Leo Leonis

Leo Leonis was an agricultural scientist in the employ of the Galactic Empire. He was married to Tepha Leonis and his daughter Dhara attended the Imperial Academy on Lothal. His son Zare entered Lothal's AppSci institute to prepare for attendance to the Imperial Academy. During the last days of the Galactic Republic, Leo and his wife Dhara developed genetically modified crops to help feed the people of Chrona and ran into problems with the Trade Federation, a powerful galactic corporation. Due to these experiences, Leo developed a strong dislike for the Trade Federation and compared the new Galactic Empire favourably to the former Republic.

Under Imperial rule, Leo and Dhara worked as agricultural scientists for the Imperial Ministry of Agriculture. They also had two children: a daughter named Dhara and a son named Zare. Their travels took them through many different planets before they settled down on Lothal, a backwater Outer Rim world. Throughout his adult life, Leo had a reputation for being a staunch Imperial supporter despite the Empire's growing heavy-handed policies on the planet Lothal. He was devastated by the alleged disappearance of his daughter Dhara. In reality, she had been kidnapped by the Grand Inquisitor for a secret Imperial project called Project Harvester.

Chrona crop engineering
Leo Leonis grew up during the last decades of the Galactic Republic prior to the Clone Wars and its subsequent transformation in the Galactic Empire. Together with his wife Tepha, the two worked for the Trade Federation to create genetically superior crops to help feed the people of Chrona. The new crops were not ready for mass production, so the Federation disallow their use in order to protect their profit margins. A case was filed in the Republic courts to allowed the Federation to withhold release until production was ready. Leo and Tepha both presented testimony to the Republic judiciary and the court ruled in the Trade Federation's favor. One year after their development the crops were released to the people of Chrona.

Years later, the Galactic Empire rewrote the narrative of the Trade Federation's work on Chrona. Their story was that the Federation had created a famine on the planet to make the population sick and thus needing of the Federation's medical supplies. No such famine or consequent sickness ever occurred. The Federation only wished to delay production to ensure a hefty profit margin, and the delay did not cause any food shortages.

Moving to Lothal
During the time of the Galactic Empire, Leo and Tepha found work as agricultural scientists with the Ministry of Agriculture. Their work led them to move between several worlds throughout the Galaxy including Hosk Station, Moorja, and Viamarr. Leo and Tepha eventually sired two children: a daughter named Dhara and a son named Zare, who were one year apart. To raise their children, Leo and his wife obtained a nanny droid called Auntie Nags. By the time their children were in their early teenage years, Leo and Tepha had settled down on Lothal, a hitherto backwater Outer Rim world that had become the target of Imperial-sponsored development projects. Within his family, Leo was known as a staunch supporter of the Galactic Empire.

Since his daughter Dhara had turned fifteen, she was eligible to enroll at the Academy for Young Imperials in Lothal's Capital City. Leo's son Zare, who was still fourteen, had to wait another year and enrolled at the Junior Academy of Applied Sciences where he became part of the school's grav-ball team, the AppSci SaberCats. Following Dhara's acceptance to study at the Imperial Academy, he and his wife hosted a farewell dinner to celebrate Dhara's acceptance. This dinner was attended by several prominent local Imperial officials including Assistant Vice Minister Sarkos, Lieutenant Piers Roddance, and Governor Arihnda Pryce. During the occasion, Leo gave a brief speech extolling the Empire and castigating the former Trade Federation. His speaking abilities were praised by Governor Pryce who commented that Leo should have been a politician.

Later, his son Zare befriended a local Human boy named Beck Ollet and another recent Corld Worlds migrant named Merei Spanjaf, a skilled hacker. Both Ollet and Spanjaf were members of Zare's grav-ball team. Ollet's family had previously owned a fruit orchard in the Westhills which had been expropriated by the Imperial Agricultural Collective for some unspecified development project. Later, Ollet, Zare, and Spanjaf learnt that the Imperial authorities had reclassified Ollet's former orchard as a mining excavation area. This development greatly distressed Zare and his friends.

When Zare related this incident to his parents, Leo argued that Ollet's farm was a small price to pay for the benefits that mining would bring to the Lothalian economy. He even offered to invite Beck over to lecture him about the benefits that the Empire would bring to Lothal. Meanwhile, his more moderate wife Tepha believing that their colleagues at the Agricultural Ministry had mistakenly reclassified the orchard for mining extraction. This incident initiated the growing differences between the staunchly patriotic Leo and his increasingly disillusioned son Zare.

Defending the Empire
As their first year on Lothal dragged on, Leo remained a staunch apologist for the Empire's policies towards Lothal. However, he was not prejudiced against Aliens; a position which set him apart from other Imperial loyalists like his son Zare's athletic director Janus Fhurek. After Fhurek demanded that Zare remove two Alien players, the Aqualish Hench Sina and the Rodian Frid Kelio, from his school's grav-ball team, Leo dismissed Fhurek as a small-minded thug who represented the worst of the Outer Rim. In response, Tepha urged her husband not to blame the entire Outer Rim for the actions of one man. Leo and Tepha also advised their son not to "get on the wrong side" of the coach. However, Zare decided to stand up for his Alien friends and kept them on the AppSci SabreCats; prompting Fhurek to unilaterally move them to a different school.

During the fall season, Leo expressed delight that his daughter Dhara was progressing in her Academy training and had been accepted into an Officer training program. While he hope that his daughter who have the opportunity to lead men into battle, Tepha expressed unease about their children being sent to fight in wars. Leo was also unaware of his son Zare's growing disillusionment with the Empire and involvement in illegal activities with his friends Beck and Merei. During the winter season, Zare turned fifteen years of age. During his birthday, Leo instructed his son to get his datapad and apply for the Imperial Academy. Zare dutifully complied with his father's wishes and submitted the application with the help of his sister Dhara, who was visiting her family for the winter break.

During the spring season, Leo and Tepha were watching a HoloNet news report by the holo-caster Alton Kastle describing a recent disturbance in the Westhills. According to Kastle, insurgents had attached surveyors and destroyed mining equipment; forcing Imperial stormtroopers to open fire on them. Accepting Kastle's account, Leo lauded the Imperial authorities' efforts to restore law and order and hoped that the "insurgents" received a few "good whacks with a rifle butt." In reality, the Imperial authorities had opened fired on a crowd of peaceful protesters protesting the expropriation of their lands. Zare, who was an eyewitness, knew the truth but decided that it was impossible to reason with his father.

Losing a Daughter
Later, Dhara disappeared while taking part in a military training exercise in Lothal's Easthills. After more than a week of receiving no contact from his daughter, Leo and Tepha were visited by the Academy's Commandant Cumberlayne Aresko, who informed them of their daughter's disappearance. Commandant Aresko reported that Dhara had ran way from the Academy, citing that there had been no signs of a struggle in her quarters and that she had left with her backpack. This news greatly distraught Leo and Tepha, who knew that Dhara was a loyal supporter of the Empire and a star cadet. The Imperial authorities issued an alert for Dhara but to no avail. No trace of her was found on Lothal.

While Leo remained fervently loyal to the Empire, his wife Tepha and son Leo became skeptical of the Empire's supposed "benevolence." For the next few weeks, Leo and Tepha spent much of their time contacting their friends at every Imperial ministry in Lothal and pleading for help to find their daughter. While sympathetic to Leo and his wife's plight, these officials were unable to help. Over time, Leo came to believe that the Empire was telling the truth about his daughter's disappearance and expressed anger that he had not recognized Dhara's alleged distress. He also told his family that some Imperial minister somewhere was about to message them that Dhara had made contact and would soon be coming home.

Meanwhile, Zare and Tepha came to question the official Imperial account of Dhara's disappearance. Desperate, Zare concocted a plan to infiltrate the Academy for Young Imperials to discover the whereabouts of his sister. Tepha reluctantly consented to her son's plan but made an agreement that they would never tell his father Leo, who was a passionate Imperial loyalist. To maintain the farce that Zare was a loyal Imperial citizen, Tepha arranged another farewell dinner and invited several Imperial dignitaries including Governor Pryce, Lieutenant Roddance, and Commandant Aresko. Seeing his son's acceptance as a mark of honor, Leo stood somber but proud during the party.

Personality and traits
Due to his unpleasant dealings with the Trade Federation when he was a young agricultural scientist on the planet Chrona, Leo had a dim view of the pre-Imperial era and praised the Empire for promoting development in the galaxy. His staunch loyalty to the Galactic Empire led him to rationalize or to minimize the Empire's excesses when confronted with the facts. While he was a faithful husband to Tepha and a good father to Dhara and Zare, Leo was also known to be deeply set in his views and to give long lectures in order to convert people to his point-of-view. On another occasion, his pro-Imperial leanings led him to fully accept a distorted report of an Imperial massacre of farmers in the Westhills.

Despite his pro-Imperial leanings, Leo was critical of xenophobic Imperial supporters like Janus Fhurek, who disliked Aliens and attempted to get his son Zare to remove two Alien players from his grav-ball team. While Leo did not hesitate to castigate Fhurek for his prejudiced views, he inadvertently exposed his own Core World prejudices against people from the poorer Outer Rim. Following his daughter Dhara's disappearance, Leo accepted the official Imperial account that she had run away and blamed himself for not spotting alleged signs of her distress.

Behind the scenes
Leo Leonis first appeared as a supporting character in Jason Fry's 2014 young-adult novel Edge of the Galaxy, the first of the Servants of the Empire series which is set in the world of Star Wars: Rebels and told through the point-of-view of Zare Leonis, a young Imperial Cadet and Leo's son. The author has described Leo as playing the role of a "smug snob" who epitomized the tensions between the wealthier Core Worlds and the poorer Outer Rim worlds; a theme explored in some Star Wars Legends literature. In Fry's view, Leo's remark that Janus Fhurek, a clear-cut xenophobe, would be fixing droids or cleaning streets in the Core Worlds reflected contemporary Core vs Outer Rim tensions.

Appearances

 * Servants of the Empire: Edge of the Galaxy
 * Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks
 * Servants of the Empire: Imperial Justice
 * Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy