| Starsha Iscandar | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Species | Iscandarian |
| Gender | Female |
| Title | Queen |
| Relatives | Yurisha Iscandar (sister), Sasha Iscandar (sister) |
| Allegiance | Iscandar |
| Portrayed by | Kikuko Inoue (2012-) |
- This article describes Queen Starsha Iscandar from Space Battleship Yamato 2199. For her counterpart in the original Space Battleship Yamato, see Starsha (OS).
Starsha Iscandar is the ruler of the planet Iscandar. Along with her sisters Yurisha and Sasha, she is one of the last surviving members of her race. Queen Starsha is crucial to saving life on Earth from an ongoing attack by the Great Garmillas Empire, despite her close personal and political ties to the empire and its leader, Abelt Dessler.
History
Early Life
Starsha reigned during a time when Iscandar had left behind its violent and imperialistic ways, and the population of Iscandar had entered a long period of decline. She espoused a philosophy of strict pacifism and protecting life throughout the universe at any cost, even as Iscandar's closest planetary neighbor, Garmillas, began to expand its own territory throughout the Large Magellanic Cloud and beyond. However, Starsha was drawn to the charms of Abelt Dessler and to his proposal to bring together Garmillas and Iscandar, and she allowed for a gradual unification to begin. With time, Starsha came to realize that Dessler was building his empire through the kind of brutality that her own people had forsaken centuries ago ("The Distant Promised Land").
Between Earth and Garmillas
Starsha finally acts after Dessler subjects the distant planet of Earth to years of bombardment. With the princesses Sasha and Yurisha Iscandar as her emissaries, she provides the people of Earth with wave motion technology and an invitation to Iscandar for a device that can restore life to their ravaged world, the Cosmo Reverse System, even though she does not entirely trust humanity to use the immense power of wave motion energy responsibly and peacefully. Starsha conducts her communications with Earth in secret, while continuing to work with Dessler ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Toward a Sea of Stars", "What Lies Beyond").
Around the time that the Earth mission to Iscandar begins in early 2199, a Garmillas vessel crash lands on Iscandar. The entire Garmillas crew and all but one of their prisoners--humans captured from the wreck of the destroyer Yukikaze--are killed. Starsha is able to temporarily nurse the lone survivor back to health, and she bonds with him before he again succumbs to his injuries. In Lieutenant Commander Mamoru Kodai's last days, Starsha helps him to record a message for the crew of the Earth ship that they believe is on its way. Starsha preserves Kodai's consciousness as pure energy at the time of his death. She continues to share her deepest thoughts and feelings with him in this form ("The Distant Promised Land", "Memories of the Blue Planet").
Queen Starsha Iscandar receives a report from Garmillas vice leader Redof Hiss, beneath a grand portrait of her and Abelt Dessler. The painting is identical to one in Dessler's throne room on Garmillas.
Starsha's faith in both sides of the war is shattered months later. She first witnesses Dessler's new space station firing a wave motion gun and obliterating a nearby planet, and then sees the Earth ship Yamato vaporize a part of the space station with its own wave motion weapon minutes later. In spite of her greatest hopes, Garmillas and Earth have both given in to the temptation to use wave motion energy for violence, just as Iscandar had done long ago ("One Man's War"). Starsha meets a party of officers from Yamato upon its arrival on Iscandar and gives them her stunning decision: humans seem to be just as much a danger as her own people were, and she will not give Earth the Cosmo Reverse System. Yurisha, having returned home aboard Yamato, argues that the humans have used their own wave motion gun only to preserve life. Starsha resists her sister's plea for understanding, but after hearing from Garmillas vice leader Redof Hiss that Yamato's wave motion gun saved the capital city of Baleras from an attack by Dessler, her mind begins to slowly change. The day after a sorrowful exchange with the consciousness of Mamoru Kodai, she comes aboard the Earth vessel and demands that Admiral Juzo Okita remove Yamato's wave motion gun components, and promise that Earth will never build another weapon like it. Okita accepts the queen's terms, and Starsha delivers the Cosmo Reverse System ("The Distant Promised Land").
Starsha fulfills Mamoru's wishes by delivering his message to his younger brother Susumu. She walks with Susumu to Mamoru's gravesite, and shares the story of his older brother's final months. As Yamato rises into the skies of Iscandar, Starsha stands alone and thinks about Mamoru--now inside the Cosmo Reverse System itself--and about Mamoru's child, growing inside her ("The Distant Promised Land", "Memories of the Blue Planet").
With Dessler presumed dead and his wave motion weapon believed to have been destroyed following the Battle of Garmillas, Starsha maintains her connections to Garmillas, sending Yurisha to represent her with the Garmillas leadership ("The Forever War").
Personality
Starsha seeks comfort and wisdom from the consciousness of Mamoru Kodai.
Starsha Iscandar is motivated by her belief in the value of life in all its forms, but even more so by her wish to never repeat the vicious history of Iscandar. Faced with the extinction of every living thing on Earth, Starsha briefly decides that it would be a small price to pay to assure that humans do not create another empire armed with wave motion technology. Starsha can also be isolated and secretive. She does not inform Susumu Kodai of her pregnancy by his older brother, and she tells no one among the Yamato crew about Mamoru Kodai's consciousness embedded in the Cosmo Reverse System ("The Distant Promised Land").
Starsha expresses genuine feelings for Abelt Dessler and acknowledges his love for her, but she maintains a somewhat formal and distant demeanor with him near the end of their relationship. She develops a strong affection for Mamoru Kodai in the brief time that they have together, further suggesting that her own love for Dessler had diminished ("The Distant Promised Land").
Notes
During the Battle of the Galactic Theater Gate, Dessler remarks that he is fighting for the salvation of "the sole woman I love." This could be interpreted to mean that Starsha herself is personally responsible for some of Iscandar's past atrocities, and that Dessler wishes to save her from her from her own history.
Japanese language information
スターシャ・イスカンダル Sutāsha Isukandaru