Battle of T'olan

The Battle of T'olan took place early in the Clone Wars, sometime around 22 BBY, when the Galactic Republic fought at T'olan, a location in the Wuun system. During the fierce conflict, a captain in the Republic Military, the mother of a boy named Trever Flume, was killed.

Prelude

The Clone Wars began in 22 BBY when a number of worlds, allied as the Confederacy of Independent Systems, seceded from the dominant galactic government, the Galactic Republic.^[3]

In order to fight with the Republic Military, a woman left her family on their homeworld of Bellassa. Just before she departed, she told her son, Trever Flume, that he could not join her in the fight and promised to return to him safely.^[1]

The battle

Early in the war, the Republic fought at a location known as T'olan in the Wuun system^[1] of the Mid Rim.^[4] The battle was bloody, and Trever Flume's mother died there, fighting as a captain.^[1]

Aftermath

The Clone Wars concluded with the rise of the Republic's successor, the Galactic Empire, in 19 BBY.^[3] By 18 BBY,^[6] the Empire had subjugated the planet of Bellassa and killed Trever Flume's father and brother in a bombing. Orphaned by this,^[1] Trever Flume spiraled into an angry, confused depression^[7] from which he emerged as a member of the Bellassan black market, haunted by the deaths of each family member.^[1] Because of what his mother had said before she left, and his father and brother saying much the same thing before their deaths, he became deeply nervous when people he cared about promised to return from danger without allowing him to come.^[5]

Months after being orphaned, Trevor Flume explained his situation to the former Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi. Years had passed since the battle of T'olan, yet Kenobi recalled its deadly reputation when Flume mentioned his mother's death.^[1]

Behind the scenes

The battle of T'olan was first mentioned in the young reader novel The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission (2005) by author Jude Watson. The name of the battle was not capitalized in the novel.^[1]

In The Desperate Mission, Trever Flume said that his mother had fought in the Grand Army of the Republic, but this could not have been the case.^[1] The Essential Guide to Warfare (2012) states that only clone troopers served in the Grand Army.^[8] Those clones were all men^[9] and nigh^[10] exclusively sourced from the bounty hunter Jango Fett. On the other hand, Jedi Generals and Jedi Commanders were considered part of the Grand Army and were not clones, but they significantly outranked the captains, who were clones. Nonetheless, there were non-clone branches of the Military fighting for the Republic, such as the Planetary Security Forces or the Judicials.^[8]

Another The Last of the Jedi book, Death on Naboo (2006), said that the Galactic Empire had killed Trever Flume's mother while she was fighting against them,^[11] but the Galactic Empire had not yet been founded when she died.^[12] Trever also remembered his mother dying on Bellassa, rather than at T'olan, in The Last of the Jedi: A Tangled Web (2006).^[13] These books conflated her with her partner and other son,^[11][13] whom The Desperate Mission established as having died at Imperial hands on Bellassa,^[1] but A Tangled Web also explicitly mentioned the deaths of those two as independent of hers.^[13]

Appearances

• The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission (First mentioned)
• The Last of the Jedi: Underworld (Indirect mention only)
• The Last of the Jedi: Death on Naboo (Indirect mention only)
• The Last of the Jedi: A Tangled Web (Indirect mention only)
• The Last of the Jedi: Secret Weapon (Indirect mention only)
• The Last of the Jedi: Reckoning (Indirect mention only)

Sources

• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, Vol. I ("Flume, Trever") (Indirect mention only)

Notes and references