Hello and thanks for reading. I spent an uncomfortable afternoon recently watching the Metropolitan Opera's movie theater broadcast of The Hours. The new work was supposed to be a star vehicle for Renee Fleming, but Joyce DiDinato stole every scene. Still putting the music and singing aside, the underlying story was so unsettling, so on-the-nose. What should a woman's life be? Housewife drudge? Determined achiever? Can't there be some happy medium? The work depicts struggling women of different eras in different relationships. And maybe that's the truth of the subject matter: regardless of our circumstances, women will struggle. Is that a gender thing? Or is that a fact of the human condition? I don't know. Any chosen life path involves tradeoffs and disappointments. The Hours movingly depicts depressed, diminished people and those who love them. Or maybe it's better to say those who survive them. And that too hit home.
Depression has come for my family. People close to me have struggled with it in recent years (Twilight of the Gods and Rule of Two wrote out some of that angst) and thankfully it's gotten better. In particular, my older sister has struggled with the blues. She's the inspiration for Meetra: a high achieving woman who's lost her direction, who is too experienced in life to truly start over, and who at times has a bitter edge thanks to her disappointments and missed opportunities. She's a damsel in distress and she resents it because that's not how Meetra views herself. That's partly why she's reluctant to accept help. For my sister, her struggles are compounded by the fact that when you live outside life's usual script of marriage plus kids, sustaining happiness can be hard. I got yelled at once for saying that my sister needs a man in her life. You don't need a man to be happy, I was chided. Honestly, I disagree. The sexes complement one another. And loneliness—for a man or a woman—diminishes you. We are not at our best alone. And so, for sad, directionless Meetra, enter Lord Sion.
Yeah, so . . . Tony. I often worry that I write the same stuff over and over again. This isn't the first time I have written a Sith Lord with a secret alter ego. This story differs from those setups in that the surprise for our heroine is that she's being deceived by the nice guy, not the bad guy. Sion isn't hiding the truth of who he is and what he does. Those other tales have a Sith pretending to be less important, less powerful, and less controlling than they really are. When they ultimately are unmasked, it forever tarnishes the relationship because our heroine knows/likes/loves the good guy, not the bad guy. That's not so here and it's mostly because Meetra doesn't trust Sion or his alter ego Tony. Instead of some huge fight over the deceit and betrayal, our cynical, depressed Meetra takes it in stride. This is one more way in which life has not turned out like she expects. The ruse pretty much confirms all the reasons she thinks she should be wary of Sion.
Meetra starts the story expecting to be tortured and probably killed. She pretends to be stoic about that fact. She ends Part 1 bewildered to be a conspirator with Sion, masquerading as his wife as she heals him. She and Sion aren't friends exactly. They aren't lovers. They are very arm's length. Two people from different worlds who are trying to establish boundaries and negotiate the future.
I have long been excited by the possibilities of writing Meetra Surik. The SW Legends story of the Jedi Exile is great melodrama. When we meet her here, she's been branded a villain and shunned. I love how that's the Jedi Order's preferred discipline—they cast you out in a weird allusion to current day cancel culture. As the Exile, Meetra drifts aimlessly without her Force or any real purpose in life. Where once she was full of zeal, she's become mired in apathy and depression. Sion captures her and suddenly she's being offered security, status, acceptance, and help by her enemy. She's confused and full of misgivings. Meetra wants to understand Sion in the context of the script she has been taught—that a Sith will seek to seduce you to the Dark Side. They will promise you what you want, and the price is your soul. But what if that bad guy trope doesn't quite fit?
Sion has his own goals for what he wants from Meetra (not all of which he has revealed). But Sion isn't looking to make her Dark. Sion's groping around at the idea of balancing the Force, much like Vitiate does towards the end of Taking the Veil. I like the idea that there are Force users throughout the different SW eras and on both sides of the Force who become disenchanted with the orthodoxy they have learned and go looking for more. These are the figures who start asking questions and challenging long held assumptions. Revan is certainly one of those figures. Sion is something of his Sith counterpart.
In this fic, I really wanted to explore the idea of two people from wildly divergent cultures. During this era, the Jedi Republic/ Sith Empire differences are broader and deeper than just the Force. I'm not sure there's a great analogy for that culture clash in our lives. Maybe a modern western woman dropped into the palace of a Saudi prince? The point is that there are strong cultural, social, religious, and political disconnects between our characters. Those disconnects are accompanied by a great deal of mistrust and judgment on both sides. There is also a strong legacy of grievance, at least on the side of the Sith. That context makes the usual enemies-to-lovers trope especially hard, if you ask me. These two think they know who the other is—they have lots of preconceived notions about the other's perspective and values. Part of their character arcs will be to better understand and appreciate the other's mindset. I'm really interested in how the past influences the present, for people personally and for societies at large. How the past can both promote and inhibit change. How you can get stalled by the past, how it can haunt you.
I deliberately made Sion the more intellectually openminded of the pair. Meetra's a Jedi from the Republic but that doesn't make her particularly tolerant or broadminded. It's endlessly amusing to me as an observer of US politics that some of the most well educated, most successful, most politically progressive people I know also happen to be the most narrowminded and judgmental. They don't see it that way, of course.
So Revan . . . I wrote a Revan story a few years ago (spoiler alert—it sucks). I didn't get the character right and I doubt I ever will. But the meaning of Revan in the SW universe still very much interests me. The man left a lot of collateral damage on both sides of the Force—talk about a disruptor!-and that is my angle for this story. My two main characters are both very interested in Revan. Meetra for her longtime personal relationship and Crusader kinship with the Jedi version of the man. And Sion for all the intriguing possibilities that the Sith Darth Revan presents.
The idea that Revan might be a Sith princeling hidden among the Jedi is not a new idea for me. Baby Revan's introduction to the Republic is Chapter Two of my fic Four Mothers. But biology is not destiny as the Skywalkers and the Palpatine lineage shows us in the SW canon movies. The idea that the Force is a morality play and you choose your side is very embedded in the official SW ethos. So, if Revan were indeed born a Sith, that wouldn't make him Dark, as Meetra points out as the stand-in for the enlightened Jedi perspective. The genealogy obsessed Sith Empire would naturally see things differently, as Sion does.
Sion is hoping Revan will be an instigator of his revolution to overthrow Darth Vitiate, hoping he's the Sith'ari Dark Side analogy to the Jedi Chosen One wunderkind savior figure. The idea of the threat of the Sith'ari runs through several of my stories. Inevitably, there's a Sith who thinks/hopes he's the Sith'ari or a Sith who fears the coming of the Sith'ari. In Starcrossed, Darth Vitiate worries that his unacknowledged son Darth Malgus is the Sith'ari come to steal his Empire. My version of Darth Plagueis in various stories also yearns to be the Sith'ari. And in The Apprentice, the not-yet Darth Bane doesn't want to be the Sith'ari. But regardless of the character or the story context, the Sith'ari concept is always the same: some iconoclast comes out of nowhere against all odds to blindside everyone as Sith Jesus and upend the status quo. Who has the most to lose from that situation? Naturally, the guy in charge. That's why rival-fearing Vitiate is terrified of the Sith'ari.
To put this story in the context of the (admittedly murky) Legends timeline of the Sith Empire, the Sith-backed Mandolorian War is about 300 years before the Sith invasion of the Republic Outer Rim that kicks off the Great Galactic War. Vitiate captures Revan and pretty much tortures him as his Jedi enemy/frenemy prisoner during the interim. Why? Yes, it's for revenge. But it's also for curiosity. There's a running theme in my stories that the stronger a Sith Lord becomes, the more drawn they are to the Light. It's the natural pull to counterbalance coming from the Force itself. Those Force users who are aberrations due to their extreme power get tempted the most by the opposing side. Overpowered Vitiate in particular is drawn to the Light, as shown in stories like Taking the Veil. In this fic, Sion is the overpowered Dark Side figure who needs Light Side healing and is curious about the ways of the Jedi. That's mostly because he's looking for allies to oppose his Emperor and seeking new powers to use against him. But it's also a consequence of his own extreme Darkness.
It's important to keep in mind just how long the reign of Darth Vitiate is. How overbearing the man has become. How reclusive. How secretive. The rigid social control and fascist politics of his Empire are best depicted in other stories, but understand that Sion is one of many dissenting voices looking for an opportunity to unseat Vitiate. The Emperor has earned himself many enemies. In this fic, as in others I have written, Vitiate is the looming threat in the background.
Next up, Meetra starts playing Sith Lady and Sion schemes against his Emperor. Plus, Force healing a zombie turns out to be complicated. Kreia—the self-styled Darth Traya—is still out there seeking Meetra. And Sion's still living because he's so overpowered brother-in-law, Cornelius Caesar, better known as Darth Azamin, is going to make an appearance.