Knights of the Old Republic Tries to Hide its Queer Horror
I have a bad feeling about this.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a Bioware game that tells the story of a ragtag group of allies who join (and potentially fall in love with) the incredibly charismatic blank slate player character. Together the crew of the Ebon Hawk strike out in search of the edge the Republic needs to win their war with the Sith Empire. It's pretty straight forward, until the catch: the player character is actually a former Sith Lord named Revan, whose memory and power are stripped of them just prior to the start of the game. Revan was betrayed by their apprentice, Darth Malak, and left for dead.
The revelation that your player character used to be a Sith Lord occurs at the end of the second act, after you've explored several planets and gathered a crew of loyal friends. In your first confrontation with the game's antagonist, Darth Malak reveals that the Jedi captured Revan when they were grievously injured. While they mended Revan's body, they opted not to mend their mind. Instead they planted a new personality and a new set of memories of their own creation, turning Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith, into a loyal Republic soldier.
The first time I read about Darth Revan, I was enamored. Here was something completely new in Star Wars! Revan was a fascinating villain, with nuance and depth that, at the time, I wasn't able to see in film characters like Darth Vader. It took me a few years to actually think about the implications of Revan's experiences, however, and looking back on this game as a recently realized trans woman, all I can see when I look at Revan is a victim, not a villain. The victim of a fate more grim than Darth Vader's.
They lost their name. Of all the details of Revan’s loss, this piece stuck with me the most vividly. Revan was a war hero, known to many in the galaxy for their military expertise. When they went against the wishes of the Jedi Council and took up arms in the Mandalorian Wars, they chose the name Revan for themself. Likewise, their companion Alek took the name Malak. And after the war, when they chased the remnants of the Mandalorians into uncharted space and there fell to the dark side, they kept those names. Even after taking on the title of Darth, cutting off the life they had lived and allegiances they had sworn, they refused to give up their names. Names are very important to me. It took me a long time to find mine, and it’s still a constant struggle to get people, even family members, to use it. I can’t even imagine having my name stolen like Revan’s was. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
It gets worse, as not only does Revan lose their identity, they’re given a new one. A new, subservient history, fabricated by the Jedi to serve as a tool. They send you to follow in Revan’s footsteps to learn what they discovered before the war, hoping your subconscious will steer you true. But Revan was a person. HK-47, your assassin droid party member, recalls at one point that Revan found the phrase “meatbag” amusing, and so programmed HK to refer to sentients as meatbags. We don’t see a lot of characterization when it comes to Revan, so this moment stood out to me. Revan had a sense of humor. They weren’t a monster, and they weren’t evil for its own sake. This is one of the reasons it’s hard for me to see them as purely a villain.
The game, however, doesn't really want you to look at Revan as a victim. Once during the initial reveal I was given the option to accuse Bastila, the party member responsible for Revan's loss, of using me. I was not, however, allowed to bring up the fact that she helped in erasing Revan's mind and then proceeded to pretend to be my friend and comrade for months. Bastila is the first Jedi you meet, and much of your Jedi training montage early on in the game features the two of you training and learning together. Being friends, even! But the game didn't want me to think about that.
There are precious few opportunities for Revan to express the betrayal that I felt would be so appropriate. Losing their memories reset Revan to a neutral moral state, wiping clean the corruption of the dark side from their body. All of a sudden, without choice or remorse, they are redeemed. Imagine the existential horror of realizing that your memory is all that determines who you are. Imagine learning that every last shred of your identity can be torn from you by the people who claim to protect the galaxy. Now imagine all of that, knowing that the identity that was stolen took you years to embody. That you fought all your life to find yourself and then someone else came along and forced you into becoming who they want you to be instead. Revan isn't allowed to think about this. More often your choices fit into two categories: Either Revan sees this as an opportunity for redemption and a liberation from their past transgressions, or they see this as a brief delay in their journey to gain power and immediately seek to reclaim their mantle as Dark Lord of the Sith. But they're never really allowed to see it as the atrocity it is, much less even approach the idea of processing what would be an immense trauma.
KOTOR provides the player a decent amount of narrative agency, so long as those choices don't lead too close to an examination of Revan's character. Much like Commander Shepard from Bioware's later Mass Effect games, each player has their own Revan and their own characterization. My Revan is a trans woman. My Revan embraced the dark side not out of cruelty, but out of a desire to declare and revel in her own identity. If the game allowed for more than two endings, my Revan would have struck down the Sith, but I just can't see how she could ever trust the Jedi or work with them again. I know I would never be able to. I've gone through so much in my own life to claim my name and my identity. I can't imagine losing that, losing everything I am and everything I've fought for. In the final confrontation with Darth Malak, he says he'd rather die than go through what happened to Revan. For once, I found myself agreeing with him.
