Garza will rise through Republic military bureaucracy while Thanaton becomes a Sith traditionalist and Dark Councilor.
Legends historical evidence · 3696 BBY
GARZA AND THANATON: TWO BIRTHS
Events, dates and source limits
Legends chronology dates the birth of both Elin Garza and the future Darth Thanaton around 3696 BBY. Garza later became a Republic general associated with elite special-forces operations, while Thanaton emerged from an enslaved and contested background to become a powerful Sith traditionalist. The fact that they were contemporaries is supported, but there is no evidence the two met as infants or belonged to the same political community. Thanaton's earlier personal identity was Teneb Kel; his later Sith name belongs to a separate phase of life and institutional advancement.
Anthropology and material consequences
Two lives beginning near the same date can follow dramatically different institutional pathways. Republic military doctrine and Sith systems of hierarchy each trained personnel, rewarded particular forms of loyalty and punished dissent. Thanaton's rise out of enslavement reveals the possibility of upward mobility within a regime that continued to support coercive status divisions. Garza's command decisions later raised questions about the boundary between civilian accountability and military security. The comparison is deliberately about structure, not imagined childhood conversations.
Open the historical sequence
- Two future leaders are born circa 3696
- Garza enters Republic military life; Teneb Kel enters Sith hierarchy
- Their adult careers illustrate opposed wartime institutions
Source context: Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia; The Old Republic: Blood of the Empire comic; Republic Trooper storyline. Supporting Legends reference →. Original illustration is interpretive, and the article distinguishes documented events from extrapolation.
Why this moment matters
Their shared generation experiences the same galactic war through institutions that teach radically different ideas about hierarchy, duty, and legitimacy.
Anthropological assessment
Contemporaries can inhabit the same history while receiving incompatible institutional interpretations of it.
Organizations produce political identities as much as personal temperament does.
Interpret the evidence · 3696 BBY
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Legends · Great Galactic War · Source-critical history
Two children enter rival institutions through very different paths
The two persons combined into this 3696 BBY entry eventually become prominent in rival political orders, but the entry is not a claim that they met as children. Elin Garza's later service in the Republic Army involved infantry command and specialized operations. The future Darth Thanaton, first known as Teneb Kel, had a different career path shaped by exploitation, Sith training and struggles over legitimacy. The available sources provide their adult achievements and conflicts more fully than scenes from their birth year. Treating them as one cohort is a chronological convenience, not an indication of shared childhood experience.
The adult Garza's leadership rests on formal command and the creation of elite Republic military formations. The official HoloNet biography describes both military competence and later controversy over how far a commander might go in the name of state security. Thanaton's later position as a Sith traditionalist, by contrast, depends on a hierarchy that assigns rank through political struggle and contested authority. These different organizations created different incentives, but neither future institutional role can be taken as proof of a newborn’s moral outlook.
IDS uses the paired biography to examine social mobility and the uneven distribution of opportunities for advancement in societies at war. Garza's career receives public commemoration; the Sith hierarchy conceals some of the violence behind its promotions. The Bomodon campaign is the beginning of a documented operation involving Garza, while Baras’s early biographical record shows another Sith whose later office should not be confused with his birth-year identity.
Historical evidence check: Does Garza's and Thanaton’s shared birth-year entry document a meeting between their families?
Evidence and correction: No. The entry connects two retrospective biographies by approximate date only. It does not imply that they knew one another or shared an institution.
Official published reference: Official General Garza biography. The official developer/HoloNet material grounds adult roles and story events, not every birth date or optional quest branch. Unverified family details, dialogue, tactical figures, and unsupported precise dates are not asserted; the social interpretation is original IDS analysis.
Sources and further reading
- Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia.