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eliotquillon · 3 years

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HIVE TIMELINE TWO, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (Updated and reworked for Bloodline; spoilers ahead!)

It's a year since my original HIVE timeline (which you can read here and is obviously pre-Bloodline), and how things have changed. Well...kind of. I was expecting more of my timeline to crumple under the weight of eight years' worth of continuity errors but, unlike most of my pre-Bloodline fic, my 2020 timeline has stayed somewhat intact. However, in light of Nessa's excellent post that used the Bloodline prologue to figure out Raven's birthday with a scary amount of accuracy, I've decided that somewhat intact just isn't enough. Lo and behold...find the C ottomalpense new and improved H.I.V.E. timeline under the cut. This is just my interpretation of the canon timeline; because Walden contradicts himself constantly when it comes to age and continuity, most of these dates are educated guesses and any other interpretations are more than valid. Bloodline spoilers below.

PART ONE: RAVEN

In my original timeline, I used two anchor dates: Otto's 13th birthday being August 29th 1993, and Raven being 16 in the 'fifteen years earlier' Hong Kong flashback, making her 31 in Aftershock/Deadlock. Using the age difference between her and Otto, I counted backwards to give Raven a birth year of 1979. Otto's birthday still holds up, but Bloodline has since made it clear that Raven was 15 in Hong Kong. Therefore, several options presented themselves in order to salvage the rest of the timeline.

Option 1: Raven was indeed born in 1979, and Hong Kong takes place in 1994. This would make her 27 in H.I.V.E., given that she has a September birthday and H.I.V.E. takes place between September-December 2006. However, this means Raven that if Raven is 30 in Aftershock/Deadlock, there are only three years between the first seven books....something that canon vaguely supports given Shelby's "I've waited three years for you two to get together" comment to Laura and Otto in Deadlock, but feels very, very unrealistic given the number of time skips and the sheer volume of things that happen in the first seven books. My original timeline was created to get rid of the stasis in canon and give a better sense of the progression of time between books. Keeping Raven's birth year as 1979 undermines that.

Option 2: Raven was born in 1981, Hong Kong takes place in 1996, and she is 25 in H.I.V.E., meaning that there's exactly five years between H.I.V.E and Aftershock. This supports my earlier placement of Aftershock being the start of fifth year, but 25 feels kind of...young? It also hinges on Raven knowing her exact birth date before she finds out that Nero is her father, which I personally don't think Bloodline supports - Nero didn't know her birthday, and I think if Raven did know, she would've told him pre-Bloodline.

Option 3: Raven was born in 1980, Hong Kong takes place in 1995, and she is 26 in H.I.V.E., but, because she doesn't know her birth date, she celebrates her birthday on New Year's Eve. So while Raven would technically be 31 in Aftershock, she would still consider herself 30 until the end of the year, as would Nero. This gives a little bit more leeway with her age, reduces the number of changes in the overall timeline, and accounts for the overall unreliability of both Raven and Nero's narration in the flashback scenes - given that one of them had been traumatised so thoroughly that she had recurring psychotic episodes just months before that scene, and the other had his memory tampered with to the point where he misremembered the date of worst day of his life.

I personally opted for Option 3, making Raven's new birthday 3rd-6th September 1980. She is 33 in the Bloodline epilogue. Therefore Hong Kong still takes place in 1995.

PART TWO: OTTO

This is just a rehash of my last timeline, but for clarity's sake: Otto being an August 1993 birthday makes him one of the youngest in his year, meaning that everyone else (Lucy, Wing*, Nigel, Franz, Shelby, Laura, and Penny) were all 1992/3 babies. Bloodline takes place right at the end of his final year (meaning I correctly predicted that it would be set in 2012), making him 19. Something I forgot to mention in my original timeline is that Tom is described as being a few years older than Penny in H.I.V.E., but given that Tom isn't really alive for long enough to present me with an issue timeline wise, I'm just going to let that one slide. The Bloodline epilogue thus takes place in 2013.

As always, I am ignoring Rogue's claim that Otto is 13, because it doesn't make sense in any context (if Otto really is 13, it means he magically ages three years in Zero Hour and Aftershock according to Walden's own implication that Otto is 16 by Aftershock...which I'm also ignoring, but whatever). Laura still choosing between universities in September 2013 is weird, because either she is very, very late for the 2013 academic year, or very, very early for the 2014 one, but, again, I am ignoring it. Essentially, nothing meaningful has changed for any of the student ages between this timeline and the 2020 one.

PART THREE - NERO

This is where it gets interesting. This time last year, my Nero section was just speculation. I was, uh, very off, and did not account for how early Nero knocked Elena up. That was on me. My bad!

Nero is in his early 20s when Elena is murdered. If we take the year to be 1980, and early 20s to mean anything between 20-24, we can get an approximate birth year of 1956-1960. I'm going to average that to 22, making Nero's birth year 1958. He's a practically spritely 48 in H.I.V.E, and 55 in the Bloodline epilogue.

(Also, I am treating the 'thirty years' in the 'thirty years ago' flashback to be an estimate. Nero has memory issues and also thirty years has a much better ring to it than thirty-two.)

PART FOUR - DIABOLUS

We can't talk about Nero without mentioning Diabolus because I, for one, have been haunted by the knowledge that Nero taught Diabolus for years. However, assuming Nero immediately joins the H.I.V.E. teaching staff in 1980 following Elena's death, he is 22. If Diabolus is a first year student, we can give him a birth year of 1966/7. That said, I tend to think Diabolus is a little bit older than that, given how close he and Nero are in Hong Kong, so if we age him up to a third year in Nero's first year of teaching, that makes him 15/16 with a birth year of 1964/5. There's only 6/7 years between him and Nero, leaving plenty of time for them to become close friends by Hong Kong, during which Nero is 37 and Diabolus is approaching 30. That means Diabolus had Nigel at 27/28.

PART FIVE - THE OVERLORD INCIDENT AND XIU MEI

The Overlord Incident (henceforth the OI) is the bane of my existence. There's no mention of Raven in the original flashback in the Overlord Protocol, implying that she wasn't around yet, but it's referenced as still being a work in progress in Hong Kong. Again, this is a rehash of my previous timeline, but the Deadlock interpretation doesn't work; regardless of anything else, Wing was definitely born in 1992/3 in order to be in the same year as Otto, and either Wing or Raven would be too young for the OI to occur after Hong Kong (Raven was only 13 in 1993 in this interpretation of events, and this is one that puts her on the older side - there's an argument to be made for her being born in 1983, which would make her 10). Ergo, in this timeline, the OI precedes Hong Kong.

As mentioned, Wing had to have been born in 1993 at the latest, and the evidence suggests that he's most likely one of the older kids in their year, pointing to a 1992 birthday, meaning Xiu Mei got pregnant by January 1992 at the earliest. There must be time allowed for the following to occur between Wing and Otto's births and the OI: survivors of the OI to start going missing, Xiu Mei and Wu Zhang /Cypher to marry and move to Japan in order to escape persecution, and Overlord to get enough soft power over Number One to convince him to start trying to produce a clone of himself to be his successor. At earliest this can be 1991. I, however, think that it's more likely to be January 1990, given Overlord's comments about how much Number One initially resisted having his brain hijacked. This is the same as my previous timeline.

Unlike my previous timeline, however, I'm also going to attempt to estimate the year of Xiu Mei's death. While the Overlord Protocol does not explicitly state this, it can be inferred that Nero receives Xiu Mei's locket and letter after she is murdered by Overlord for investigating the Renaissance project. Nero receives the locket "many years" before Overlord Protocol (which takes place roughly in Spring/Summer of 2007), but Xiu Mei was also presumed "long dead" already when he received it as a result of the OI. This puts 17 years between Xiu Mei's faked death and Nero's reminiscence over the locket and letter in 2007 after the assassination attempt in Vienna. Xiu Mei can't have died before Wing was at least 5 years old, given the strong memories he has of her and the fact that he made a promise to her not to kill anyone, so I'm tentatively putting Xiu Mei's real death at 2001, when Wing would've been 9. This leaves just enough time for Cypher to establish himself as a thorn in Nero's side, and for his relationship with Wing the deteriorate to what we see in the Overlord Protocol.

PART SIX - OTHER

I've been meaning to do the maths on this for a while, but H.I.V.E.mind was officially brought online April 10th, 2006! (He'd been online for four months, three weeks, and two days by September 1st.) Nero really was paranoid after the OI.

Brexit doesn't occur in the H.I.V.E.verse, because Duncan Cavendish (David Cameron) resigns in 2010, AKA way, way, before the rise of UKIP and the 2016 referendum. The Iraq war, however, does - Tony Blair is heavily, heavily implied to be the prime minister in 2006.

Not really timeline related, but the fact that both Otto and Raven are Virgos is enough to make me shudder.

TL;DR - THE (FINAL???) TIMELINE

1950-59: The Furan siblings are born at some point. Two siblings are twins, presumably Elena and Anastasia or Anastasia and Pietor. At some point, they are owed a blood debt by the Sinistres.

1958: Nero is born.

Early 1960s: H.I.V.E. is founded, most likely by Nero's mother.

1964-5: Diabolus Darkdoom is born.

Late 1970s: Elena and Nero start their affair.

1980: Elena is murdered by Pietor. Raven is born. Nero has his memory of Raven's survival forcibly erased by Francesca Sinistre, clearing the blood debt between the Furan and Sinistre families.

1980s: Diabolus Darkdoom and Duncan Cavendish attend and graduate H.I.V.E. Diabolus and Nero become friends.

1989: Raven runs away from her orphanage.

1990: The Overlord Incident takes place, leaving three named survivors: Nero, Xiu Mei, and Wu Zhang. Overlord begins to assert control over Number One.

1991: Raven is found by the Furans and brought to the Glasshouse. Wu Zhang and Xiu Mei marry and immigrate to Japan after survivors of the Overlord Incident start going missing.

1992: Presumably the year Raven claws out Pietor's eye and gets shot in the woods, it is also the point at which Overlord/Number One most likely starts considering cloning himself. In the final quarter of the year, some students - most likely Wing, Shelby, and possibly Laura - are born.

1993: Otto and the rest of the students in his year are born.

1994: Likely the year Dimitri's escape attempt fails, and Raven is forced to murder Tolya. Also presumably when H.I.V.E.'s Icelandic location became dangerously compromised, and Nero starts seriously considering plans to move. At this point his mother is dead.

1995: Nero and Diabolus go to Hong Kong to meet with the Architect, and thwart Raven's assassination attempt. Raven eventually defects to G.L.O.V.E., and the first Glasshouse burns.

1996-2000: Construction on H.I.V.E. 2.0 is completed. Nero starts work on the emergency Zero Hour protocol.

2001: Xiu Mei is murdered by Overlord for asking too many questions about the Renaissance initiative. Wu Zhang becomes Cypher. Nero receives his half of the amulet, and Xiu Mei's letter.

2001-2005: Lucy's parents die of unknown causes. Diabolus Darkdoom falsifies his death to escape execution for getting too close to the Renaissance initiative, possibly after divorcing his wife first. Otto drops out of school and starts scamming local business to repair St Sebastian's. At some point Pike convinces Nero to try AI again. Number One's will is entirely consumed by Overlord.

2006: H.I.V.E.mind goes online. Pike's experiment to give Ms Leon the same reflexes as her cat goes horribly wrong, leaving them both trapped in the wrong body. Shelby becomes the Wraith and makes headlines for stealing millions of dollars' worth of jewellery. Laura is caught hacking the nearby American air base's early nuclear warning system. Otto hypnotises the current prime minister, allowing Duncan Cavendish to come into power. During a failed escape attempt from H.I.V.E., several hundred million pounds' worth of damage is caused to H.I.V.E. by Nigel's experimental crossbreed plant, Violet.

2007: Cypher fakes his death as Mao Fanchu in order to lure Wing to Tokyo, and the Contessa betrays Nero. Nero keeps Cypher alive, unbeknownst to Number One, and starts to have suspicions about Number One/Overlord for the first time. By the end of August, everyone is fourteen, and first year is over.

2008: H.O.P.E. is formed, and Nero is captured in either April or May whilst meeting with Gregori Leonov. Three months later, he is rescued by Otto, Raven, and the gang. The Contessa and Number One/Overlord die. Laura and Otto kiss, but nothing comes of it. Diabolus resurfaces from the dead to be elected head of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council. At some point in late August to early September, Otto, Wing, Shelby and Laura first encounter the animus fluid on a train to Paris whilst on a mission to recover a stolen thermoptic camouflage suit. As a result of the Contessa's death, Lucy Dexter is transferred to H.I.V.E. at the start of third year, at which point everyone is fifteen. Following the hijacking of Dreadnought, and an encounter with Pietor Furan, the animus fluid, and the Disciples, Otto is captured by American forces after saving Air Force One and the US president. He is then turned over to H.O.P.E.

2009: Assassinations of key members of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council take place at the hands of Otto, now under the influence of animus. Raven is given executive privilege to kill him if necessary. Otto confesses his love to Laura. Following a confrontation in the Amazon jungle, Cypher, Ghost, and Trent all die. H.O.P.E. is destroyed. Otto feigns memory loss of everything that occurred under animus. By the end of the year, everyone is sixteen.

2010: Laura's brother, Douglas, is born. Otto has continual and repeated nightmares and is the subject of rumours. Overlord takes control of the Advanced Weapons' Testing Facility in Colorado. The Zero Hour protocol is activated. Wing and Shelby get together. Chief Lewis and Lucy Dexter die. Pietor Furan is killed by Raven. Nero becomes head of G.L.O.V.E. Duncan Cavendish is forced to resign. The Architect is contacted by Anastasia Furan through a proxy, and construction of the new Glasshouse is completed. Following the appointment of Security Chief Dekker, Laura is blackmailed into betraying the location of the Hunt after Tom and Penny's recruitment to H.I.V.E. Joseph Wright and several former members of the ruling council are offered the help of Disciples'. All of the Alpha stream save Shelby, Otto, Franz, and Wing are taken captive. Otto is expelled, and joined Raven on the hunt for the location of the new Glasshouse. By the end of the year, everyone is seventeen.

2011: Raven and Otto take down several Disciples, most notably visiting Dubai, London, and Paris. In Venice, they are pursued by the CIA after tracking down the Architect with the help of Diabolus Darkdoom. Tom dies. The new Glasshouse is stormed and destroyed, again. Laura is given the choice as to whether she wants to stay at H.I.V.E. or not, and decides to stay. Anastasia Furan is taken hostage in Nero's basement storage facility. The Disciples' countdown for the new batch of hostages starts at 99 days. By the end of the school year, everyone is eighteen.

2012: The majority of Otto and the gang's final year goes smoothly. Franz starts working out and loses weight, becoming conventionally attractive. A few days shy of graduation, the clone known as Anna becomes loose. Otto reconvenes with the CIA and is allowed access to the last remaining batch of the animus fluid. Francesca Sinistre dies. It is revealed to Nero by Anastasia that he is Raven's father. Raven kills Anastasia. Otto stays behind to destroy H.I.V.E. and dies. His consciousness is transferred to a cloning vat by H.I.V.E.mind. Everyone is nineteen.

2013: Construction on the new H.I.V.E. facility is already underway. Raven finds out her birthday. Shelby and Wing set up an orphanage, implied to be in Africa, for war orphans in Otto's honour. Franz is an instructor at the temporary facility. Laura gets in to MIT and Oxford. In early September, Otto shows up on her doorstep.

#h.i.v.e #h.i.v.e.#h.i.v.e. timeline #bloodline spoilers

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sanerontheinside · 7 years

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Meta Post 1: Fool of a Sith

devilangel657 replied to your post “Revenge of the Fifth”

Question! If the trade feds were technically on sidious command and they killed qui gon originally by association, why does dooku join them if they killed his former padawan?

Solid question, 10/10

Confused me for a moment there, I wasn’t sure whether you were asking about canon or the fic or the au I currently live in. This isn’t 100% meta, even, just my interpretation, or character notes for future use. @obaewankenope, @deadcatwithaflamethrower, @aidava, look at this mess. if you want. I meta’d again. Second meta post is on the Trade Federation, coming soon. uuum. also tagging @kyberpunk, @poplitealqueen, @lilyrose225writes, @maawi, @eclipsemidnight, and @stonefreeak.

(tl;dr: because he thought that would be the best way to destroy them.)

Dooku trained the most accomplished lineage of diplomats the Jedi Order had. He was often assigned missions that kept him away from the Temple for long periods of time, the same way we later see the Jinn-Kenobi team frequently away from the Temple. That must have been incredibly isolating for Padawan Qui, but on the other hand he was also apprenticed to one of the most skilled diplomats in the Order—his training was without fault.

The Council did what it would do with any skilled team: it passed them the most difficult assignments. Now, consider: the Senate provides the Order with information about some planet or other needing help. That message is relayed through at least two stopping points: locally, to the planet’s representative, and from there to the sector’s Senator or one of their aides. Each person involved in this chain has their own political agenda, and the Council can never rely on them for accurate intel. Basically, some of the most difficult cases are the ones where the team is, effectively, going in blind.

Other cases include, but are not limited to: points of conflict, brewing revolutions, coups, etc. Some of these missions are better handled by at least three teams, but the Order doesn’t have the manpower to spare. Basically, it’s all a mess.

I could almost bet Dooku was jaded even before he took his first Padawan. Consider: we know him to be from a noble family, and that is often seen as the reasoning behind his focus on networking among the powerful. Personally, I imagine Qui-Gon’s easy friendships with local pirates and questionable types stood them in good stead very often; but Dooku believed that the way to create a lasting change was to convince the powerful that such a change would be in their interest.

This is double-edged, of course, because while Dooku is not necessarily wrong, he is relatively blind to the full extent of the strife of lower classes. Meanwhile Qui-Gon accidentally blunders into revolutions wherever he goes; it’s a byproduct of the Order being poorly-informed of the local sociopolitical climate, and Qui-Gon’s own curiosity and drive to see justice done.

Manipulating Dooku

Years later, Darth Plagueis—posing as Hego Damask II, Magister of the InterGalactic Banking Clan—is quietly pulling strings in the Outer-Rim territories and manipulating trade disputes and agreements. For instance: two worlds, Celanon and Serenno, were at a dispute over transit taxes for the use of the Hydian Way hyperspace lane. Celanon was building a hyperwave transceiver—basically, a transceiver that used hyperspace to connect to the HoloNet. Because of the amount of infrastructure required for the thing to work, they had to replan the local hyperspace lanes that ships could pass through. For this reason, they decided to charge transit taxes for ships entering their space—which included Serenno.

Damask’s (Plagueis’s) plan was fairly simple: he hoped that mediation between Serenno and Celanon would fail, and then Damask Holdings would withdraw funding for building the hyperwave transceiver. Said construction would have been of benefit to the less wealthy planets in that corner of space. The moment negotiations broke down, those worlds would blame the wealthy Serenno and Celanon for it.

Damask made the error of approaching Qui-Gon Jinn during a recess in the meeting. Jinn, ever one to call the situation exactly as he saw it, ‘accused Damask Holdings of fomenting discontent in the Outer Rim in the name of profit.’ [x - see subsection Serenno: Meeting Dooku and Sifo-Dyas] Not only was that a bit blunt, but it was also exactly right. You can imagine, no Sith Lord working on enacting his Grand Plan, the Return of the Line of Bane, would be particularly excited to have an opponent who could see right through all their careful smokescreens.

Damask also took the opportunity to chat with Dooku and Sifo-Dyas. Dooku was by then well aware of corruption in the Senate, and was quite vocal about it. Sifo-Dyas was more restrained. Unfortunately, talking to Sith is universally understood to be a bad idea. Plagueis walked away from that conversation knowing that to destroy the Jedi, he had to exploit their loyalty to the Republic, to make them appear the enemies of peace rather than guardians.

At the root of Damask’s interest was the fact that Dooku, while he might have thought himself one man working against the tide, had actually done a great deal of good in the Outer Rim territories, and even foiled a number of the Sith’s plans in the process. [x - see subsection Darth Tyranus is Born]

Part of the tragedy of Dooku’s Fall is that he could see a glaring problem, and had no idea that he was already doing a great deal to fix it. That blindness, and a great deal of hubris, really. Hubris in thinking that he could build a utopia from scratch—rebuild the Republic without corruption, rebuild the Order without the faults he’d seen in it.

Dooku’s greatest disappointment was Galidraan, and Galidraan was a Sith-manipulated mess. [x]

The Governor of Galidraan rigged up a complicated scheme that was supposed to rid him both of an insurrection from his colonists and of the True Mandalorians—all of this while hiding a splinter group of the Death Watch (Viszla) on his world. The resulting scheme was designed by Sidious, of course.

So, step one: the Governor calls the True Mandalorians for help dealing with his minor insurrection, and offers to give them Pre Viszla’s location. The True Mandalorians agree and show up, setting up camp locally.

Step two: the Governor of Galidraan has the Death Watch pose as the True Mandalorians and attack the colonists.

Step three: the Governor calls the Senate in a panic begging for assistance from the Jedi Order—help, help, the Mandalorians are killing my people!

Step four: Dooku and a small team show up and surround the Mandalorian camp. Pressed for time (think of the dying colonists!), unable to verify, but possibly just the slightest bit suspicious (the Mandalorians are warriors, not butchers… surely?) the Jedi order the camp to surrender. The Mandalorians, having done nothing wrong up until this moment, open fire and resist.

Aftermath

Dooku had called for reinforcements. His hand was forced before they arrived. He and his small group were vastly outnumbered. What could have been resolved over a pot of tea instead ended in the slaughter of three hundred.

Now, on the one hand, the facts that Dooku had told him he didn’t have time for a pot of tea. On the other hand, even if we were to assume that he’d done everything right when making that decision, and still failed, that must have stung. It must have been, also, incredibly hard to face up to the fact that he’d done his best in a situation where he’d been set up for failure, and yet the Senate was forever going to use that horrible incident against the Order. The very same Senate that had sent him there without a real understanding of the situation, on the word of the Governor. The Order that had not been circumspect and simply said that Judicial would be manpower enough.

Even Chancellor Valorum would later refer to the Yinchorri Uprising as ‘another Galidraan’, and use it as an example for why the Jedi could not serve as the Republic ‘police force’. [x - see subsection Aftermath] On the one hand, it would’ve been nice if the Senate had allowed Valorum to actually declare, by law, that the Jedi were never to be sent out anywhere again for anything other than peaceful negotiations. On the other hand, a reminder of that kind of disastrous failure would have tailed Dooku for the rest of his time in the Order.

No matter whether Galidraan was his fault (an arguable point, and I’m not familiar with the book or comics), he would have still felt guilt over that disaster. He also never faced it: In Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force by Ryder Wyndham, Dooku—by then Darth Tyranus is quoted as saying,

"Even though I knew that the Senate was corrupt, the Council was fallible, and Jedi training methods far from perfect, I remained with the Jedi Order for twelve years after Galidraan. Why? Because I still believed that I could accomplish some good as a Jedi. I thought I could bring about some positive changes, right certain wrongs, and do better than maintain the status quo. In short, I was an utter fool."

Dooku is willing to blame everyone else—the Senate, the Council, down to Jedi training methods. Never himself. He Knows Best, after all. Proud man, and the mightier his fall for it.

Naboo

To Dooku, Qui-Gon’s death on Naboo was just another indication of the Senate’s and Order’s ineptitude. Palpatine was only too happy to tell him the story of how his brave Padawan fell during the Battle of Naboo (even going so far as to show him a recording of the generator’s security feed, according to the comics). [x - see subsection Darth Tyranus is Born] Dooku had publicly criticised the Order and the Senate already, but this was all Palpatine needed to lure him over to the Dark Side:

[Dooku] "I declined to be a member of the Council in order to devote myself to diplomacy, and look how that has turned out. The Republic is sliding deeper into chaos." [Palpatine] "You're one man against a galaxy full of scoundrels." [Dooku] "One man should be able to make a difference if he is powerful enough."

How kind, how understanding Palpatine always was.

I imagine, even knowing that he was dealing with Sith, Dooku would never once have doubted his ability to outwit, outmaneuver those who had given him power. He would use Palpatine as Palpatine had intended to use him, and then he would destroy the Sith. He would destroy the Trade Federation, and the Banking Clans, and the Commerce Guild, and all those pesky monopolies that had been so influential in the fall of the Republic.

Once Palpatine had given him power, he proceeded to strip away Dooku’s every last connection to the Order. Every last thing that had grounded him vanished. Sifo-Dyas was killed the moment his usefulness ran out, though Dooku preserved his body in cryostasis. [I’ve meta’d here before] Somewhere in the midst of ten years of running errands for Sidious, Dooku realised that he could not win without help. He tried, he really did try, to turn to Obi-Wan for help on Geonosis.

But Dooku would never have turned to him on his own. He would never have asked for help, because no one was quite as good as he. When Obi-Wan proved to be resourceful, clever, and exactly the sort of nutcase who’d get himself into trouble the way Jinn would have, caught, and still defiant—that’s when Dooku decided to take a chance. But, alas, he walked into the cell without a plan, and what should have been a delicate manipulation to get Obi-Wan to believe him and then help him—completely blew up in his face.*

They had no common ground. Dooku had never spoken to him. He’d barely maintained contact with Qui-Gon after his Knighting, apparently, and left the Order after Obi-Wan’s. Obi-Wan had no reason to trust him, no reason to believe a word that came out of Dooku’s mouth. Unfortunate, that: the moment Obi-Wan understood Darth Tyranus had not been lying, his Grandmaster was long dead, the Jedi had been slaughtered, and Sidious had made the Republic into an Empire.

*[By the way, Dooku’s scene with Obi-Wan in AotC doesn’t strike me as one artful diplomat manipulating another. It sounds desperate, and for someone who’s supposed to be so good with words, the segue into ‘Qui-Gon always spoke very highly of you’ was rather blunt. But, as @meabhair pointed out, Lucas wrote choppy dialogue, so I suppose we can’t entirely blame the Count.]

Also, as an aside: in Silent enim leges inter arma (the frankenau), Dooku’s Turn and shocked realisation that he’s in over his head happen earlier—before Naboo. Details are still a bit hazy, but as you can see, there’s plenty to work with.

#devilangel657 #forgive me for I have meta'd #Master Dooku #silent enim leges inter arma #the frankenau #a collection of thoughts for later use #saner chats #character sketch

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