[TRIPLE ZERO] Chapter 1: Most divorced guy in the galaxy

[mamuzzy]

|| Republic Commando: Triple Zero || 2006 || Book series || Military, Sci-fi || 18+ for violence and harrowing themes ||

When I first read Triple Zero, this whole conversation with Kal and Jango hit me like a brick, and hit too close to home. It felt like the author straight-out used IRL inspiration from actual military families and their conflicts when writing about the domestic issues of Kal Skirata. When both of the parent works in the military, there is a mutual understanding usually. But in families where only just one of them is a soldier, being away for months-to-years in a foreign countries is often a source of serious conflicts in families, especially regarding raising children, leading the household, the tolerating the loneliness that comes with these missions. It is inevitable that needs won't be met.

Jango slowed down tactfully. “So, Ilippi threw you out?”  

“Yeah.” His wife wasn't Mandalorian. He'd hoped she would embrace the culture, but she didn't: she always hated seeing her old man go off to someone else's war. The fights began when he wanted to take their two sons into battle with him. They were eight years old, old enough to start learning their trade; but she refused, and soon Ilippi and the boys and his daughter were no longer waiting when he returned from the latest war. Ilippi divorced him the Mando way, same as they'd married, on a brief, solemn, private vow. A contract was a contract, written or not. “Just as well I've got another assignment to occupy me.

What I find intriguing in this section that Kal doesn't blame Ilippi. He thinks their cultural differences were at blame. It makes you think that maybe when Kal and Ilippi got together, maybe they didn't think this relationship through. They haven't talked about what will this entail. That being a Mandalorian is not a nationality or a race, it is a LIFECHOICE. Being a partner of a Mandalorian will require sacrifice and lots of devotion, just like IRL when you partner up with a soldier: you either accept that you will be alone a lot, or you will move a lot, you won't have a stable place to live most of the time. I have found an quote in Order 66 that elaborated more about this divorce and a little bit what made Kal attractive in Ilippi's eyes:

Ilippi thought the beskar’gam was dashing when she married Skirata, but his long absences on deployment started to wear on her with three small kids to care for, and then she hit the big cultural wall—Tor was coming up on eight years old, and Skirata wanted to do as all Mando fathers did, to take his son to train and fight alongside him for five years.

Of course this is where reality and fantasy parts. A Mandalorian child at age 8 starts to train with one of their parents and when they reach age 13, they do the Verd'goten which is the traditional rite of passage in order to become legally adult in their society. Basically when a normal child is already sitting in school, the Mandalorian child remains with their parent and learn their profession from them alongside with basic survival and fighting skills. I think Ilippi reluctantly but accepted the life that Kal is barely home. But taking away the children too was too much to bear.

“You should have married a Mando girl. Aruetiise don't understand a mercenary's life.” Jango paused as if waiting for argument, but Kal wasn't giving him one. “Don't your sons talk to you any longer?”

Kal is so interesting here. Jango blames Ilippi for not wanting to be a Mandalorian, like offering some kind of friendly gesture, a consolation for Kal that he shouldn't feel bad for a woman who didn't even try. But Kal doesn't accept this gesture. He doesn't argue with Jango that "NO NO ILIPPI WAS FINE HOW DARE YOU" but also doesn't agree with him openly.

“Don't your sons talk to you any longer?”
“Not often.” So I failed as a father. Don't rub it in. “Obviously they don't share the Mando outlook on life any more than their mother does.”
“Well, they won't be speaking to you at all now. Not here. Ever.”

From this section we can assume Kal feels it more shameful that his own kids rejects him than his ex-wife.

Nobody seemed to care if he had disappeared anyway. Yes, he was as good as dead.

I think we have the motivation why Kal accepted this very shady assignment even without the details: he had no reason not to.

I want to put here another quote from Order 66:

Tor was thirty-nine now. Maybe he even had grandchildren. That was possible, if he’d been Mandalorian and married very young as Mando’ade did; but his mother wouldn’t have allowed that.
(…)
It took thirty seconds, Mando-style—a short oath to wed, and a shorter one to part. Skirata handed her all his earnings and left for another war.  

Every credit. Every credit I didn’t absolutely need to survive, until the day I left for Kamino. Then I was dead and gone.

Doing a little math, Tor Skirata was in his late-twenties when Kal stopped sending them money, that's when he disappeared due to the Kamino mission. But that wasn't mean they were in real contact. Then probably Kal wouldn't have accepted this assignment. Kal had no one to stay for. I can imagine that when he finished, he would have send the Kamino money to back to his family too. But yeah… things happened. :D

“Just as well I've got another assignment to occupy me." ← I remember so many occassions in the books where Kal downplays his own misfortune in life, but damn, Kal, YOU HAD SO MANY ASSIGNMENTS SINCE THEN TO OCCUPY YOU. You are so not over this divorce. Or at least not over your kids.