Is it just me, or does it seem like I'm usually the only one who knows what I'm doing?
—Mara Jade Legio
Mara Jade Legio was a Human female Jedi Master and a member of the Jedi Council in the New Jedi Order. She was a unique figure in galactic history, having served both the Empire and the New Republic at various times in her life. She also worked for a period of time as a smuggler as part of the Smuggler's Alliance, acting as a liaison between the Alliance and the New Republic until she decided to devote herself fully to the Jedi Order in 12 ABY.
In 4 ABY, her career as an agent of the Empire came to an end while helping Rebel Jedi Stephanie and Mark Legio to escape from the planet Byss, following a duel with another of the Emperor's Hands, Lumiya. During the escape, Mara suffered a traumatic head injury, causing post-traumatic retrograde amnesia.
Unable to remember her past life as an Emperor's Hand, Mara worked a number of odd jobs across the galaxy, eventually becoming a smuggler. She would meet the Legios again in 8 ABY, during the Thrawn Campaign. After saving their lives from Luke Skywalker's deranged clone, she began her training as a Jedi. In 13 ABY, she married Mark Legio, and gave birth to a daughter, Vera, later that year. As a Jedi, Mara continued to serve the New Republic in many conflicts. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, she was exposed to the deadly Coomb spores, putting great strain on her friend, Jedi Healer Stephanie Legio Skywalker, to find a cure.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Although Mara was known by the Solo, Skywalker, and Legio families to have once been an Emperor's Hand - one of Emperor Palpatine's personal assassins - much of her early life spent working for the Empire is still a mystery. Mara considered her homeworld to be Coruscant, although her true birthplace is unknown. Early in her childhood, she was taken from her family by the Empire to be trained in the ways of the Force and become one of the Emperor's Hands.
Final days as a Hand[]
The hunt for Skywalker[]
Well... I guess you managed to end her career as a dancer pretty quick.
—Han Solo to Stephanie Legio, regarding her duel with Mara Jade
On one of the final missions of her career as a Hand, Mara was assigned by Palpatine the task of hunting down and killing Luke Skywalker. To do so, she posed as a dancer in Jabba The Hutt's palace, where she expected Skywalker to come in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the crime lord. The day before he arrived, however, Mara witnessed the entrance of Boba Fett into the throne room with a captive claiming to be Solo's lover, Leia Organa. Feeling a disturbance in the Force, Mara deduced that both "Fett" and "Organa" were Force-sensitives and working with Skywalker and the real Organa to rescue Solo.
That same day, Mara watched as Organa's impersonator—by this time chained to Jabba's dais as his personal slave girl—used the Force to save the dancer Oola from being fed to the rancor and was then dropped down into the rancor pit herself by a suspicious Jabba. As a result, Melina Carniss, a secret security officer who had suspected Mara of being an assassin hired to kill the Hutt, diverted her attention away from Mara to the unfortunate slave girl. Despite the woman's supposed death in the pit, Mara sense through the Force that she was still alive, and a possible obstacle in her mission to kill Skywalker.
Her prediction would come true when the young Jedi arrived the next day, and Mara managed to talk Jabba into letting her come on the sail barge to witness the execution of Skywlker, Solo, and Organa's impersonator, now revealed to be Stephanie Legio. During the ensuing chaos, Mara was forced to engage Legio in a lightsaber duel, in order to get a clear shot at Skywalker. The two women fought to the point of exhaustion, until Mara finally managed to wound and disarm her opponent. As she prepared to fire her blaster at Skywalker, Legio managed to stop her at the last moment, using the saber throw technique to sever both of the Emperor's Hand's legs below the knees. Shocked and in immense pain, Mara pitched herself off the side of the barge into the sand below, waiting there until the barge exploded before managing to get onboard the remaining skiff and pilot it back to the palace.
Behind the scenes[]
Mara Jade Legio was created as an alternate-universe version of the character Mara Jade Skywalker for Padawan Leanne's fan-fiction series, The Legio Twins Saga.
Author Padawan Leanne was initially skeptical about the plausibility of Mara's amnesia-inducing head injury. However, it actually is quite possible for the currently planned type of injury suffered by Mara to cause a person to loose his/her memory.
Like the author, the character Stephanie Legio was meant to have been a great fan of Mara Jade while living on Earth. The two would initially become enemies and later close friends in the Star Wars universe.
See also[]
- Mara Jade Skywalker on Wookieepedia
- Mara Organa Skywalker, part of Padawan Leanne's upcoming Starkillers Saga
- The Legio Twins Saga