For many of us our first glimpse into the world of the Mandalorians came via Boba Fett and his distinctive armor. Now that author Karen Traviss (and friends) have introduced us more fully in the Mando way of life, we have to wonder if Fett is truly the Mando we once thought of him as.

As a culture six precepts, the Resol'Nare, make a being a Mando'ad more than anything else:
* wearing armor
* speaking the language
* defending their families
* raising their children as Mandalorians
* contributing to the welfare of the clan
and
* rallying to the Mand'alor if called

The more we learn about Fett and the Mandalorian culture, I'm forced to consider that Fett really isn't all that Mando even if he is the Mand'alor - the "Chief of State" of sorts. Of the Resol'Nare, the only one he follows is the first one - no one can deny that he wears the armor.

But is it his fault?

As a pseudo-member of the Cuy'val Dar stuck on Kamino with his father and later as a war orphan, he didn't have the ability of interact with the culture on a large scale. There were the seventy-five Mandalorian training sergeants on Kamino, but from what we've read the only rabidly Mando clones were those of Kal Skirata's batch, and from LotF: Bloodlines, it sounds like Boba was pretty good at evading them. Concord Dawn doesn't exactly seem like a very Mando place either after the Death Watch had come to visit, being a sparsely inhabited planet of farmers.

Everything Fett knew was learned from the library on Tipoca City and from his father. And above everything else Jango Fett was a bounty hunter, and he raised Boba to be a bounty hunter. Despite Jango's being Mand'alor, the Mandalorians had been nearly wiped out during the Civil War and were still rebuilding. What good was it to teach your kid to be a warrior when there were hardly any of them left? And as the Mandalorian culture didn't seem to be passed down from his father, can we really fault him for not following the six precepts of being a true Mando'ad? For that matter, why didn't Jango pass on the culture he'd been adopted into by Jaster Mereel?

The question should be: how does Fett see himself? We know that during the Legacy of the Force-series and possibly in the NJO, Fett's taken more of an interactive role with the Mandalorians. But what about the time between his leaving Concord Dawn at age nineteen/twenty and his meeting with Fenn Shysa when he assumed the title of Mand'alor? If Fett had seen himself as a Mando'ad, wouldn't he have sought out a clan to be adopted into or married into one?

The more we learn about the Mandalorians, the more questions they seem to naturally raise about the characters we already know. I guess the only thing I can say is: Help me, Karen Traviss. You're my only hope...