so because he believes it is the best way to protect the family. However, it is a decisions that best serves his interests, not that of anybody else in the family; ultimately, it is a self-serving and self-centered decision. Broadly, there is staunch disagreement on this, most vocally the Nulls. With one exception, Ordo. Though Ordo very much agrees the cure should not be destroyed, he finds himself being asked to choose between Kal and the other Nulls. Despite it all, and despite how far he’s come, Ordo still views losing Kal’s approval as an existential threat. He adopts a neutral stance because he is afraid and he is trying to have it both ways. Among the Nulls, at least, there is understanding for why Ordo is scared to vocally oppose Kal.

To get to the point, despite the overwhelming disagreement, Kal ends up destroying the cure anyway. Or, he thinks he does. Mereel, being clever and having A’den’s support, secretly saved some of it—just in case.

It isn’t enough, however, to save the family. Mereel, disgusted, is immediately estranged from Kal, and the others drift off as well. Ordo, ends up being the last of the six to remain. Seeing the others feel pushed away from Kal wears his own relationship to Kal down. Blame @tapcaftogo​ especially for this last part, but Mereel apparently dies. Though it isn’t entirely accurate, Ordo jumps to the conclusion: “If Kal hadn’t driven him out, Mereel would still be alive.”

(Just to throw it in here to reassure you, he’s not actually dead. He’s just believed dead.)

Sure, inaccurate, but it’s the start of a very long journey down realizing that Kal has hurt them all immensely anyway. Coupled with Ordo’s own guilt that he let fear of losing Kal’s approval over supporting the five siblings he loves more than anything else in the galaxy, it fractures whatever is left of Ordo’s relationship with Kal.

Unable to cope with the immense amount of stress, he suffers a debilitating nervous breakdown, gets pulled out of Kyrimorut by Besany, and doesn’t look back. The subsequent process of dealing with grief, recovering from his breakdown, gaining the distance to finally grasp the true nature of his relationship with Kal, working through it all solidifies the estrangement.

Ordo is forced to face the extreme end of how Kal’s disregard for their decisions and how his self-centeredness hurts them and, coupled with the physical and emotional distance his nervous breakdown demands, he is given the chance to look back at it all and see it for what it is.

Besany is a harder one to explain, but it’s very much based on headcanon. I’ve written two posts on it: some rough sketching, on motivations for why it developed. Specifically, Ordo and Besany are still married, they never formally divorce, but they are separated and are open to seeing other people. Though it wasn’t exactly as intended at the time, what ends up happening is that Ordo and Besany go on (a very long) break—they separate, but ultimately they get back together eight or nine years later.

Ordo is so very young. He doesn’t have any life experience nor does he have a completely settled sense of identity. The way Kal raised him to think of romantic relationships isn’t completely healthy either: to have a normal life, Ordo must have a marriage. Besany as a spouse becomes an integral, inseparable part of Ordo having a normal life. It’s a framework that is susceptible to pedestals and possessiveness and stifling idealism. 

And I think that’s what happens. The relationship gets stifling—because they get trapped in pitfalls that they didn’t adequately work out in the early stages. As they change, they get anxious about what the other thinks of them and both start focusing on what they believe the other expects from a good spouse. They start turning inward, into themselves, into their own anxieties—as is their tendency to do as intensely self-reliant persons—instead of turning outward toward each other. They project, they assume, they disconnect. As they both change, the disconnect grows greater until it starts to fester into resentment.

To add onto it, much of their early relationship is informed by the fact that they are both very lonely people who are desperate for the validation and emotional support offered by each other. They love each other, deeply and sincerely, but there is a potential for a lingering shadow on their relationship that this was something built because they had no other choice.

I basically conceive of it as Ordo coming back to this relationship once he has a firmer sense of self, stronger ability to navigate a close relationship, and a more developed understanding of his own personal needs and of how to tend to someone else’s needs. Besany, for her own part, doesn’t have the same identity and boundary issues to work out—but her life has had a series of major upheavals, and she’s been swept into this family and her choices limited to what this single family, what Kal specifically, has wanted to do and wanted her to do. She needs the ability to step out of this circle just to know that she can. This was a family structure that, when Kal was in it, was immensely controlling and was almost violently reluctant to allow people to leave it. Even though Ordo would never retaliate against her should she decide to leave him, she needs that peace of mind to know that she can safely leave him. And feeding into that, Ordo needs to be alone. He needs to know that her leaving him isn’t the end of the world. He needs to learn that he can and is able to stand on his own—despite his fears about being left, despite all he’s been told about how his life cannot be normal without her.

After everything about the situation they were in has done to them and how it has negatively influenced a relationship between them that has so much good to offer, they both need the certainty that being alone can offer them. They both step away from the relationship to give each other and themselves the breathing room to figure things out.

It’s like… weirdly complicated in my head, and I don’t think I’m explaining it right, but that’s how it is. They need breathing room, especially Ordo. They need time to come to terms with the new contexts of their lives and figure themselves out alone—so that they don’t tie everything into this relationship and ask of this relationship the impossible.

How exactly it happens, there isn’t a specific incident really for it. It’s just a slow degrading over time, them growing distant from each other, at times skating so close to resentment. It’s just ongoing strain in their relationship and their inability to accommodate the kind of person their beloved is becoming strains them more. They do both still love each other, it’s just that they’ve begun to struggle to manage the lingering issues that have plagued them and they’ve ignored since the beginning. Ordo, especially, grows afraid of being resented. In an effort to save themselves, to save each other, they decide to cut each other loose before they both get dragged into the undertow and drown.

I don’t really have an inciting incident right now for why they chose to part ways, but it was a long-time coming.