This is a deep rooted history, belief, honor, tradition, culture, almost religious topic/practice for them.
There's a lot to unpack in this part of the discussion. For millennia, Mandalorians
were their armor. They were at least seminomadic, and pretty much kept what they could wear or carry. Whole suits likely were not heirlooms (seriously -- does anyone here know how ridiculous it is to suggest resizing a full set of metal armor?). The precedent has been the odd bit here or there to honor or remember a father or grandmother or like that, but generally the bulk of it is
your armor, made for
you. And here's where it gets a little vaguespecific... It's not the actual individual pieces of armor that are important, it's the wearing of the armor, period, that's important. This is Star Wars -- they have stupid-advanced materials. The actual "armored spacesuit" originally described is probably (and by probably I mean definitely, but I can't show current-canon proof) the layer under the bodysuit -- something of a cross between a Dune stillsuit and something Batman would come up with. Armorweave cloth, antiballistic gel padding, atmospheric and thermal isolation and regulation, and so on. The flight suit is there to keep it from getting dirty. The flak vest is a plate carrier for the outer plates, and the shape of
those is a matter of tradition, even though the plates themselves are wasters...
One EU element I really hope is gone is the magical Mandalorian supermetal. It was basically Adamantium, from the way it was described. Which I think is bunk. One, my armor is 16-gauge stainless steel. A car accidentally backed over one of the chest plates and the plate didn't even notice. From any kind of range, it would probably stop anything but an armor-piercing round (not that I'm going to put this to the test). But two, the point of armor is to absorb and dissipate incoming damage energy. The more rigid it is, the more it transmits through to the wearer. If you've got impervious Unobtanium armor, it doesn't matter if it can survive a direct blast from a turbolaser without a scratch if the impact energy shatters all your bones and pulps your internal organs while toasting all the organic matter in your body to a nice medium-well.
I don't like the EU denigrating Boba's armor as "crappy durasteel". I always liked that his armor showed he'd been through twelve kinds of hell and survived. On the one hand, bad on him for not maintaining his kit, but kudos for the walking intimidation factor. The implication was that he had what he had and couldn't replace anything due to his exiled status. ROTJ borked things by having him in different gear that was supposed to be the same gear. Won't get into that. Then the New Mandalorians get thrown into the mix...
According to the clone wars, jango wasn't a mandalorian. He was just a guy who had the armour.
Remember, these were the enlightened pacifist Mandalorians who had turned their backs on their warrior heritage and denigrated it who said this. Everything else we've seen has been that the further away from Mandalore itself you get, the more the traditional ways seem to hold sway. Unless and until it gets overwritten, Jango was from Concord Dawn, a planet in Mandalorian space, from whom we've seen both Rako Hardeen (the Marksman from Concord Dawn) and Fenn Rau (the Protector of Concord Dawn) both being very non-pacifist during the Clone Wars. The Prime Minister just dissed Jango by way of disavowing
any traditionalist, armor-wearing Mandalorians. Remember, these New Mandalorians who "[didn't] know where [he] got the armor" had the Death Watch producing it by the dozen right next door without them knowing.
But what do these groups have in common? A deep spiritual and traditional belief system that's so etched in their culture as to be almost invisible to them. Notice the "chest diamond" on most of the Mandalorian armor we see? Notice that motif is all over the dress and architecture of the New Mandalorians as well? The EU called that shape the "
Beskaryc Kar'ta", or "Heart of Iron". The Mandalorians believed that they were fundamentally interconnected through a racial collective overmind called the
Manda. Their own form of ancestral Force-kenning. This connection to it and to each other is a crucial element of what it means to be Mandalorian, and that symbol represents that connection.
In traditional Earthen symbolism, a square is an ancient symbol for elemental Earth, often in the form of Metal, and frequently even more specifically Iron, representing unyielding strength. The hexagon has always -- when it's been used -- represented some holy or spiritual or ethereal power. In the Heart of Iron, the Iron strength of the Mandalorian is surrounded and protected by the collectivity of the Manda. Might even go so far as to say all for one and one for all. Yeah, the symbol is stretched a bit, vertically, in a sort of stylistic Art Deco fashion, but I don't dock them for their artistic motifs.
So while individual plates should be considered disposable/replaceable when they get damaged in combat -- not counting any that happen to have belonged to Great-Grandmama or your Uncle Steve -- the actual symbolic continuance of wearing the metal armor plates, with the Heart of Iron in the middle of it, is the biggie -- the main doctrinal bone of dispute between the New Mandalorians and the rest of the race. So yeah -- you salvage your armor if at all possible. Especially your helmet -- that's got all your preferences set and has all your music. Irreplaceable.
--Jonah
