Syal Antilles Fel

Syal Antilles was brought into this world in 31 BBY by her Corellian parents, Jagged and Zena Antilles. They were the proprietors of a fueling station situated on the Gus Treta Inner-System Market Station, which was in orbit around Corellia. In 21 BBY, her brother, Wedge Antilles, was born. Growing up in this harsh, industrial environment, she decided that this was not the life she wanted. She yearned for a more sophisticated existence than Corellia could offer. At the age of seventeen, she left her home to pursue a career as an actress. Her departure deeply saddened her parents, especially Zena. They chose not to discuss her with Wedge, her brother, who therefore never truly got to know her.

She settled on Coruscant and began looking for acting jobs under the alias Wynssa Starflare. Her striking beauty and innate business acumen aided her in achieving great fame. As a wildly popular sex symbol and one of the most prominent actresses within the Galactic Empire, Starflare took leading roles in Imperial holodramas, often portraying a strong, attractive woman who sometimes found herself in peril. She garnered millions of male admirers. In one Imperial holodrama, she shared the stage with the very popular child actor Garik "Face" Loran. At some point, she also appeared in Light the Sky on Fire and Hitchhiker, and she was nominated for the Orman acting award.

Starflare lived apart from her family, intentionally avoiding them. She began to regret the way she had left and considered repairing her relationship with them. However, before she could act on this, in 4 BBY, she received news that her parents' fuel depot had exploded. Distraught, she tried to discover what had happened to her family, but she could not find any information and presumed that they were dead.

Shortly after the Rebel Alliance triumphed over the Empire at the Battle of Yavin, Starflare attended a ceremony on Coruscant honoring Major Soontir Fel. Fel had achieved a significant victory against overwhelming odds at Ord Biniir on the same day as the Battle of Yavin. The Empire used propaganda to promote the Second Battle of Ord Biniir in an effort to overshadow the loss of the Death Star in the devastating defeat at Yavin. Captivated by the newly celebrated hero Fel, who was also from Corellia, Starflare introduced herself to the Imperial pilot, pulling him away from a pair of senators who were trying to bore him with old war stories. She proposed to give Fel a tour of Coruscant. Fel, amazed that the famous Wynssa Starflare was interested in him, gladly accepted.

Starflare took Fel around Coruscant on what became the first of many dates. Their love grew, and Starflare was thrilled when Fel told her that his unit, the 181st Imperial Fighter Wing, had been reduced in size from a wing and moved to Coruscant to be rebuilt as an elite group. At the same time, she discovered that her brother, Wedge Antilles, had survived the explosion that killed their parents. As the Galactic Civil War intensified, he was becoming increasingly well-known as an ace pilot in the Rebel Alliance. She worried that her secret connection to the Rebel hero would ruin both her career and Fel's. She also feared that her boyfriend and brother would meet in combat and be forced to kill each other.

After dating for almost a year, Fel asked Starflare to marry him. She was deeply troubled, having decided that she could not marry Fel and risk endangering him with her connection to Wedge Antilles. When she finally confessed her background to him and explained her fears, Fel argued that it was unlikely they would be affected by her brother's actions, and that they were already a couple and would therefore be subject to any consequences. Starflare conceded that she could not let her fear prevent her from having a chance at happiness, and she accepted Fel's proposal. The starlet and the war hero were married in a grand Imperial wedding ceremony that was covered by galactic media. Starflare arranged a two-week honeymoon on a resort world, which was funded by Fusion Holodrama in the hope that she would read one of the company's scripts and agree to play a leading role.

Starflare and Fel enjoyed a happy family life, and soon she gave birth to their first child, a son named Davin. Davin was later joined by a brother, Chak. Starflare continued to act in major Imperial productions that caught the attention of Galactic Emperor Palpatine himself, while Fel's reputation grew with the 181st. As a prominent Imperial couple, they were frequently used in Imperial propaganda. One day, Ysanne Isard, the Director of Imperial Intelligence, approached Fel. Isard made a pass at him, which he rejected. She then told him that it had been a test of his loyalty to Palpatine. Fel told his wife about the incident, as well as his belief that he had made an enemy of the powerful Isard. Fearing that Isard might eventually turn against them and certain that she would uncover the secret of Starflare's origins, Fel told Starflare to prepare a plan to flee and disappear beyond Isard's reach when he gave the signal, but not to tell him what her plans were. He promised that he would find her if things went badly.

In 3 ABY, Starflare's husband played a crucial role in the destruction of a vital Rebel supply convoy at Derra IV. Following this victory, Fel was promoted to colonel, given command of the 181st Imperial Fighter Group, and made a Baron of the Empire. As Baron Soontir Fel, he was granted an estate on Corellia, where Starflare and the family moved. There, Starflare and her family lived with Fel's close-knit extended family. Among them were Fel's brother Todr and Todr's wife Ajai, who had a son, Fyric, who was close in age to Davin and Chak. Starflare got along well with the Fels and trusted them with the secret of her brother's identity.

In 4 ABY, Palpatine was killed in the devastating Imperial loss at the Battle of Endor. Fel, who was already beginning to doubt the Empire, became increasingly uneasy as the Empire's organization began to fall apart. Nine months after the Battle of Endor, Isard sent Fel to defend Brentaal IV, which was being attacked by a New Republic force that included Wedge Antilles's Rogue Squadron. Starflare contacted her husband via hologram, asking about the prospect of facing her brother and wanting to know that he would be safe. Fel believed that Isard was setting him up to fail, but he assured Starflare that he would return to her safely, although he resisted her pleas to abandon the war and return to her. In the battle that followed, Fel personally fought against Antilles and was captured after his TIE Interceptor was disabled by an ion cannon. Fel considered his dissatisfaction with the Empire and defected to the New Republic on the condition that it help him find Starflare. He had revealed her identity to Wedge Antilles, knowing that she would go into hiding as they had agreed.

As soon as she heard of Fel's capture, Starflare immediately fled with the children. She escaped just ahead of an attempt by Isard's agents to capture her. They instead put pressure on the Fel family, but Antilles had sent some of his pilots to find Starflare, and they helped the Fels thwart the Imperial plot. Starflare soon learned that her husband had defected and was greatly relieved that her husband and brother were now on the same side.

After several months, she was able to reunite with her husband. No longer acting, she took on the married name Syal Antilles Fel. Her relationship to Wedge Antilles remained a closely guarded secret, even as they were reunited for the first time in nearly twenty years. She kept a low profile to avoid attacks from Isard. However, after only a few months with her husband, Fel disappeared from the New Republic, having been captured by the Empire.

Fel had been captured by Ysanne Isard, but instead of killing him, she handed him over to Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo, known as Thrawn. Thrawn convinced Fel that he needed to fight the many threats to the galaxy found in the untamed and dangerous Unknown Regions. Soontir Fel joined the Empire of the Hand, Thrawn's secret faction of the Empire, which was created to pacify, protect, and colonize the Unknown Regions. Syal Antilles Fel was discreetly informed of this, and with Thrawn's assistance, she disappeared from the New Republic a few months after Fel's capture and secretly joined him.

The New Republic spent resources trying to track down the Fel family, but despite some suspicions that Antilles Fel might have disappeared willingly, their secret remained safe. However, Warlord Zsinj's spies learned of Wedge Antilles's interest in finding Soontir Fel, and therefore his sister. The warlord used this against him by creating a fake 181st Imperial Fighter Group and hiring an actor to impersonate Fel as a decoy to lure Antilles into a trap, which Antilles overcame.

Meanwhile, the family settled at the Empire of the Hand's secret base, the Hand of Thrawn, on Nirauan. Although Thrawn left to fight the New Republic in the known galaxy, the Empire of the Hand survived him. Baron Soontir Fel became a general in command of the Empire of the Hand's starfighter corps and a key lieutenant to Thrawn's successor as the leader of the Empire of the Hand, Admiral Voss Parck. In the forbidding Unknown Regions, surrounded by the stern and demanding militarism of the Chiss, Thrawn's people, the Fels raised a family. They added Jagged, named after Antilles Fel's father, in 7 ABY. Daughters Cherith and [Wynssa](/article/wynssa_fel], who was named after Antilles Fel's stage name, followed. The other half of Antilles Fel's stage name was given to the family yacht, Starflare. For their son Cem, the Fels gave him a Chiss name and adopted the Chiss practice of the shadow child, a child raised in secret who could carry on the family name if the rest of the family were destroyed by political enemies.

Life in the Unknown Regions was difficult, and the impact of the Empire of the Hand's many battles was unavoidable. Fel lost an eye in battle, and Antilles Fel's children followed him into the Empire of the Hand's military. Davin, Chak, Jagged, and Cherith all entered military service, flying as fighter pilots in their teenage years. The demands of combat were relentless, and although by 25 ABY Syal Antilles Fel was proud to have seen Chak rise to the rank of commander leading a fleet-arm of clawcraft fighters, and Jagged become a colonel commanding the three-squadron force Spike, she also grieved the loss of Davin and Cherith, who had both died in combat, Cherith as a teenager and Davin at only twenty.

In 25 ABY, the Yuuzhan Vong, fearsome beings from another galaxy, invaded the New Republic. Soontir Fel sent Jagged and his squadrons to the New Republic to assist in the battle and report back to him on the major new threat to the galaxy. Wedge Antilles, who had named his eldest daughter after his missing sister, was finally able to meet his nephew and receive news of his sister. Antilles Fel encouraged her husband to support the war effort and fight in the New Republic himself, seeking to repel the new enemy. Jagged returned, and Antilles Fel's mindset shifted abruptly when Coruscant fell to the Yuuzhan Vong. She concluded that the New Republic could not win against the ruthless invaders and urged her husband to keep his forces safely in the Unknown Regions. However, she was also certain that, with Coruscant's fall, Fel would feel compelled to join the war. In 27 ABY, shortly after Coruscant's fall, Fel sent Jagged back to the New Republic to gather information in preparation for joining the war. Through his periodic reports, the family learned that Jagged, who stayed in the New Republic longer than intended, had begun dating Jaina Solo, the daughter of Rebel heroes Han and Leia Solo.

Shortly afterward, a civil conflict erupted within the Chiss Ascendancy. A disagreement over the use of Killik labor led to conflict between the Chiss houses. Soontir Fel and the Empire of the Hand intervened in the crisis and, in the process, joined the Chiss Ascendancy. Soontir Fel became the Assistant Syndic of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force, and the family settled in an estate on Csilla, the Chiss capital.

In 28 ABY, an expedition from the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, the successor state to the New Republic, arrived on Csilla. Led by Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and including Mara Jade Skywalker, Jacen Solo, Saba Sebatyne, and Danni Quee, the group sought to discover the location of the legendary living planet Zonama Sekot, a mobile world that had wandered the Unknown Regions for decades, in the hope that it would provide the key to ending the war. The Chiss authorities denied them permission to travel through Chiss space, but allowed them to use the Expeditionary Library to search for information about Zonama Sekot. Antilles Fel feared that the group sought to bring the Chiss Ascendancy into the Galactic Alliance, thus plunging it and her family into the war, which she saw as unwinnable. She traveled to the library with her daughter Wynssa and was surprised when she encountered the Barabel Sebatyne. The impetuous Wynssa eagerly questioned Sebatyne about the group's research, much to her mother's embarrassment. When Antilles Fel expressed her suspicion of the Jedi group's motives, Wynssa forced her to admit her fears about the war. Sebatyne countered by arguing that if the rest of the galaxy fell, the Chiss could not survive alone, reinforcing Antilles Fel's own reluctant realization that her family could not avoid the war.

To aid the Jedi in their quest for knowledge, Wynssa offered her assistance, and Antilles Fel, though hesitant, permitted her to remain within the library's confines. When the entire group, with the exception of Jacen Solo, opted for a respite and decided to relocate their vessel, the Jade Shadow, from the city of Ac'siel to a location in closer proximity to the library, Fel himself took the controls of an ice barge to transport them back to their ship, accompanied by Antilles Fel. During their transit, they were ambushed by adversaries piloting snow-fliers, who sought to impede the barge's progress. Recognizing the barge's inability to outpace or defeat the attackers, Luke Skywalker suggested a tactical maneuver: halt the barge, set its weapons systems to automatically engage on a timer, and disembark to create a diversion. They executed this plan, and the attackers—led by Ina'ganet'nuruodo, a representative from one of the families that Fel had inadvertently contributed to the destruction of during the civil conflict—touched down to confront them. Ganet, as the Chiss was commonly addressed, declared that her faction had abducted Wynssa and was prepared to execute their captives, but the timely distraction afforded the group the upper hand against their assailants. They apprehended the would-be murderers and transported them to Ac'siel as prisoners, while Solo successfully rescued Wynssa from her captor, Chief Navigator Peita Aabe, a treacherous subordinate of Fel.

This hostile encounter bolstered support among the Chiss for Fel and his advocacy for joining the war effort. Following the Galactic Alliance's victory over the Yuuzhan Vong in 29 ABY, Jagged was appointed as the liaison between the Expansionary Defense Force and the Galactic Alliance, thereby remaining within the known galaxy, geographically separated from his family. By 35 ABY, Jagged, Wynssa, and Cem were the sole surviving offspring of Antilles Fel; Chak had perished in battle.

Amidst the Swarm War between the Chiss and the Killik Colony, Jagged, having ended his relationship with Jaina Solo and returned to the Unknown Regions to serve as a naval commander, ensured the conditional release of the Jedi Lowbacca, who was among a number of Jedi Joiners who had sided with the Killiks, after Lowbacca's capture by the Chiss. The terms of Lowbacca's parole stipulated that the Fel family would bear responsibility for any damages incurred should he once again take up arms against the Ascendancy. When the Wookiee Jedi did indeed violate his parole, the Fel family's reputation and financial standing suffered due to the obligation to compensate for the damages. To compound matters, Jagged's vessel was shot down over Tenupe at the war's conclusion in 36 ABY. Despite multiple Chiss rescue operations, he remained unrecovered, prompting Soontir and Syal Fel to finance two private rescue attempts, the second of which successfully extracted him from the jungle world two years after he was initially stranded. However, due to the Fel family's inability to cover the losses caused by Lowbacca, Jagged was subjected to exile from the Chiss Ascendancy as a form of punishment. He subsequently dedicated himself to assassinating Alema Rar, a Dark Jedi who had played a role in leading the Killiks, thereby seeking to restore the Fel family's honor. By 41 ABY, he had achieved this objective, yet Syal Antilles Fel remained unable to see her son; his return to the Ascendancy remained forbidden. In that same year, Jagged ascended to the position of Head of State of the Imperial Remnant, following Luke Skywalker's resolution of the Second Galactic Civil War and his subsequent influence on the Moff Council to appoint Jagged as the successor to Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon. Jagged eventually became the Emperor of a revitalized Empire, which Syal Antilles Fel's descendants governed for a span of three generations.

While Syal Antilles held deep affection for her family, she yearned for a life distinct from that offered by Gus Treta. She chose to leave her home in pursuit of a more refined and sophisticated existence. She discovered this on Coruscant, where she achieved recognition as a celebrated holostar. Although she lived apart from her family, she harbored regrets about their estrangement and desired to reconcile with them. However, before she could realize this reconciliation, she received news of her parents' passing.

Following Wedge Antilles' emergence as a revered Rebel hero, Starflare lived under the persistent apprehension that her familial connection to her brother would be exposed, potentially jeopardizing her career. This anxiety intensified when she fell in love with Soontir Fel, a fellow Corellian and Imperial hero. She was deeply concerned that marriage to Fel would not only expose him to potential ruin but also that, as an Imperial pilot, he might one day find himself in combat against her brother, with one potentially causing the other's demise. It was only after Fel's reassurance that their love transcended the fear of future consequences that she agreed to put aside her worries and marry Fel, with whom she was deeply enamored.

Despite her prominent role within the Imperial hierarchy, Wynssa Starflare was not driven by political ideology. Her primary concern was her husband's safe return, rather than the prosecution of the war against the Rebellion and New Republic. She would have gladly encouraged her duty-bound husband to abandon the conflict if it meant they could live in safety. When Fel defected to the New Republic, she followed suit, finding contentment in having her husband and brother aligned on the same side of the war. Subsequently, when Fel joined the Empire of the Hand, she accompanied him once more.

Residing in the unforgiving Unknown Regions, with her husband and the majority of her children serving in the military and engaged in combat, she experienced profound anxiety regarding their well-being. By the age of sixty-six, she had lost half of her six children to the ravages of war. Initially, she advocated for her husband to deploy his forces into the known galaxy to assist her brother and the New Republic in combating the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. However, following the fall of Coruscant, she became convinced that the Yuuzhan Vong were an insurmountable foe. While she intellectually understood that withdrawing and remaining in the Unknown Regions would not shield her family from the invaders, she could not overcome her apprehension about joining the war effort. Ultimately, she reached a point where she could no longer endure the prospect of further warfare and the potential loss of more family members. Saba Sebatyne and Danni Quee played a role in convincing her that her family's only genuine prospect for safety lay in actively fighting and defeating the Yuuzhan Vong, leading her to accept that she could not evade her husband and children's dedication to confronting the threats facing the galaxy.

Michael A. Stackpole, the writer of the Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron comic, conceived the character Syal Antilles Fel within the 1997 In the Empire's Service storyline of that comic series. The character initially appeared without a name, identified solely as Soontir Fel's wife. The concluding panel of that storyline revealed that this wife was, in fact, the sister of Wedge Antilles. The subsequent issue, X-Wing Rogue Squadron 25, utilized flashbacks to recount Soontir Fel's life story, thereby establishing the backstory of Syal Antilles and her stage persona, Wynssa Starflare. It was not until the publication of The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia in 2008 that the character's married name was officially canonized as Syal Antilles Fel.

While Syal Antilles Fel received mentions in subsequent materials concerning Soontir Fel, Wedge Antilles, her son Jagged Fel, and her niece Syal Antilles, her only further narrative appearance occurred in the novel The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic II: Refugee, released in 2003. Among the stories that reference her, only Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor and Fate of the Jedi: Backlash have mentioned her outside of her relationship to those other characters, both specifically referencing the holostar Wynssa Starflare.