Revan: the Prodigal Knight

Revan was a human male Force user who began his life as a celebrated Jedi Knight, fell to the dark side as a Dark Lord of the Sith, and was later redeemed to fight against the empire he had built. He led the Republic Military to victory in the Mandalorian Wars, vanished into the Unknown Regions, and came back changed, founding a Sith Empire that brought the Galactic Republic to the brink of ruin in the Jedi Civil War. Captured and mind-wiped by the Jedi, he was set against his own creation and destroyed it, then spent the remainder of his existence locked in a struggle against an older and far greater Sith power. This entry describes the Legends continuity. (Knights of the Old Republic; Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords; The Old Republic: Revan)

The Revanchist#

Revan was born in approximately 3994 BBY in the Outer Rim and was taken into the Jedi Order, where he received instruction from the Twi'lek Master Zhar Lestin, who remarked on the young man's insatiable desire for knowledge. Lestin and Master Vandar Tokare expected him to become a great defender of the Order, while Master Vrook Lamar remained wary of that same appetite for learning. Alongside his close friend Alek, Revan was widely acknowledged as among the most promising members of the Order, and of the two he was recognized as the more powerful, the more intelligent, and the natural leader. (Knights of the Old Republic; Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)

When the Mandalorians launched their war of conquest against the Republic, the Jedi Council held that the Order had no place in the conflict. Revan disagreed. After investigating Mandalorian activity on Onderon and its moon Dxun, he found his discoveries disturbing and pressed for Jedi intervention, gathering a following of like-minded Jedi who became known as the Revanchists. To the wider Republic he was cast as a crusading savior wrongfully ignored by the Council, and though first called the Revanchist Leader, he soon became known simply as the Revanchist. (Knights of the Old Republic (comic); Knights of the Old Republic)

Hero of the Mandalorian Wars#

As the war ground on, the Council moved to recall and if necessary detain the Revanchists, judging their interventionist path wrong for both the Republic and the Order. Revan and his followers fought on regardless. In recognition of their accomplishments, Supreme Chancellor Tol Cressa named Revan Supreme Commander of the Republic forces. (Knights of the Old Republic (comic); The Essential Guide to Warfare)

In the years that followed, Revan and Alek, now known as Malak, uncovered ancient ruins of the Rakata species near the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine and gained access to a Star Map, a relic that revealed part of the location of the Rakatan station known as the Star Forge. By around 3960 BBY, Revan wielded a blue-bladed lightsaber and had commissioned a superweapon called the Mass Shadow Generator, designed by the Zabrak engineer Bao-Dur. The device became the centerpiece of a trap in the Malachor system, where Revan lured the Mandalorians into a final confrontation that ended the war. The victory came at a terrible cost in lives, but it broke the Mandalorian threat. (Knights of the Old Republic; Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)

Fall to the dark side#

Pursuing the remnants of the enemy into the Unknown Regions, Revan and Malak came upon the world of Nathema and found it utterly barren of the Force. There they learned the story of Vitiate, a Sith Lord from the time of the Great Hyperspace War a thousand years earlier, who had gathered the surviving Sith into a ritual of dark magic. The Ritual of Nathema had extinguished all life on the planet's surface and granted Vitiate immortality. Taking the title of Sith Emperor, he had gathered the younger Sith and departed the shattered Empire to rebuild in secret. (The Old Republic: Revan)

Drawn by the power he had glimpsed, Revan turned from the Jedi. He came to believe that the power of the dark side was to be craved above all else, that mercy and compassion were weaknesses, and that loyalty itself was a weakness because to trust an ally was to invite betrayal. He declared himself Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith, and took Malak as his apprentice, who became Darth Malak. The two located another Star Map in the tomb of the ancient Sith Lord Naga Sadow and, with the secrets of the Star Forge in hand, returned to wage war on the Republic they had once defended. (Darth Bane: Path of Destruction; Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords; Knights of the Old Republic)

The Jedi Civil War#

As a Dark Lord, Revan forged his own Sith Empire and turned the strength of the Republic Military, whose inner workings he knew intimately, against itself. He recognized that the Star Forge was as dangerous as it was powerful, for the Rakata's dependence on the station had once destroyed their own civilization, and so he limited his exposure to it, taking only a fragment to construct his fleet. Malak regarded this restraint as weakness. (Knights of the Old Republic)

The betrayal came when Malak, hoping to seize the mantle of Dark Lord for himself, ordered his ships to fire on Revan's own flagship while a Jedi strike team was aboard. The bombardment left Revan near death. He was recovered by the Jedi, and the Council, judging him too valuable to lose, remade his shattered mind, implanting an entirely new identity so that the redeemed Revan might be turned against the apprentice who had usurped him. (Knights of the Old Republic)

Redemption and the Star Forge#

Stripped of his memories and believing himself another person, Revan was retrained as a Jedi and sent to undo what he had done. Guided once more toward the Star Maps, he traveled to distant worlds to reassemble the route to the Star Forge, recovered his past, and rejected the temptation to reclaim it. He confronted Darth Malak and destroyed both his former apprentice and the Star Forge itself, ending the Jedi Civil War. (Knights of the Old Republic)

To later generations, the most telling fact of Revan's life was that, given a blank slate, he chose not to return to the dark side. The Jedi historian Deesra Luur Jada held that this choice said more about Revan than any of his deeds, and often corrected younger Jedi who blamed the Sith Lords Revan and Malak together for the devastation that the redeemed Revan had fought to repair. (Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force)

The true Sith and the centuries after#

Revan's nightmares of a storm-covered world and an approaching darkness drove him to seek out the true Sith, the hidden Empire of the immortal Emperor. He was captured, and for a long age his will was bent to the Sith cause, even as a Sith faction called the Revanites came to believe he had defeated and replaced the Emperor and built a shrine to him on Dromund Kaas. In time Revan broke free and devoted himself wholly to the Emperor's destruction, a struggle that spanned centuries and several brushes with death, from the Foundry to Yavin 4. (The Old Republic: Revan; The Old Republic; Shadow of Revan)

His legacy endured long after him. Even as a captive he held back the Sith Emperor's attention for nearly three centuries, buying the Republic time. His mask passed from Sith Lord to Sith Lord across the generations, and his story was preserved in the Revan Mythologies and other Jedi histories. Even the Dark Lord Darth Bane, who came long after, held Revan in high regard. (The Old Republic: Revan; The Old Republic; Nexus of Power; Darth Bane: Path of Destruction)

In the later canon, almost nothing of this history survived. The name Revan endured only as a Sith legend, kept hidden from the wider galaxy and known to cultists who repeated it in the catacombs beneath the Sith Citadel on Exegol, and lent to the Revan Legion of the Sith Eternal's army. (Shadow of the Sith; The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary)