The Zabi Family are an aristocratic family of Spacenoids who are the ruling dynasty of the Principality of Zeon and the main antagonists of the 1979 anime Mobile Suit Gundam.
History[]
The Zabi Family first came to prominence when they offered shelter to political activist and philosopher Zeon Zum Deikun after he moved to Side 3 to spread his philosophy of Contolism. As Deikun's supporters grew in number, the Zabi Family all came to occupy high-ranking positions in his newly formed political party, the Zeon Party, with Degwin Zabi serving as Vice Chairman to Deikun while his eldest son Gihren Zabi served as campaign manager.
After Deikun died under illusive circumstances, Degwin became Sovereign and the Zabi Family became the ruling family of Zeon, with all of Degwin's children coming to occupy prominent roles in the military and political spheres. Gihren Zabi, as Prime Minister and Supreme Commander of the Zeon Armed Forces, soon cultivated his own cult of personality of fervent loyalists both in and outside the Zeon government, to the point where he effectively supplanted his father as the de facto ruler of Zeon and reduced him to a mere figurehead. Gihren also began to ramp up the propaganda against the Earth Federation, portraying it as a corrupt and decadent government keeping Spacenoids down, in order to garner civilian support for Zeon to embark on militaristic action against the Federation to "liberate" the space colonies from its rule.
Eventually, the One Year War kicked off with Operation British, masterminded by Gihren and carried out by Dozle Zabi, where the colony of Side 2 was gassed and dropped on Earth in an attempt to take out the Federation military headquarters at Jaburo, only for the colony to veer off course and crash into Sydney, Australia instead.
Around the time the One Year War began, the surviving son of Zeon Zum Deikun, Casval Rem Deikun, joined the Zeon military under the alias "Char Aznable" with the agenda of killing off the members of the Zabi Family in order to avenge his father, who he believed the Zabis had murdered in order to seize power. Serving alongside Garma Zabi, during an attack on White Base, Char sabotaged Garma and left him to be shot down by White Base.
Later on, during the Battle of Solomon, the Zabi family lost another member when Dozle Zabi attempted a last stand against the Earth Federation Forces in the Big Zam Mobile Armor while his crew evacuated, eventually being slain by Amuro Ray in the RX-78-2 Gundam.
As the war dragged on and Zeon's losses began to pile up, Degwin Zabi desired to make peace with the Federation and left to go negotiate Zeon's surrender with Federation General Johann Revil. However, Gihren was determined to not stop until the Earth Sphere was under his tyrannical rule and ordered the Solar Ray to be fired at Degwin's fleet, blowing both his father and General Revil out of the sky. When his sister Kycilia Zabi found out about this however, she in turn executed him for the crime of patricide and assumed command of the Zeon forces at the Battle of A Baoa Qu. After the Earth Federation Forces decisively defeated the Zeon forces at the battle, Kycilia attempted to evacuate with her men, only to have her head blown off by Char with his beam rifle, finishing Char's campaign of vengeance against the Zabi family.
After the One Year War ended, the sole surviving member of the Zabi family, Mineva Lao Zabi, the infant daughter of Dozle, was evacuated to the Zeon asteroid base Axis, where numerous other surviving Zeon forces had gathered. There, the leader of the Zeon Remnants, Maharaja Karn, proclaimed Mineva to be the heir to the throne of Zeon. However, Mineva would end up being little more than a figurehead at Axis while her regent, Maharaja's daughter Haman, held all the real power in Axis. At some point before the beginning of the First Neo Zeon War, Haman had Mineva sent away to Earth and replaced with a body double to prevent her from being caught up in the fighting.
Members[]
- Degwin Sodo Zabi - Father of Gihren, Cicero, Kycilia, Dozle and Garma
- Naliss Zabi - Second Wife of Degwin, Mother of Garma
- Gihren Zabi - Eldest child and first son of Degwin
- Cicero Zabi - Second oldest child and second son of Degwin
- Kycilia Zabi - Fourth oldest child and only daughter of Degwin
- Dozle Zabi - Third oldest child and third son of Degwin
- Garma Zabi - Fifth oldest child and fourth son of Degwin
- Zenna Zabi - Wife of Dozle
- Mineva Lao Zabi - Daughter of Dozle and Zenna
