I've named my first Star Wars action figure. I guess I can die now.

This month sees the release of Hasbro's Pre-Cyborg Grievous action figure, with a removable Kaleesh mask so you can see the general as he originally was in all his ugly alien glory. But a particular treat for me is that the coin that comes packaged with the ugly guy has "Qymaen jai Sheelal" struck on it, the birth name I came up with for the villain in Unknown Soldier: The Story of General Grievous. He even comes with the sword Joe Corroney illustrated for the project.

Why didn't Hasbro put Grievous' original name on the packaging? The reason became clear to me when I revealed his pre-cyborg name to my five-year-old cousin, a rabid Star Wars fan of the prequel generation. After looking confused for a second, he declared, "I like 'Grievous' better."

Score for George Lucas.

For some time, I've meant to explain the origin of Grievous' pre-cyborg name and of the history I created for him and his people, the Kaleesh. Now that the figure has put a face to the man, I figure it's time to put a history to the name.

First of all, how do you say Grievous' birth name? Well, I say it "Kahy-meyn (Qymaen) hayh (jai) shee-lawl (Sheelal)," though it's open to interpretation because I like that sort of thing. (For instance, "Kahy-mey-in" for Qymaen is fair game and so is "jahy" for jai, with a hard "j" instead of a soft one).

Names are generally important in my writing. Often, I can't write about a character unless I figure out the significance of his or her name. That's how I came up with the backstory for Grievous, which I wanted to encompass not only the idea of causing suffering, which is obvious for a villain, but also of being suffering--of literally "being" grievous. Villains are people too, right? Craven, but people nonetheless. "Even bad men love their mamas," as Ben Wade tells us.

At the time I was assigned to write The Story of General Grievous, explaining who the man was, only a few official sources existed indicating what Grievous had been like before becoming a cyborg killer. The novel Labyrinth of Evil and the StarWars.com Databank indicated he had once been a fierce Kaleesh warlord dedicated to fighting an insect species called the Huk, before being crippled by a Separatist-orchestrated shuttle crash. Then the short comic, "Eyes of Revolution" in the Visionaries trade paperback actually showed this pivotal event, revealing that many of Grievous' fellow soldiers died in the crash, and showing a humbled Grievous' transformation into his fearsome cyborg self. Meanwhile, the Clone Wars cartoon micro-series, the comic General Grievous, Labyrinth of Evil, and Revenge of the Sith itself depicted the cyborg as a conniving, merciless, unstoppable, Jedi-killing machine and a brilliant military mind.

Lucas had stated that Grievous' character was a metaphoric prototype for Darth Vader, whom had once been Anakin Skywalker. But if that was the case, then there was still something missing from Grievous story, I thought. What turns a thinking person to evil? As depicted thus far, I felt the tragic, even noble, depiction of a pre-cyborg Grievous didn't match up well at all with his sociopathic behavior after his transformation. Sure, anyone can become an unhinged maniac after being forced to become a robot. But the key is that Grievous wasn't forced. "Eyes of Revolution" shows us that he chose to discard most of his body and become a killing machine, rather than choosing death. What could possibly be his motivation? What, as Jungian psychology calls it, was this killing machine's Fisher King wound?

Well, I know of exactly two things that can make a person act absolutely crazy: religious fanaticism and true love.

I happened to be reading the 9/11 Commission Report at the time I was given the Grievous project. And as I looked at Warren Fu's iconic illustration of a flesh-and-blood Grievous, these ideas crashed together with dramatic force, and the origin of Qymaen jai Sheelal, the Kaleesh warlord, began to take shape in my head.

As at least one reader guessed, my inspiration for Qymaen's backstory has its roots in recent history, peppered with allusions, rhetoric, and conventions borrowed from the life, culture, and myth surrounding, arguably thus far, the most notorious figure of the 21st century.

Take another look ... Qymaen jai Sheelal.

Of course, this isn't completely obvious; then I'd just be a bad writer. As Grievous' voice is modeled after a Romanian accent, I intermixed some Eastern European influences into his background, as well as vague echoes of Native American culture. But the inspiration for Grievous' Fisher King wound ended up coming from a source more ancient than any of these, specifically the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I'll explore these themes in more detail next time. ~ Abel G. Peņa

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Next ... Unmasking Grievous, Part 2: The Wounding of Qymaen jai Sheelal


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