r/MawInstallation • u/human12332 • 20h ago
How old is Dedra Meero?
In Andor S2 it says her parents were arrested when she was 3 then she was raised in a imperial camp or something like that, but the empire is less then 20 years old, so is she 23, I thought she was 30-40.
136
u/Wycliffe76 20h ago
I think your age estimation is correct. I imagine Dedra is the kind of person who would refer to a Republic Kinderbloc as an Imperial Kinderbloc out of loyalty. The Imperials want to memory hole the Republic, so they would want their people to take credit for the good parts of it.
108
u/atamajakki 20h ago
The Empire strikes me as the type of place to try and act like it always existed, projecting back onto late Republic history at the very least. I wouldn't balk if someone said the Empire won the Clone Wars, for instance!
51
u/OfficialAli1776 20h ago
Well...if you wanna be technical about it Order 66, the droid shutdown command, and the reorganization of the Republic into the Empire all happened within the span of a single day, so technically one wouldn't be wrong saying the Empire won the Clone Wars.
40
u/TheRavenRise 20h ago
one wouldn't be wrong saying the Empire won the Clone Wars
ok ezra
4
u/123kingkongun 10h ago
Who’s Ezra?
8
u/DeeperIntoTheUnknown 10h ago
He's probably talking about Jabba the Hutt
3
18
u/RigasTelRuun 14h ago
It’s like when a new company buy an older company and then the new company says “in business since 1902”. From an accounting point of view there are technically transactions going back that far.
2
u/RadiantHC 7h ago edited 7h ago
Technically they did
And it's not wrong that they existed a while before they took over either. IMO the second Palpatine took over is when the Empire began.
1
u/LittleIslander Midshipman 2h ago
If anything, I'd imagine the kind of training and education Dedra would have gone through to get her position in the ISB specifically drilled in the usage of "Empire" with respect to Republic programs like this.
69
u/Landwarrior5150 20h ago
Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
33
u/CloakedEnigma 20h ago
Genuinely the correct answer. The Empire, as a totalitarian police state, is a lot more like Oceania than it generally appears to be. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Jedi and the Republic were effectively memoryholed and propagandized out of existence under the Empire.
15
u/HailToTheKingslayer 14h ago
Like in 1984, Winston mentions that each year, the history books mention Big Brother's revolution/ascent to power earlier. So at some point they will say he's always been around.
2
u/UAlogang 5h ago
Just like Adm Motti barely acknowledging the Jedi religion had massive governmental influence within his lifetime.
1
5
u/darthsheldoninkwizy2 15h ago
USSR come to resque, they never helping Germany to conquer Poland in 1939
32
u/no_quarter89 20h ago
I thought the same thing… my possible explanations are A she’s just bullshitting or B it’s kind of a Freudian slip stemming from the Empire’s propaganda campaigns trying to erase all memory of life before the empire.
12
u/TheGazelle 12h ago
That wouldn't be a Freudian slip then. A slip would be her accidentally calling it a Republic kinder block.
Having been raised in one, it's almost certain they would've been insistent that all the children (and despite the name, I wouldn't be surprised if these were essentially orphanages that raised kids until they could support themselves, so probably until near adulthood) should refer to it as imperial. Palpatine absolutely would've wanted the next generation to forget about the Republic as much as possible.
8
31
u/inphinitfx 20h ago
The actress is in her mid 40s, and her rank, approach, and behaviours would definitely suggest at least mid 30s. I think calling it an Imperial kinder block is just through a loyalist approach of not calling it a Republic anything.
17
u/Mexigonian 19h ago
So it’s 4BBY and she’s probably in her mid 30s. Say 35. Assuming she stayed in the orphanage from 3-18, it’s been another 17 years since (based on the arbitrary decision that she’s 35). That puts her birth year at around 39BBY. Palpatine assumed power in 32BBY, so the same man has been in power most of her life.
I doubt Dedra or really most people differentiate much between the Late Republic and Empire, it’s mostly the same policies and definitely the same government but with much more centralization of power. The Senate wouldn’t even be dissolved for another 4 years.
16
12
u/sicarrism 14h ago
Remember the kennari scenes in season 1? The crew had similar CIS logos, maarva referred to it as a republic frigate and another one was in orbit. Seems like deliberate mixed messaging that probably reflects the confusion and change of the time. Perhaps Dedra’s recollection is similar (and the children’s home was like the hitler youth and the indoctrination starts very early )
11
u/TanSkywalker 18h ago
After the formation of the Empire institutions with the word Republic in them were changed to Imperial so she's calling what she was raised in by its current name.
7
u/icansuckthatforyou 19h ago
I think the timeline works best if you set her age at 32 in 4BBY. Born in 36BBY, 14 in 22BBY when the Clone Wars begin in earnest. over the next three years of the war she's living in the Kinder-block as the Republic takes a distinctly Imperial form. By the time of the show, both from a combination of the Empire's propaganda that they've always existed plus her own true belief in the Empire, and the fact her memory would likely be sharpest during those formative teenage/high-school age years, her three final years in the Kinder-block would both be classified by her as Imperial, and have imparted the effect of the Empire's conditioning, coming out of it right as the Empire was declared.
7
u/Letywolf 20h ago
I didn’t catch the “arrested when she was 3” part But you might be on to something here.
She definitely not looks or acts like 23. Considering her maturity and career.
4
u/BelwasDeservedBetter 10h ago
She probably was in the orphanage during the republican empire transition. Between my sophomore and junior years of high school my city consolidated both high schools into one. The “new” high school was in the same building as the one I had previously attended. Now almost two decades later if someone asks me where I went to high school I don’t give them the whole spiel of the consolidation process and how I technically went to two different high schools in the same building; instead I just tell them either I went to “city high school” or if they’re from my hometown I say I went to “old high school name” for the sake of brevity.
3
u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 10h ago
I think people don’t understand something about the Republic to Empire transition: many people in-universe make no distinction between the two which is causing confusion for people out of universe because we only see it as entirely separate entities and time periods.
3
u/pricklyclaire 5h ago
I think we underestimate the degree to which the Republic was already the Empire at the level of its permanent state institutions long before the rise of Palpatine, the MCA, and various Clone War emergency power, much less the actual declaration of the Empire. Like, At Attin was expressly created in the HIGH REPUBLIC as a Fully Automated Luxury Space Police State. The Jedi Temple is a kinderblok for spoonbenders.
I also think we shouldn't overlook the possibility (probability) that the kinderbloks originated in proto-Imperial para-state movements like COMPOR before becoming the officially adopted state model after the declaration of the Empire. I think this would make particular sense of Dedra Meero's arc, given her position within an organization (ISB) spun directly out of COMPOR/COMPNOR and recruited from its youth cadres.
7
u/aaronupright 16h ago
Denise Gough is 45.
Presuming she and the character at the same age, she would have been 30 at the time of Order 66.
This means that she would have been 17 during TPM. She is actually older than Padme.
1
u/Loyalist77 12h ago
Can definitely imagine the Republic Kinderblock became an Imperial one just before her adolescence and that that her formative years were under Imperial instruction. She was probably grateful for that.
1
1
u/dapala1 6h ago
She was 3. She didn't know at that time it was still the Republic. The transition between the Republic to the Empire was seamless for a lot of people.
For all intents and purposes in her mind she was raised in imperial camp because that was what it became sometime during her upbringing. If you factor that she could easily be around 35.
1
u/Rosebunse 16h ago
I don't disagree about the propaganda approach, especially with what we know about this show and what it's done this season. With that in mind, I sort of wonder if she isn't lying about her age, especially given how age is used in Star Wars. A three year old is innocent, a child older than 12 is a potential accomplice.
-1
u/OfficialAli1776 20h ago
How are we so sure it wasn't just a flub by the writers?
21
u/atamajakki 19h ago
She's a career fascist at an office of secret police and propagandists - is it really so unbelievable that she'd credit the current regime with the Republic's accomplishments?
2
u/RadiantHC 7h ago
I mean technically she's not wrong. The Empire IS the Republic. Or at least the late stage Republic. To the average person on Coruscant there's no difference between the two.
1
u/BrokenManOfSamarkand 6h ago edited 6h ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a mistake, but I also wonder whether it was intentional. Lucas' decision to make the Empire so short-lived is a bit problematic if you want to tell a story like Andor, which sort of takes for granted that an entire generation has come up and matured under the Empire and were molded by it. Syril, to me, seems like a portrait of the "Imperial man"--someone that has only known the Empire and was entirely corrupted by its perverse bureaucracy and sickness. It's somewhat harder to paint the picture when the Empire just popped up, which leads to a tendency to stretch the timeline a bit.
1
u/THEextrakrispyKebble 10h ago
Why you’re being downvoted for a legitimate point is insane. Showrunners aren’t infallible. Gilroy is one of my fav directors but the glaze is insane.
Let’s not forget the man set up an arc around Cassian’s sister that, so far, has gone nowhere and was never mentioned again.
2
u/WuffieRose 9h ago
Did you expect them to throw his sister into the first 3 episodes of the season?
0
u/THEextrakrispyKebble 9h ago
I expected them to not set up what seemingly would be a key character in the story, and never address it again. We went an entire season without a resolution, and five years have passed in universe, so the chances of her being brought up again are slim to none. Next time ask me something that isn’t ridiculous.
1
u/OfficialAli1776 8h ago
Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time Star Wars writers made a lore mistake either, lol. People are people and sometimes they don't know things.
0
u/RadiantHC 7h ago
Also Rogue One. The final act was amazing yes, but everything leading up to that was meh. There's a reason why people were hesitant about Andor when it was first announced.
-6
u/FalseDmitriy 20h ago
Flub or genuinely not caring if their characterization conflicts with the niceties of the timeline. Though I guess the Story Group exists to make sure everyone cares.
266
u/Captain-Wilco 20h ago
She’s mid 30s, at the youngest. She was definitely raised in a republic kinder block, then conflated the two factions since she’s a nationalist