Imagine a fantasy world. You probably thought of a castle, knights, dragons, and maybe a kind king, but left it at that if you went to develop that world more you likely would focus on the knights/heroes but completely forget about how the world can function politically. Often times what makes a fictional world really “pop” would be its world building ability, with one great example being Star Wars. Star Wars was originally based off of the politics at the time, mainly the “Vietnam war”, but has gone far beyond just making a political system to critique America. Geroge Lucas and the rest of the worldbuilding team on Star Wars made hundreds of different worlds with unique political systems. Many of them fall under three different classifications: self-governed, part of the galactic senate, or ruled by the hutt cartel, examples of these being Mandalore, Naboo, and Tatooine respectively.

Mandalore (or Mand’alor depending on where you’re from in the galaxy), as previously mentioned was a self-governed planet, relying on democratically elected leaders to rule their world in a fair and just way, without input from irrelevant planets. Over the course of the Skywalker saga there were 4 primary leaders: Satine Kryze, Pre Vizsla, Darth Maul, and then Bo-Katan Kyrze, each having their own pros and cons. Satine’s rule was one of peace and prosperity, she united the Mandalorian people and kept them out of large-scale conflicts, Pre Vizlsa took control after he won the DarkSaber (which works much like the sword in the stone in the sense that the wielder is the rightful ruler) and had a very short rule mainly know for it’s chaos, Darth Maul later killed Vizsla, taking the DarkSaber and throne of Mand’alor, his rule lasted for roughly a year, using his power to turn the Mandalorian back to their warrior-like life style, then lastly is Bo-Katan who led Mand’alor after staging a rebellion against Maul, she ruled afterwards for the next several years, outliving the Galactic Empire but bringing nothing overly good to the Mandalorian people. For one world never shown in the movies, the world builders working on Star Wars really put a lot of effort into this world, giving four different leaders with different ruling styles, and different cultures as to who should lead.

Naboo is next, due to its importance in the Galactic Senate. Naboo was a simple mid-rim world, which managed to produce some of the best senators the galaxy had seen alongside some of the most powerful people the galaxy would ever see. One of the major political aspects of this world is that there are two intelligent species with two different governments, the people of Naboo who were mainly humans that democratically elected their queen who would usually represent them in the senate, and the Gungan’s who had a king, often called “Boss”, who was appointed by a high council that was elected via various means. Now you might be thinking “if they had different governments, how could they run the planet well?”, and that’s the thing, they didn’t interact with each other much due to their dislike of one another only having good enough relations to work directly together right after the Naboo was attacked in “The Phantom Menace”. Another really interesting point from Naboo is, Sheev Palpatine this from there, it shows that through the Senate system people from small worlds that had little say in the Senate can democratically become the leader of the entire galaxy, much like in America.

The final planet, Tatooine, everyone’s favorite desert. Tatooine is different from the other because it lies in Hutt Space, meaning it is ruled solely by the Hutt cartel and their leader, who for, many years was Jabba the Hutt. Tatooine is the most significant of the Hutt controlled planets because, that’s where the Cartel is run out of ever since Jabba put his palace there. Tatooine, like many Hutt planets, was very dangerous for the average person, due to a lack in job opportunities leading to severe poverty and resource limitations. Jabba promoted to many inhabitants that working as a bounty hunter, smuggler, hitman, bodyguard, or any other illegal/dangerous job was their only option for a better life. Hutt space was widely considered by many as the worse place to be, much preferring to have to deal with the corrupt and unfair Empire, Galactic Republic, or even New republic.

Now in short, the people working on Star Wars took enough care to really flesh out many different political systems even if they had no strong view in the audience eyes. Does any of this matter though? No, not really in the grand scheme of things, though it does make for great storytelling and in some cases can be used as an example of what to or not to do in politics.

grawha

I’m a high school student who plays the trumpet. I like Star Wars, especially the politics of it, and the politics of the world. I like to compare real world issues to Star Wars, sometimes other fictional universes, in order to explain my views on things to others.