Dooku: Jedi Lost author talks about exploring Count Dooku’s past
From StarWars.com:
“[…] For [author Cavan] Scott, writing Dooku: Jedi Lost has made him a bigger fan of the character than he ever was before — and that’s because his story is not just about revealing Count Dooku’s past, but exploring how a mixture of personality and circumstance led to the villain he’d become.
“There has to be a reason he’s so shut down,” Scott says of the cold, manipulative Sith Lord. “And it can’t just be because he’s been turned by Darth Sidious.”
Dooku: Jedi Lost, coming April 30, will investigate Dooku’s early days training Asajj Ventress, and in turn, his journey to becoming the Sith Lord we meet in Star Wars: Attack the Clones — one who would murder his friends and start a war that would tear the galaxy apart. As the story unfolds prior to the beginning of the Clone Wars, Dooku’s sister has gone missing; he dispatches Ventress to find her in a surprising first — and very personal — mission for his new assassin. “In doing this, she starts discovering stories of Dooku and his sister from when they were very young,” says Scott, “and we find out that Dooku, even though he joined the [Jedi] Temple at a very early age, still kept in touch with his family.”
Indeed, as Ventress learns about her new master, so will we. “We meet his family,” Scott says. “We meet his father. We meet his sister. We meet his brother. We go from him being a Padawan in the temple, right through the moment he tells the Council he’s leaving. So it’s his entire life.” We’ll see Dooku as a Padawan with his master, Yoda, adventuring with his best friend Sifo-Dyas — who would later take the fall for the creation of the clone army — and his time with his own Padawan learners. Pulling back the curtain on one of Star Wars’ biggest bad guys is no small venture, especially when mystique is part of the villain’s character. […]
One challenge facing Scott was showing Dooku before he turned to the ways of the Sith, while not undercutting his impact as a villain, or making him too sympathetic. “He doesn’t start off as the man we now know,” Scott says. “But there’s always a sense that he knows that he’s better than everyone in the room. And there’s an arrogance there right from the beginning.”
Scott illustrates this through his relationship with Sifo-Dyas, who received only a mysterious mention in Attack of the Clones and was fleshed out a little more in The Clone Wars. “He’s a bit of an outsider as well, so the two of them at the temple just come together,” Scott says. “Sifo-Dyas is there to say, ‘Just remember you’re the same as the rest of us.’ And they encourage each other to perhaps push the boundaries of what they should be doing.”
In exploring a Jedi who pushes these boundaries, Scott was keen not to retread previous stories in the same vein. His way of avoiding this pitfall came down to a major realization of what separates Dooku from one of the saga’s icons. “Whereas Anakin was always saddled with being the Chosen One, Dooku wants to be the Chosen One,” he says. “Right from the off, he thinks he’s better than everyone.” And perhaps, this ambition and arrogance doesn’t go unnoticed. “Pablo [Hidalgo] pointed out that Yoda taking a Padawan was huge. There would be a reason that Yoda would want to take him.” And while this is not quite the tale of his seduction by Darth Sidious, it looms large. “The dark side plays a part throughout,” Scott says, “because I think it’s always there in his nature.” […]
Dooku: Jedi Lost promises to change the way we see both Ventress and Dooku. But for the Sith Lord, it will deliver something previously elusive: a deeper appreciation. “That’s the whole point of doing this kind of project,” Scott says. “We want people to identify more with him and understand him more. He’s the character now for me, personally, that I wanted him to be when I went to see Episode II.”
Dooku: Jedi Lost arrives April 30 and is available for pre-order now.”
