Teneniel Djo

Teneniel Djo was a Force-sensitive human female that became the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium, reigning from 11 ABY to 27 ABY where she was executed. Djo had also been a member of the Singing Mountain Clan of the Witches of Dathomir prior to becoming the Hapan ruler.
Raised by her grandmother, the Queen of Dathomir Augwynne Djo after her mother Allaya's untimely death, Teneniel was gifted in the use of the Spell of Storm. After living in semi-exile in the desert while searching her dreams and looking for a husband to kidnap, she came across Luke Skywalker and the Hapan Prince Isolder, the latter of whom she eventually married.
After Isolder's mother Ta'a Chume stepped down as Queen Mother, Teneniel and Isolder reigned over the Hapes Consortium for approximately seventeen years. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Teneniel suffered a Force-induced miscarriage that left her semi-catatonic and vulnerable to attacks from many who had deemed her unfit to rule. In 27 ABY, Ta'a Chume had Teneniel executed, and her daughter Tenel Ka succeeded her as Queen Mother.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Teneniel Djo was born in to the Singing Mountain Clan of Dathomiri Witches to Allaya Djo, the clan's warleader. While Teneniel was still young, Allaya Djo died in battle, and Teneniel was raised by her grandmother Augwynne Djo, the clan's leader.
Augwynne taught Teneniel the basics of Allyan Magic, and eventually Teneniel became proficient in the use of an ability called the Spell of Storm. This ability would cause massive wind storms or slight breezes, depending on how it was used.Cracken's Threat Dossier
====Exile====
When Teneniel was around sixteen years of age, she caught two of her Initiate sisters using spells from the forbidden Book of Shadows. Enraged at her fellow Initiates for attempting to learn the Dark Spells, she cast the Spell of Storm on them. Although they survived, Teneniel was sentenced to four years of exile in the desert in an effort to atone for her rage.
Her exile was not a total banishment, as she was allowed back to visit the clan, but for no more than a week at a time. During her four years of exile, she was drawn to the crash site of the Chu'unthor, and tried many times by many different means to break inside the ancient shipwreck. After a vision revealed that she would find a husband at the crash site, she took shelter nearby and waited.
===The Hapes / Dathomir incident===
====Meeting Luke Skywalker and Isolder====
In 8 ABY, while tending to the garden she was growing a short distance away, Teneniel sensed a disturbance near the Chu'unthor. When she went to check it out, she happened upon Luke Skywalker and Prince Isolder of Hapes, who had come to Dathomir to search for Han Solo and Leia Organa. She duly captured both men as potential husbands, and although she considered Isolder more attractive, she was drawn to the fact that Luke, a "simple male," could cast spells without using words and considered him a prize catch. After the two men explained their plight to Teneniel, she agreed to take them to see her grandmother at the Singing Mountain village.
====The Nightsisters reveal themselves====
Along the journey to her village she and Luke were attacked by the Nightsister Ocheron. Teneniel was nearly killed in the encounter by Ocheron's Force lightning, though she was saved when Luke decapitated Ocheron and healed her wounds. Since Luke had saved Teneniel's life, she no longer had a claim to him as her husband per Dathomiri tradition.
After returning to Singing Mountain clan village with Isolder and Luke, she was greeted by her grandmother Augwynne. After introducing Luke and Isolder to the clan, Teneniel claimed Isolder as her husband in front of the whole clan village, stunning him. Leia Organa (who along with Han Solo was a guest of the clan villagers) offered to buy him from Teneniel, but Teneniel stated that he wasn't for sale yet. Shortly afterward, because the other clan sisters would claim him if she set him free outright, Teneniel gave Isolder his freedom in all but name.
Han's ship the Millennium Falcon was a working ship that the Nightsisters coveted, and they planned to use it in their plot to escape the confines of Dathomir. To prevent them from doing so, the group of Isolder, Teneniel, Leia, Han, Chewbacca and Luke sought out Barukka, a former Nightsister and Teneniel's aunt, to get information of how to sneak into the Nightsister-controlled Imperial prison to locate spare parts with which to repair the ship and leave Dathomir. After getting the information from the half-insane former Nightsister, the group then infiltrated the Imperial prison.
After locating a suitable ship from which to steal parts, the group was attacked by Nightsisters, and Teneniel was almost killed by Baritha. After being saved by Luke, Teneniel gave into her anger towards Gethzerion and the Nightsisters and unleashed the Spell of Storm. Luke stopped her before she could kill the Nightsisters, and the group escaped the prison.
====The Battle of Dathomir====
The Battle of Dathomir had begun when the group returned to the Singing Mountain clan village. During the battle, Teneniel had again used the Spell of Storm, but this time she succeeded in killing her opponents. As a side effect of unleashing her power in anger, she had acquired a burst blood vessel on her face characteristic of a Nightsister. In an effort to atone for her rage, Teneniel gave part of her life force to a badly wounded Nightsister.
After the Battle of Dathomir concluded, all nine of the Dathomiri Witch clans gathered at Singing Mountain clan village for a celebration feast. During the high point of the celebration, Teneniel became the de facto Princess of Dathomir due to the fact that her grandmother was given ownership of Dathomir by Han Solo. Isolder then announced his intention to marry Teneniel, with whom he had fallen in love. Isolder's mother Ta'a Chume protested the union, but after Teneniel threatened her using the Force, the elder woman backed down and allowed the marriage.
===Queen Mother===
Around the time of the birth of her daughter Tenel Ka in 10 ABY, Teneniel became the Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium when Ta'a Chume abdicated. As Queen Mother, Teneniel kept the Hapes Consortium out of galactic politics for the most part, and consistently rebuffed any help or advice from Ta'a Chume. Also around this time, due to Teneniel's status as the princess of Dathomir, Dathomir was proclaimed the unofficial 64th member planet of the Hapes Consortium.
Isolder and Teneniel often disagreed on how Tenel Ka should be raised. Isolder wished for Tenel Ka to be raised as a typical Hapan princess, but Teneniel insisted that Tenel Ka should be allowed to choose her own path. Both parents agreed, however, that Tenel Ka was to be enrolled at Luke Skywalker's Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4 as soon as she was old enough.The New Essential Guide to Characters
In 22 ABY, Teneniel went on a diplomatic mission to another system with Isolder to negotiate trade agreements. Ta'a Chume's underling Yfra, as part of her plot to take over the Hapan throne, had planted assassins in their entourage to kill them both. Isolder and Teneniel escaped the assassination attempt and returned to Hapes, only to find out that Tenel Ka had lost part of her arm in a lightsaber accident. Teneniel was supportive of Tenel Ka's wish to not wear a prosthetic arm, and encouraged her to continue on at the Praxeum if that was what she wanted. Two years later, Teneniel, Isolder and Augwynne Djo would attend Tenel Ka's knighting ceremony.Young Jedi Knights: Crisis at Crystal Reef
With Tenel Ka opting to choose the path of a Jedi Knight and all but forsaking her status as the heir of the Hapes Consortium, the question of succession became a thorny topic between Isolder and Teneniel, putting a strain on their marriage. To resolve it, they conceived another child to act as the heir near the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong War.
====The Yuuzhan Vong War====
=====The Battle of Fondor=====
During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Leia Organa Solo went to Hapes to enlist the help of the Consortium and its navy against the invaders. After listening to Organa Solo's speech, Teneniel instructed all of the planetary representatives to vote on whether or not to ally with the New Republic in their fight. The result was a tie, and the deciding vote rested on whether Beed Thane or Isolder won a Hapan honor duel. When Isolder proved victorious, the Navy was sent to Fondor to participate in the Battle of Fondor.
However, tragedy struck when a beam from Centerpoint Station wiped out most of the Hapan fleet. Due to the Force backlash she suffered from all the deaths, Teneniel miscarried her heir and went into a semi-catatonic state. Some time afterward, she decreed that Hapes would welcome refugees from planets the Yuuzhan Vong had conquered. This proved to be an unwise move, as it now made Hapes, with its navy still weakened from the Battle of Fondor, a target of the Yuuzhan Vong.
Ta'a Chume, who never got along with her daughter-in-law, decided that Teneniel's catatonia was a hindrance to the Hapan people and formulated a plot to replace her with Jaina Solo, whom Ta'a Chume thought could be controlled. She urged Isolder to divorce Teneniel and marry Jaina, or she would take back the throne. Though Isolder had promised to think about it, Ta'a Chume formed a secret working relationship with the Ni'Korish to kill Teneniel, but their plots continually failed.
=====Sentenced to death=====
By 27 ABY, Isolder and Teneniel's marriage was near the point of collapse, with talk of Teneniel returning to Dathomir. Shortly after Tenel Ka and the rest of the Myrkr strike team had retreated to Hapes, Tenel Ka visited her mother to pay her respects. Teneniel knew that she did not have much time left on the throne, and gave her daughter an emerald ring, with the express instructions that the next Queen Mother receive it. Tenel Ka took the ring and promised her mother she would deliver the ring as she had asked.
Shortly afterwards, Teneniel was visited by Leia Organa Solo, who was dumbfounded at Teneniel's condition, both physically and mentally. In her only semi-coherent moment, Teneniel assumed that Isolder had chosen Leia as his new bride and told her that Tenel Ka had the ring. Not knowing what Teneniel was talking about, Leia played along until Teneniel sat at her bedroom window and became unresponsive.
Ta'a Chume, seeing an easy way to get rid of her hated daughter-in-law, arranged for the Ni'Korish to poison Teneniel and have her replaced with Jaina. Shortly before the Battle of Hapes, the plan to poison Teneniel was executed successfully. However, Ta'a Chume's plan to install Jaina on the throne backfired when, much to the surprise of everyone, Tenel Ka took up her mother's crown.
===Legacy===
The ring that Teneniel had given her daughter was actually a holochip containing the location of a rebuilt Hapan fleet, commissioned by Teneniel to replace the fleet lost at Fondor. Tenel Ka placed this fleet under the command of Jagged Fel, and the Hapans successfully repelled the invaders.
==Personality and traits==
Growing up in a village dominated by Force using women, Teneniel was trained in the use of Allyan Magic, the Dathomiri version of the Force, by her grandmother Augwynne Djo. Although she knew a great variety of spells, she showed a particular talent for the Spell of Storm. She was also trained in physical combat, and enjoyed mountain climbing as a pastime.
Teneniel was compassionate, as shown when she secretly gave Isolder his freedom to keep him from being claimed by the other clan sisters. She could also be quite persistent, as she still stubbornly tried to get Luke Skywalker to become her mate even though she had no claim to him after he saved her life. She also did not hesitate to use the Force to prove a point, such as using the Force to destroy the blasters of Ta'a Chume's bodyguards before they could shoot her for threatening the Queen Mother.
Quick to anger, she had unleashed the Spell of Storm at least three separate times in anger, with the last time giving her a burst blood vessel on her face characteristic of a Nightsister. In an effort to atone for lashing out with her gift yet again, she gave part of her life force to a Nightsister who was wounded by the exhaust of the escaping Millennium Falcon. Teneniel also used the Force to cause the exhaust to flow around her and the injured Isolder.
After the fallout from the Battle of Fondor, Teneniel became a shell of her former self. She sat alone in her room for long periods of time, neglected most of her duties as Queen Mother, and offered no resistance to Ta'a Chume's plots. However, she was of sound enough mind to order a new Hapan fleet to be built to counter the threat the Yuuzhan Vong posed.
==Behind the scenes==
===Origin===
Teneniel Djo was created by Dave Wolverton and first appeared in the 1994 novel The Courtship of Princess Leia.
===Mother's name===
There is some disparity over the name of Teneniel's mother. The Star Wars Encyclopedia gives Allaya Djo as her mother, while Cracken's Threat Dossier implies that her mother's name may be Kara'Teel. In the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, it is implied that Teneniel's mother is named Allya with the statement "I am Teneniel Djo, a daughter of Allya, and you are my slave!". This may or may not be a variant of Allaya Djo. This could however be interpreted to mean 'follower of Allya', making the Dathomir Witches 'the Daughters of Allya', as would be common in many primitive societies where a direct connection to an important figure provides prestige and tradition.
===Spell of Storm===
Teneniel's "Spell of Storm" ability was described as a "Force Storm" in The Courtship of Princess Leia, although it bears no resemblance to the existing Force power with that name. Her ability is more in line with the Force power Force Whirlwind. The term "Spell of Storm" comes from her bio in Cracken's Threat Dossier.
===Ascension===
The exact date of Ta'a Chume's abdication and Teneniel's ascent to the throne is unknown; the placement in this article is conjecture based on the novel Dark Journey and the New Essential Chronology.
==Appearances==
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Djo family
Category:Females
Category:Hapan Queen Mothers
Category:Individuals with she/her pronouns
Category:Singing Mountain Clan members