All the way from the ancient days of the Jedi order, through to the time of the Clone Wars the Jedi Temple guards served as the sacred security force of the Order, given the task of protecting the Jedi temple on Coruscant from attack, invasion or threat. Serving in the Temple guard was an honored and highly respected tradition within the Order and required those chosen to completely detach themselves from emotion and identity. But what happened to the Jedi temple guards after Order 66 and the Clone Wars and why was it so heartbreaking? Lets find out!
So right away, we can’t go deep into the fate of the Jedi Temple guards without delving into the history of the most infamous one of them all, the Grand Inquisitor. For those of you who don’t know, the grand Inquisitor actually did appear in the Clone Wars tv series, as the guard escorting Barriss Offee to her court case after she framed Ahsoka Tano for a horrific attack on the Jedi temple. This whole situation sadly eventually led to her defection from the Jedi Order, and was just another of the reasons Anakin fell to the dark side. And I’ll explain just how his presence at this court case eventually turned him against the Jedi Order and made him completely disillusioned later in the video, because it was a major step in his path to the dark.
The grand inquisitor himself was born about 15 years before the invasion of Naboo and soon after, he was discovered by the Jedi Order because of his strong force sensitivity. He was then taken away from his loving parents on Utapau and brought to the Jedi temple on coruscant, where he rose to the rank of Knight much faster than anyone expected. Eventually, because of his outstanding skill, reverence and service to the Jedi Order, the young Utapau boy was given the opportunity to become a Jedi temple guard, one of the most revered positions in the order…
In doing so however, he was told that he must detach himself completely from his identity, relinquishing his name and even his face under a mask, and must also become devoid of emotion. In order to increase his connection to the force, he was required to do both of these things, which was the same responsibility that burdened every temple guard… And I don’t even have to explain how this ancient tradition left him very vulnerable to the dark side once Order 66 eventually came around, because you can imagine just how draining this must have been. And this is also most likely why we still don’t have a personal name for the character, as he was forced to set aside his old identity and prioritize his service to the order anonymously.
Now on top of this, during his time as a temple guard the future grand inquisitors developed a strong hatred for the temple Librarian Jocasta Nu, something which Palpatine eventually sensed in him and took notice of… obviously because this is not the trait of a proper Jedi Knight… The reason the young Jedi Temple knight hated Jocasta Nu was because he always tried to delve deeper into the Jedi archives and knowledge banks, hoping to read more and more of the obscure data files inside. He wanted to expand his knowledge of the force further than any other temple Knight had before… Unfortunately for him though, the Librarian would keep very close watch on him while he did this, probably to monitor him in case he strayed to the darkness. She also ridiculed him for going so deep into the archives, not believing that he was worthy of having a proper education in the force. As you can imagine, this infuriated him deeply, but as a temple guard he was not supposed to show or feel any emotion.