a completely normal sideblog

I mean, just as an example to start with: we’re given the impression at various times that he dislikes slavery and see slavers as immoral, and yet when he and Eli discover that the Empire is trafficking Wookiee slaves, he’s able to put that aside in favour of treating them as “imperial assets” who “must be treated as such”.

That ability to compartmentalise his own morals and resolve cognitive dissonance is (I would argue) key to understanding how he can be a card-carrying, uniform-wearing fascist without actually being an ideological fascist himself. Like, he’s certainly a militarist, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not a political authoritarian the way that someone like Anakin “if it works it works” Skywalker is — even though he’s manipulative and controlling on an interpersonal level, those behaviours are utilitarian and limited in scale. And crucially, they don’t seem to be reflected in a belief in autocracy or the inherent necessity of forced social homogeneity. Instead, in both the books and in Rebels, we see multiple occasions of him displaying respect and reverence for cultural diversity (see: *hiss* “i forget that not everyone appreciates art as i do”), which is actually fundamentally antifascist.

Circling back around to what I said earlier about loyalty, I’m starting to think that perhaps that’s the crux of his whole issue.

Because if you think about Thrawn as a classical tragic character, his whole deal starts to make a lot more sense. He cycles through these arcs of stability, then peripeteia (reversal of fortunes), and then downfall. It happens to him in the Ascendancy, it happens to him in the Empire. And it’s always with this sense of the results having been predetermined by either his own nature or by narrative necessity. The Bendu literally prophesies his defeat!! That’s some Oedipus Rex shit.

So if we can think about him as a tragic hero (which is not the same as a hero in the “good guy” sense — the aforementioned Oedipus was very much a questionable dude, as are most classical tragic protagonists) we’re led to the question that lies at the heart of all such characters: their hamartia, their fatal flaw. What is it about them that makes their fate inevitable?

I think that for Thrawn, his fatal flaw is loyalty. He is a man uniquely capable of boxing up everything that he is and wants for the sake of serving a cause, and remaining resolute no matter where that cause leads him. He’s indefatigable — he doesn’t stop, not if his intellect reveals any viable path to success, even if that path cuts narrowly through the absolute depths of depravity. He has very little by way of a life outside of the military, and what little he has he willingly sets aside in order to submit himself completely and utterly to the mission of serving the Ascendancy and the Empire by proxy. And because he sees that cause as more important than his own personal morals, he permits immorality as a means to that end!. He is not more important than the success of that goal, so his moral preferences cannot be either!

And we can extend it outward!! Why is he so blind to politics? Because he struggles to understand actions which are self interested, rather than motivated by loyalty or duty. Why does he manipulate and mistreat Eli, but also care for and uplift him? Because at the beginning of their relationship, Eli’s autonomy was mutually exclusive with the needs of Thrawn’s mission. But as he starts to feel a degree of loyalty to Eli himself, he prioritises finding ways to support him that are compatible with his duty.

And finally, why why why does he get so completely lost in the shits with the Empire after he sends Eli away?? Because without any strong personal relationship where he can express his own thoughts, beliefs or personality as an individual separate from his duty; he hollows out. There’s nothing to fill his mind or motivate his actions other than the pursuit of success. Because he is now without allies, his mission has never mattered more, and because he is deeply alone, he has never mattered less.