Robert Watts
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
| Robert Watts | |
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Male |
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186 centimetres (6 ft 1 in)[1] |
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96.2 kilograms (212 lb)[1] |
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Gray, formerly blond |
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Gray[2] |
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- "Don't be spoiled, don't start a fight. Always be careful, here at night. Because the Spartans might come, in suits that weigh half a ton. And they'll steal from you all you gots, just like they did from Colonel Watts."
- — Insurrectionist children's rhyme[4]
Colonel Robert Watts was a human insurrectionist and the former leader of the United Rebel Front.[2] Formerly an officer of the UNSC Marine Corps, Watts defected from the UNSC after growing sympathetic to the insurgents he once fought against. Watts led numerous campaigns against the Unified Earth Government, particularly from the Eridanus system, and was responsible for establishing the URF.[1] He was eventually captured by Spartan-IIs of Blue Team in 2525.[5]
Biography[edit]
Early life and military career[edit]
Robert Watts was born on the human Inner Colony of Mars on August 16, 2455.[1] Raised in the Epsilon Eridani system, Watts eventually enlisted in the UNSC Marine Corps.[6] Watts led forces on the frontlines combating militaristic independence movements throughout the Outer Colonies prior to the outbreak of the Insurrection, where he became a decorated and highly regarded commander of the Marine Corps. In the late 2480s, Colonel Watts became disillusioned with the policies of the Unified Earth Government after first-hand experiences with these separatist movements. He defected from active military service within the UNSC and joined the insurrectionist factions growing in the Outer Colonies.[1]
Leader of the United Rebel Front[edit]
With the beginning of the Insurrection, Watts soon re-emerged in June 2494 as the commander of the Secessionist Union's chapter on Eridanus II in the Eridanus system.[1][7] The Secessionist Union began preying on shipping freighters in the Eridanus system, leading to the Eridanus Government requesting aid from the United Nations Space Command.[8] However, by January 2495, Watts successfully orchestrated a takeover attempt on the government and effectively gained control of Eridanus II.[1] Additionally, Watts' forces were able to amass a small fleet of spaceships through their contacts within the Colonial Military Authority. In January 2496, the UNSC finally responded to the Eridanus Government's requests with a major offensive dubbed Operation: CHARLEMAGNE. A battle group of warships arrived at Eridanus II and engaged Watts' forces in the system, eventually breaking his hold on the planet.[7] Other insurgent factions allied with the Secessionist Union on Eridanus II were also splintered as the UNSC eliminated their leaderships.[1]
Watts eventually realigned the surviving insurgent factions in the Outer Colonies and took command of them. Branded by the UNSC as a "united rebel front", Watts came to adopt the pejorative as a badge of honor and titled his unified faction the United Rebel Front. As the Insurrection continued, Watts led insurgent forces against the Colonial Military Administration on a number of worlds,[1][7] and essentially commanded a majority of rebel activity in the Outer Colonies.[9] Eventually, Watts and the URF re-accumulated enough strength to attempt to overthrow the Eridanus Government once again; Watts hoped to use Eridanus II as a base of operations for the URF and drag the CMA into a costly guerrilla war.[1] In 2513, Watts led an armed uprising on Eridanus II. Having anticipated the attack, the UNSC engaged United Rebel Front forces as part of Operation: TREBUCHET. A UNSC fleet of carriers, cruisers, and destroyers attacked Watts' own fleet of roughly one hundred smaller spaceships,[2] while some URF forces attempted to engage UNSC forces in a ground campaign on Eridanus II. During the conflict, several assassination attempts were made on Watts' life, including one made by Avery Johnson of the Marine Corps, though none were successful. An operation to capture Watts' second-in-command was also attempted, but failed.[6] Ultimately, much of the United Rebel Front's forces in the system were decimated by the UNSC before they could properly establish a presence on Eridanus II.[1] Ordering the mass exodus of insurrectionist forces on the planet, knowing their survival in battle to be impossible, Watts was taken by Pelican to Iliad, a captured Charon-class light frigate which he used as a flagship as he coordinated both the resistance and evacuation. When Gateway, another URF warship, experienced difficulties with its slipspace drive, Watts utilized towing cables on Iliad to rip apart a UNSC cruiser that threatened Gateway and sent its debris into a collision course with another cruiser, destroying both ships. Afterwards, Gateway's issues were resolved and both ships fled the battle through slipstream space along with the surviving remnants of their fleet.[10]
The remaining URF forces regrouped under Watts' command and eventually constructed a stronghold within Eridanus Secundus, a hollowed-out asteroid located in the Eridanus system's largest asteroid belt.[1] While the UNSC Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence was aware that the rebels hid in the asteroid belt, they did not know Eridanus Secundus' location and knew very little about their strength; ONI initially believed that rebels were disorganized and lacked a leader, though they eventually realized that the insurgents were organized under the United Rebel Front and commanded by Watts. UNSC attempts to search for the asteroid were met with either a lack of results or with an ambush by superior URF forces.[2] Initially, the United Rebel Front experienced supply shortages. In 2517, Watts led a desperate act of piracy on the UNSC-registered cargo ship UNSC Dartmouth in order to acquire much-needed supplies. Despite the frigate UNSC Journeyman being less than four minutes away, he gave his men the order to board and commandeer the ship, allowing supplies to be looted in the safety of the asteroid field.[11]
During Operation: SILENT STORM in 2526, research into the background of suspected Insurrectionist Hector Nyeto revealed that he had spent a lot of time on missions with Watts. It was theorized that either Watts or Nyeto radicalized the other for the Insurrection.[12