Editing Mandalorian (section)

== History ==
Talking about the history of Mandalorians is tricky because in addition to the Legends/Canon split, which is already contentious, you have the issue that a lot of the Legends lore about Mandalorians was invented by [[Karen Traviss]], who is kind of the [[Matthew Ward]] of [[Star Wars]] (and [[Halo]]) novels - she absolutely loves the Mandalorians, since they push her "hard(ish) sci-fi badass military faction, yay!" love button, but she also loathes the Jedi and by extension all Force users, which often results in her turning the Mandalorians into the Star Wars equivalent of the [[Ultramarines]].

The basic idea, boiling it down short, is that the Mandalorians are a warrior culture who arose in the far-flung past of the known galaxy. Whilst originally they were a distinct species known as the Taung, they were also an "assimilationist" type of nomadic empire-builder, striving to actively integrate conquered races into their culture by basically wiping out their old beliefs and making them follow the Mandalorian way. It technically paid off, because even though the Mandalorian species is long-extinct, the Mandalorian culture has remained in existence for thousands of years. Unfortunately that history was tossed out once Disney drew a line between EU and Canon lore. In Disney Canon, the Mandalorians remain a warrior culture but are now a mostly-human culture (with open customs of adopting other species into their ranks) tied to the planet of Mandalore (before the Imperials scattered them in a purge against a rebellious uprising and bombarded their planet to oblivion). Due to their warlike natures and ambitions of conquest, they have frequently fought against the Jedi, and in fact they usually allied themselves with the Sith in just about every one of the major Jedi/Sith wars - this is why they invented ''beskar'', a mineral that can actually negate lightsaber energies, and made armor out of it.

Shortly before the time of the Clone Wars, there was an active civil war amongst the Mandalorians over whether or not their traditions of conquest and warmongering were worth keeping, considering it had consistently resulted in them getting the shit kicked out of them by the rest of the galaxy. This resulted in the pacifists temporarily taking over and booting the traditionalists off the homeworld, causing them to largely scatter across the galaxy as mercs and bounty hunters. Then the Clone Wars happened and a traditionalist terrorist group, the Death Watch, discredited the pacifists, assassinated their leader, and took over the planet again... which just led to more or less another civil war, resulting in Mandalore staying out of everybody's way during Palpatine's reign over the newly fledged Galactic Empire, save for the aforementioned legions of Mandalorian mercs and bounty hunters still roaming the galaxy and continuing fighting for money and kicks as if nothing had changed.