Harrandatha Estillo

"And as sure as Eiattu revolves around the sun, my little brother, Prince Harrandatha was mad."

- Plourr Ilo

Prince Harrandatha Estillo, known for short as Harran, was a member of the royal family of Eiattu VI, a Mid Rim world (possibly capital of Ado Sector) which retained its monarchial government under the New Order. After his death, he was replaced by an Imperial agent.

The true Harran
"He screamed for the nobles to come and get me. He screamed of how he wanted to watch as they slit my throte, and then he would be Emperor."

- Plourr Ilo

The son and heir-apparent of the reigning monarch, Uthorrferrell Cartha, Harran had a vicious, psychotic personality, and from boyhood supported the Galactic Empire. His personal hero was Darth Vader, and on a visit to Eiattu, the Dark Lord of the Sith moulded the young prince as his protege and proxy, using mental manipulation to transform his hot-blooded sadism into something cold and calculating.

During Harran's childhood, the Eiattauan nobility overthrew the royal family and sent them into internal exile, forming a ruling council, known as the Priamsta, to govern in their stead. A faction of the Priamsta resolved to murder the dynasty, but Harran was killed not by the nobles or their agents, but rather by his sister, Plourr, who he attempted to stop escaping so that he could watch her die. Plourr clubbed him to death with a rock, and left his body in the bush for the thuvusaurs to eat.

The false Harran
"This false Harran truly believes that he is Harran. He has all of the true Harran's memories. He believes in his cause, but more in the power the PLB will give him. And he truly loves me, the fool."

- Leonia Tavira

Years later, a man claiming to be Prince Harran led the revolutionary People's Liberation Battalion against the Priamsta, apparently satisfying tests to prove his bloodline, and wearing the ring which Vader had given the prince&mdash;in fact an Imperial mind-control device.

In fact, he was not only an imposter, but an agent&mdash;and lover&mdash;of Moff Leonia Tavira. This false prince was explosed by the returned Plourr, who took the leadership of her people after the expulsion of the Empire. Harran's ring hand was blasted away in a firefight, and he was reduced to a catatonic state, his mind destroyed.

Behind the scenes

 * Inasmuch as Eiattu is loosely based on Russia during the 1917 revolution, Harran fills the role of the Tsesarevich Alexei; the suggestion that his condition had an underlying genetic cause is likely to be an echo of Alexei's hemophilia, but the Tsesarevich was not psychotic, nor was he influenced by Germany in the way that Prince Harran is portryaed as being corrupted by the Empire, which plays the broadly analogous role in the story.
 * The false Harran, however, seems to be based on a different incident in Russian history, the succession of three false Dmitris who claimed to be the Tsarevich Dmitri in the seventeenth century; this casts Leonia Tavira somewhat in the role of Marina Mniszech, the Polish queen of the first two pretenders.
 * Just as there will always be some measure of possibility that one of the false Dmitris really was the tsarevich, it is also possible that the "false" Harran was actually the genuine one. He satisfied biological tests to prove his identity, and Plourr's memories cannot be taken as absolute proof that she killed him. Tavira's opinion that he was a double created by the Empire, activated after the real Harran "disappeared", does tend to support Plourr's tale, but it appears that Tavira had no real knowledge of the true Harran's fate, and from her phrasing&mdash;"It seems...."&mdash;her entire knowledge of the situation may only have been based on hearsay.

Appearances

 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: The Warrior Princess