Count Dooku's Curved Hilt

Almost every lightsaber is a straight tube. Dooku's bends — and the bend is the entire point.

Dooku fought Makashi, the duelist's form, developed specifically for lightsaber-against-lightsaber combat rather than blaster deflection or open battlefield work. Makashi is fencing: one-handed grip, bladework driven from the wrist, precision over power. A curved hilt sits in the palm at an angle that makes those wrist rotations natural, in exactly the way a sabre-fencing grip does. Straight hilts fight you when you try it.

He built the weapon after leaving the Jedi Order and turning to Sidious, mounting a bled crystal in an ornate hilt with a scalloped grip and a swept emitter. It's a deliberately aristocratic object, which suits a former Count of Serenno who never stopped behaving like one.

It served him extremely well. Dooku beat Obi-Wan and Anakin on Geonosis in quick succession, took Anakin's arm, and fought Yoda to a draw. He only lost once. Aboard the Invisible Hand, Anakin — considerably better than he had been three years earlier — trapped Dooku's blades, crossed them at his neck, and, on the Chancellor's instruction, closed them.

The curved hilt remains one of the best-looking objects in the whole of the saga. shop sabers

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