Work Text:
This springs from a conversation in one of my comments sections that I am too lazy to look up again, but if you find it, yes, it's that.
Let us start with the worldbuilding.
Imagine the Mandalorians are not good at subtlety except in reading body language of the fully armoured. So, you have these people from the old Mandalorian Empire, and they invade a planet and then stand in front of the survivors. These scary people with their heavy armour, faceless helmets, emotionless facades and positively bristling with weapons tell the survivors that they now have a choice. They can join up or swear fealty as a subject fiefdom to Mandalore. Heck, imagine it's not an invaded planet, but a bunch of uncommunicative Mandalorians who were tracking down some criminal organisation or even someone they have a clan feud with. So, you have these people who have no idea why half their local population was just massacred, faced with these threatening figures, and assume they are now dragooned into indentured servitude.
At this moment there are two perspectives on what's happening. The people who think they're being threatened into servitude, and the Mandalorians who think they are making a cheerful friendly overture to join up with the Super-Awesome-Mando'ade.
The thing is, people who think that Mandalorian armour (containing whistling birds, flamethrowers, whipcords, tasers and holdout blasters) is not fundamentally threatening, who think that 'my head was tilted in the head tilt of friendliness!' and who assume that everyone who would rather run away than fight is a cowardly hu'tuun aruetii with nothing to offer, these are maybe not the people to understand that they are smilingly holding a gun to someone's head and making suggestions for their next actions.
In this way, Mandalore suddenly has a whole class of people who think that they are slaves. These people take on jobs that no one else wants, because whenever someone brings it up they feel threatened, and they raise their kids with that mindset, because they have no idea it could be otherwise. I can also very easily see none of them finding out that Mandalore is fundamentally against slavery, because what slave is going to ask their master what the official party line is on slavery?
So, into this milieu comes Tarre Viszla, who as a Jedi spends a lot of time considering philosophy, the state of affairs and just generally looking beyond what you see and all that. He actually talks to these people and finds out that menial jobs of the weak and cowardly are actually the jobs of terrified slaves - because these people are actual whole family lines of heritage slaves. He blows up and goes on a whole campaign as Mand'alor to bring awareness of this to the people at large, who naturally balk.
You could even decide that both the New Mandalorians and Kyr'tsad wind up being the result of this. The New Mandalorians are not truly pacifist, so much as using that as a quick-and-dirty handle. What they are is people who were scooped up by Mandalorians (maybe even generations ago) from much more peaceful societies, who have been accidentally forced into the resol'nare and who want to go back to their roots. They are militant and cranky with the traditionalists, because these are the people who were too dumb to realise the threatening figures they are, and have no idea that people will do what they say out of fear of being killed. They want to do away with armour and weapons, because that intimidation is how they wound up enslaved by accident.
Kyr'tsad, meanwhile, get angry and double-down on things, basically declaring that if these people were dumb enough to think they were being enslaved, then clearly the hu'tuune deserve it.
After the Dral'han/Excision, the origins on either side get lost, most traditionalists forget about the slavery thing and the Mandalorians go back to not realising that they are actually scary.
So, now to the present-ish. What if the reason there is a Duchess/Duke of Kalevala is because one of the slave lines created back in the day from the 'choice' presented, was the noble family of planet whatever, and so the Kalevalan duchy is a transplanted culture that were slaves in Mandalore up until Tarre Viszla freed them. The duchy has therefore been a proponent of pacifism all along, because they want to make sure every accidentally created slave is freed. Meanwhile, Kyr'tsad is obviously actively enslaving people, having taken the notion that they were doing accidentally before as a good reason to keep doing it. So, many many years ago, Satine's older sister, Tashmi, was taken. She tells Obi-Wan about it, and so while he finds traditionalist Mandalorian culture fascinating and delightful, he also completely understands that the New Mandalorians have a right to recapture their own heritage, taken away by the (frequently accidental) actions of colonising Mando'ade. Most traditionalists are insulted because how could anyone think they would keep slaves?
I maintain there is no way to explain to these people that a menacing appearance as a bounty hunter or mercenary doesn't just go away because you're not actively trying to be menacing right then.
Tashmi ends up on Tatooine, using the heritage lessons of slavery from Mandalore to keep herself together in this return to slavery. Anakin is therefore raised on the hybridised culture of the Kalevala former slaves that is partly their peaceful pre-Mandalore culture and partly Mandalorian culture.
Enter The Phantom Menace plot.
So, after all that, Anakin is at the temple as a padawan, when he trips over Obi-Wan's Mandalorian something-or-other. This leads to him telling Obi-Wan about where he and his mom came from, and that his mom's name is 'Shmi'.
Now, Obi-Wan had tried to get Anakin's mother freed before and the Council had said no because they don't buy slaves, even to free them, and they don't have the resources to take someone off a more important mission (of standing around watching an Alderaanian festival) to go after her. But now he has new leverage. He contacts Satine and tells her that he maybe possibly has a lead on her older sister, and could she send him a DNA sample to test against someone else for a relationship? She obliges, and Anakin tests as being closely related to Satine - say as a nephew.
Obi-Wan goes to the Council and asks to go on a rescue mission for the family member of a foreign dignitary. Well, that's a horse of a different colour, so they let him go and rescue Shmi (and Kitster, Wald and whomever else Obi-Wan can grab at the time). Obi-Wan brings them all back to Kalevala for resettlement.
Shmi acts as a moderating force on Satine to keep her from pushing the pendulum too far the other way. That is, much like many movements to gain freedom for marginalised groups, Satine was starting to hit that point where efforts to get equality were going too far. Like the sans-culottes of the French Revolution, but with less guillotines. Obi-Wan gets to connect with Anakin on the matter of Mandalorian culture, because Anakin is really not a pacifist by nature.
On another side note, a lot of fanfics like to do a 'the Kalevalans don't speak Mando'a' thing or that it makes Obi-Wan's accent weird. They have a regional accent that derives as much from their heritage language as it does from Mando'a, and the language is peppered with words from that language in a way it isn't in the rest of the system. Possibly all the words for outsider-who-is-not-a-traitor, or retreat, or peace, or other concepts that have less of a place in mando'ad discourse. So, Anakin and Obi-Wan speak that Mando'a with each other.
Anakin goes on with training to be a Jedi, but with the knowledge that he can practice parts of his own culture in the Temple and knowing that his mother is bulwarked on Mandalore with Aunt Satine. Obi-Wan is also finally able to get the Council to let him take Anakin on missions that involve freeing slaves, because they're no longer worried Anakin will take it nearly as personally. You can make it a slightly misplaced empathy on the part of the Council, trying to avoid putting Anakin in a difficult position with regard to his ability to remain a neutral third party, or you can make it that they're jerks who are obsessed with Code-stuff. Whichever. As I always say, I'm not writing this properly.
With all these changes, he has much less to complain about to Palpatine, who has far less to latch onto Anakin with. Among other things, it's easier to listen to rational arguments about not destabilising the entire outer rim with a crusade that would only lead to death and mostly not increased freedom when you don't have a deeply personal stake in things. So, Palpatine can't get him that way. Obi-Wan is aiding with Anakin's re-connection with his own culture, so there's none of that. Shmi is safe, so Anakin doesn't have that worry bearing down on him. He and Obi-Wan are communicating more and better, so there's less scope for misunderstanding to put a wedge between them.
You get the drift.
Finally, when the war starts, Anakin and Obi-Wan are both a little more alive to the clusterkriff that would be letting Boba be on his own, so they bring him along instead, keeping Boba out of the clutches of jail and Aurra Sing. They also have a knock-down, drag-out fight with the Mandalorians on Kamino about Anakin's cultural background that involves bringing in Tarre Viszla's own writings and makes them all super-shocked and deeply apologetic. Boba gets sent off to stay with Shmi, who is tough as nails, and lets him get away with nothing.
And Anakin doesn't Fall and we have fixit territory at this point.