Wullf Yularen/Legends

Wullf Yularen was a male Human, born into a prominent family, who served as an intelligence officer in the Galactic Republic and its successor government, the Galactic Empire. During the Clone Wars, he served as an admiral in the Republic Navy under the command of Jedi General Anakin Skywalker. Following the conclusion of the war and the birth of the Empire, Yularen would go on to serve as a colonel in the Imperial Security Bureau.

As an admiral during the Clone Wars, he commanded his fleet from the Venator-class Star Destroyer Resolute. Yularen would lead from the Resolute for the majority of the time, including the Battle of Christophsis and the hunt for the Separatist warship Malevolence in 22 BBY. At one point, he led his fleet into the Battle of Teth from the Spirit of the Republic.

Sometime following the creation of the Empire in 19 BBY, Yularen became a colonel in the Imperial Security Bureau. He would be stationed onboard the Death Star I, where he was tasked with briefing Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin and maintaining loyalty to the Empire. He was killed when the Death Star was destroyed by Luke Skywalker at the Battle of Yavin.

Early life
Wullf Yularen was born to an influential Coruscanti family, which provided him the political backing to get a job as a special agent with the Senate Bureau of Intelligence. Over the next decade, he investigated a myriad of cases for, against, and about the Senate, observing all the major delegates and assembling detailed dossiers on all of them. Even then, there was corruption within the SBI, and numerous low-level functionaries who were game to support any Senator's schemes by passing on misinformation for the right price. Ultimately, the sheer scale of the corruption led Yularen to leave the service. Afterwards, he was assigned to an anti-corruption unit under the Office of the Supreme Chancellor, investigating both government corruption and the growing Separatist movement. It was during this period that Yularen became enamored with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and the direction in which he intended to take the Republic. Very soon, he was a loyal follower and a trusted agent for Palpatine's inner circle.

Service during the Clone Wars
During the Clone Wars, Yularen joined up with the naval contingent of the Grand Army of the Republic at least in part to distance himself from the intelligence community. He served as an admiral a year into the war and commanded a major task force, led by Jedi General Anakin Skywalker. Yularen was often worried of his commander's reckless tactics.

Battle of Christophsis
After the Jedi had been requested to help rescue Rotta, the son of Jabba Desilijic Tiure, Yularen was tasked with delivering Ahsoka Tano to Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Skywalker on Christophsis. After Tano's shuttle had landed, Yularen, aboard the Jedi cruiser Resolute was forced to withdraw from the planetary orbit, leaving the ground forces on their own. His flagship at the time was the Spirit of the Republic.

The Malevolence
Sometime afterward, Yularen and Skywalker were participating in the search for General Grievous's secret weapon, the warship Malevolence. Yularen led the briefing of Shadow Squadron before they launched in their BTL-B Y-wing starfighters to attack the Malevolence. He would later warn Nala Se and the Kaliida Shoals Medical Center of the Malevolence's plan to destroy the medicenter, killing approximately 60,000 wounded clone troopers in the process. Ultimately, Skywalker, Plo Koon, and Shadow Squadron were able to stop the Malevolence in time, destroying its two ion cannons. The destruction of the primary weapons disabled the hyperdrive and inflicted massive damage throughout the ship. From the Resolute, Yularen led a total of three Star Destroyers in pursuit of the damaged Malevolence as it attempted to flee to Separatist space. When Senator Padmé Amidala and her protocol droid C-3PO were captured by the Separatist warship, Generals Skywalker and Kenobi infiltrated the battleship and recovered the senator and her droid. However, the battle droids onboard had managed to repair the ship's hyperdrive, so Skywalker and Amidala infiltrated the bridge and set the coordinates of a nearby moon into the navicomputer. The two Jedi, the senator, and the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 fled onboard the Twilight as Grievous, in his Belbullab-22 starfighter Soulless One, and Vulture droids followed close behind. As the Malevolence attempted to flee, it impacted with the moon, obliterating the massive warship.

Battle of Nexus Ortai
Yularen's forces would also participate in the battle above Nexus Ortai, a strategic world located at the junction of some hyperlanes. Though the initial Separatist invasion force was destroyed, the Republic suffered many casualties and were forced to withdraw when enemy reinforcements arrived. Sometime after the retreat, Yularen was present when Skywalker, Kenobi, Tano, and a squad of clone troopers under Captain Rex had themselves frozen in carbonite in order to infiltrate the Separatist shipyards at Gwori. Yularen was present when Tano indicated that the strike force was in position, and that Plo Koon's and Saesee Tiin's Hunter Squadron would proceed to Gwori to destroy the shipyards in their BTL-B Y-wing starfighters. Yularen's fleet did not participate in the engagement, however.

The Republic fleet under Yularen later accompanied Generals Kenobi and Skywalker to the Togruta colony world of Kiros. The subsequent battle ended in a Republic victory after Kenobi defeated the Besalisk commander of the droid occupation force, Ugg, in hand-to-hand combat. Yularen reported via hologram that the Togruta population appeared to have vanished completely from the planet, leading Kenobi to believe that the missing Togruta were being held as slaves in the nearby Zygerrian system.

Battle of Quell
"Are all Jedi so reckless?" "Just the good ones."

- Admiral Yularen and Aayla Secura

When Jedi General Aayla Secura was attacked by Separatist forces, Yularen, Anakin and Ahsoka went to aid her aboard the Resolute. Anakin, Ahsoka and Captain Rex boarded LAAT/i gunships and went to land on Aaayla's cruiser to evacuate all personnel aboard, but after Anakin sacrificed himself to save Aayla, Bly, Ahsoka and the clone troopers aboard from a raging inferno, he was severely injured. Aayla and Ahsoka managed to drag him onboard the Consular-class frigate Anakin had summoned for the evacuation, but as they attempted to board the Resolute, the frigate's hyperdrive was activated from an assault by Vulture droids. Yularen ordered his men to maneuver the Resolute out of the way so that they would not be taken into hyperspace with them. After the frigate had jumped to hyperspace, Yularen ordered his men to plot every course along their last known trajectory, and stated that they needed to finish the battle and find them. Yularen was apparently able to find the Jedi on his own, for shortly after the Battle of Maridun, the Resolute and two other Venator-class cruisers arrived on Maridun to pick up the Jedi.

Battle of Ryloth
After Techno Union Foreman Wat Tambor seized control of Ryloth and its inhabitants, Yularen joined Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, on a mission to destroy the Separatist blockade so that the invasion forces could land and liberate the planet. Ahsoka led a squadron of fighters for the first time, and managed to cut a path through the advancing Vulture droids to the lead control ship. However, after Separatist reinforcements arrived out of hyperspace, Yularen ordered Ahsoka back to the Resolute to help defend it, but she disobeyed his direct order. The Vulture droids soon began suicidal runs on the Resolute, and one droid crashed into the bridge. Yularen was severely injured, but managed to weakly tell Anakin to get them out of there. After the Republic forces retreated to hyperspace, Yularen was tended to by TB-2 in the medical bay. Ahsoka arrived and apologized to him for the loss of his men while he was unconscious, and he woke up soon after she left. Despite Ahsoka's earlier disobedience, Yularen arrived on the bridge of the Resolute and arrived to support her as she was devising a plan to angle the hull of the Resolute toward the blockade to act as a screen so the fighters could launch. Anakin rammed the Defender into the lead Separatist ship, and Ahsoka's plan went off without a hitch.

Service in the Imperial Security Bureau
With the coming of the New Order, the various major intelligence organizations&mdash;the Senate Bureau of Intelligence, the Republican Security Organization, the Interstellar Consortium on Technology, and the Special Acquisitions Branch of the Library of the Republic&mdash;consolidated themselves into a more professional and objective force known as Imperial Intelligence, overseen by a governing body called the Ubiqtorate and headed by former SBI director Armand Isard. Yularen's personal loyalty to Palpatine made him a poor fit for a supposedly objective organization.

At the same time, however, Palpatine's advisor Crueya Vandron, reforming the grassroots patriotic organization COMPNOR to meet the needs of the New Order, was sufficiently alarmed by the sudden transition and expansion of Intell that he established a COMPNOR spin-off organization called the Imperial Security Bureau as an intentional rival to Intell, a secret police organization to increase Palpatine's knowledge of political events. The ISB had no pretensions of objectivity, and so Yularen, now in his mid-thirties, was reassigned there. His move lost him respect in the eyes of his former superiors or colleagues, many of whom viewed COMPNOR, especially the ISB, as a misuse of valuable resources. Yularen had good connections to the Emperor's inner circle, but he himself remained outside of it.

Service aboard the Death Star
By the outbreak of the Rebellion, Yularen had risen to the rank of colonel in the ISB, and had acquired a reputation as an effective leader with boundless personal loyalty to Palpatine. It was probably for this reason that he was assigned to head the ISB contingent aboard the nearly-completed Death Star I battle station as a member of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin's command staff. Officially, he was assigned to brief Tarkin on intelligence matters; unofficially, he was there to ensure that the station's personnel remained absolutely loyal to the Emperor. Given that the Death Star could literally change the dynamics of power in the Empire, and that men like Tarkin and his naval advisor, Admiral Conan Antonio Motti, were possessed of apparently-limitless ambition, there were legitimate concerns on Imperial Center that, even though Palpatine's personal emissary Darth Vader made repeated visits to remind them of their obligations, one or more officers on the station would be tempted to use it take power themselves. Yularen was there to prevent this, and in all likelihood he was not the only prevention measure that Palpatine had in place.

As head of the ISB contingent, Yularen was placed in charge of numerous agents specializing in surveillance, investigations, internal affairs, interrogation, reeducation, and enforcement. Death Star security forces were obligated to provide office space and reasonable assistance to the ISB, though they did not welcome his men with open arms. In addition, there were several undercover agents aboard to investigate suspicious activities, acting as soldiers, administrators, and lower-level officers – in fact, at least one of Tarkin's personal aides was an undercover ISB agent.

Yularen believed that Tarkin would attempt to grab power for himself. The colonel was certain that he could stop the Grand Moff in time, thus ingratiating himself to Palpatine, who would almost certainly appoint him to head the ISB in return. Yularen's plans were foiled when he was killed in the Death Star's destruction during the Battle of Yavin.

Personality and traits


Wullf Yularen was considered an excellent observer. He was comfortable in the halls of power, and over his multiple military and intelligence careers had amassed a great deal of information on a large number of beings. Though his intelligence reports were factually correct, he tended to add a pro-New Order spin to them. He headed up his own special task force during the early years of the Empire, which received high-level assignments, often involving an Imperial Senator or other important individual. One of these assignments was to investigate the names of the signatories of the Petition of 2000, the document that Senator Padmé Amidala presented to Palpatine on behalf of a vocal group of opposition senators.

Behind the scenes
In Star Wars: The Clone Wars film and Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series, he is voiced by the veteran Star Wars voice actor Tom Kane. Kane compared Yularen in Imperial times to General Rommel, a German commander in World War II. Rommel's opposite number on the battlefield, Lieutenant-General Montgomery, respected the German commander and said that even though Rommel wore the Nazi uniform, he wasn't a Nazi. Kane believed that Yularen, a strict military officer, was simply following orders when the Republic transitioned into the Empire.

Yularen's last name may have been inspired by a character from Sutâurufu named Colonel Yarulen who wears a white uniform. His first name may be a reference to the same film's main character, who is a Jedi-like warrior known as a "Star Wolf." Featured in the United States as Star Force: Fugitive Alien II on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Sutâurufu has many similarities to (and may itself have been partly inspired by) A New Hope.

An action figure of Yularen was produced by Hasbro in 2007 as part of the Death Star Briefing set. It included a short biography claiming that none of the officers present at the briefing were aware that Yularen was an ISB agent, though he was obviously wearing an ISB uniform in the scene.

On the packaging of the Hasbro Death Star Briefing set, his first name is misspelled as "Wulff." On page 138 of The Clone Wars: The Visual Guide and in the end credits of The Clone Wars TV episodes, his last name is misspelled as "Yularan."

In commentary for The Clone Wars movie, the creators stated that Yularen was seen as a Grand Admiral in Episode IV and thus put him in the movie to show him rising through the ranks. They based the Grand Admiral claim on his white uniform, which is similar to the uniform worn by the Grand Admirals. The commentary does not mention Yularen's accepted rank as a colonel in the Imperial Security Bureau, as specified in the Star Wars Customizable Card Game, "Premiere Limited" (1995) and the Death Star Briefing action figure pack (2006).

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars film / novel
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars Volume 1: Shipyards of Doom
 * Star Wars The Clone Wars 1: Slaves of the Republic - Chapter 1: The Mystery of Kiros
 * The Clone Wars: Shakedown
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope