Shenrick's predecessor

Shenrick's predecessor was a individual who ruled as the monarch of the planet Mon Cala during the High Republic Era. The monarch had at least three children, the third being a son named Shenrick. During the monarch's reign, Shenrick, a "spare" who was not expecting to inherit the crown, fell in love with Ghal Tarpfen, a Captain Third Class in the Mon Calamari Guard from a low-ranking family. The pair kept their relationship secret as it went against the mores of Mon Cala society, which valued the "purity" of the royal family, and they became fans of a holodrama which told the story of a Mon Calamari guard who ran away with a princess, feeling that it was "their" story. However, at some point no later than 232 BBY, the Monarch and their two eldest children were killed in a tragic incident, and Shenrick became Mon Cala's king. Shenrick then spurned Tarpfen, removing her from the service of the crown and pretending it was at her request, and she left the planet to avoid seeing him marry another.

Tarpfen became the Head of Security for the Galactic Republic's Starlight Beacon space station, and had served in the role for over a year by time of the Dalnan evacuation in 230 BBY. The Nihil marauder group, with whom the Republic had an ongoing conflict, learned of Tarpfen's relationship with the monarch's son from traitorous Senator Ghirra Starros of Hosnian Prime, and sent the Mon Calamari woman cryptic holomessages in a failed attempt to blackmail her. One such holomessage, which alarmed Tarpfen the most and caused her to recall the tragedy that had killed Shenrick's predecessor and elevate her one–time lover to the throne, was the holodrama she and Shenrick had related to. A final message from a masked Nihil commanding her to shut down security cameras in certain corridors of the station instead prompted her to investigate the area, only to be ambushed by Starros and an accomplice, who knocked Tarpfen unconscious and kidnapped her. When Tarphan came to, she was on a Nihil starship deep in No-Space. She was able to escape her bonds and subdue double agent senatorial aide Jeni Wataro, in order to send a message to mostly Starlight Beacon frequencies, but also a few Mon Cal ones that she remembered from her days serving the monarch in the Royal Guard, warning that the Senate had been compromised, just as the other Nihil vessels began to fire upon the ship.

In 228 BBY, after being recovered from Nihil captivity by the crew of the Republic Defense Coalition Longbeam Aurora III in the Occlusion Zone, being broken free of a protective hibernation shell that had induced biostasis to protect her from a blight infection, and having her infected extremeties amputated, she reminisced about her ill-fated time with King Shenrick during his predecessor's reign, whilst touching her bandaged fingertips to her newly shortened barbels.

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