Yana Ro, an Evereni female, was alive during 382 BBY. Marda Ro was her cousin. When they were young children, their grandparents and Yana's sire were killed in an assault, causing their mothers to escape with them to the planet called Dalna. The family joined the Path of the Open Hand, a group that revered the Force but thought it should not be used.
Later, Kor Plouth, a Nautolan and the daughter of the Path's former leader Werth Plouth, became Ro's romantic partner. Upon reaching the Path's age of fifteen years for making a choice, Ro began discussing her desire to leave Dalna and the Path with Kor. The two also became part of the Children of the Open Hand, a group that "liberated" Force artifacts for the Mother, the Path's spiritual leader, through theft; other members of the Path believed the Children were trying to convert people off-world. During the Jedi Order's mission to Dalna, Ro lost Kor when the Mother tried to have the Children killed. Werth and Ro decided to collaborate to take down the Mother. Ro also became the "champion" of the Leveler simply because she was holding its control rod, known as the Rod of Seasons, nearby, which made her valuable to the Path and prevented the Mother from acting against her.
Ro later went with the Path to Jedha to retrieve the Rod of Daybreak. She accompanied Werth and Radicaz Dobbs to speak at the Convocation of the Force. After the Convocation denied Plouth's demands to disband the council, and then his alternative proposal to prohibit Force use until he could prove the Path's beliefs about Force misuse, the three left the Convocation Building. As Werth began addressing the citizens of the Holy City about the incident and other recent occurrences, Ro, holding the Rod of Seasons, unleashed the Leveler on the crowd, providing cover for their search for the Rod of Daybreak. While Marda became increasingly radicalized and, even after discovering the Mother's deceit and killing her, departed to rebuild the Path to liberate the Force, Yana abandoned that life after the Night of Sorrow. She decided to become a hauler with Shea Ganandra, another former Path member, and care for Kor's ailing mother, Opari, whom she considered her only remaining family. She also secretly kept the Rod of Daybreak from Marda, who had left with the Leveler and the Rod of Daybreak.
Yana Ro and her cousin Marda were taught by their mothers at a young age the Evereni way of saying or avoiding farewells. To help Yana cope with pain, Yana's mother taught her to bury her sorrows by taking deep breaths and letting go. Throughout her life, Yana became very aware of how others viewed the Evereni negatively. One lesson Yana learned was that being Evereni meant understanding that trust was a weakness.
On their final night on the planet Genetia, the Ro family was attacked by Genetian villagers when Yana and Marda were just children, after the family was blamed for a failed harvest. During the assault, Marda Ro's sire fought fiercely to help the family escape, but the cousins' grandparents and Yana's sire were killed. The remaining Ro family members managed to flee Genetia after Yana's mother and Marda's mother killed a family of Theelins and stole their ship.
After escaping Genetia, the Ro family spent days hungry and cold as the ship's life support systems failed. Eventually, a Hutt Clan trawler towed their ship to Nar Shaddaa, where the Hutts tried to force the family into slavery. The Path of the Open Hand intervened and paid for the Ro family's freedom.
Marda and Yana's mothers decided to leave their daughters with the Path of the Open Hand. Marda believed their mothers wanted the cousins to stay together. While Marda dealt with the trauma and bloodshed of their escape from Genetia by assimilating, Yana kept everyone at a distance, recognizing the weakness in trusting others. She tried her best to avoid attention and remain unnoticed, and therefore unthreatened. However, she eventually developed a crush on and began a relationship with Kor Plouth, the daughter of the Path's herald, Werth Plouth. For years after arriving on Dalna, Yana and Marda lived as members of the Path, with Yana eventually joining the Children of the Open Hand alongside Kor. While Yana would always remember the difficult time when she and her cousin joined the Path, Marda would forget much of her life before the cult. Some of the few things she remembered as an adult were the lessons her mother and Marda's had taught them long ago.
Yana Ro first appeared in the young-adult novel The High Republic: Path of Deceit (2022), authored by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland for the Star Wars: The High Republic project. Her concept art was initially shown on an episode of The High Republic Show, which premiered on March 8, 2023.