If you’re assuming Revan’s red lightsaber comes from bleeding a kyber crystal—like what we see with Sith in modern Canon—then that’s the wrong framework. Revan’s story comes from an era of Star Wars lore where red blades weren’t defined by a “bleeding” ritual in the first place.
Revan has a red lightsaber for a much simpler reason tied to how crystals were explained in his time, and what happened to his weapons across different phases of his life.
When Revan Actually Got His Red Lightsaber
Revan’s “Sith red” isn’t a brand-new weapon he forges after flipping to the dark side. In the Legends telling, he’s using the same lightsaber he already had from his Jedi/Revanchist years—he’s even credited with wielding it in the later Mandalorian Wars, including against Mandalore the Ultimate.
The big change happens after Revan is turned to the dark side by the Sith Emperor. He keeps his existing hilt, but he swaps out the original blue crystal and replaces it with a synthetic crimson crystal, and that crystal swap is what gives him the red blade associated with “Darth Revan.”
From there, that red-bladed saber is the one tied to his reign and the Jedi Civil War, right up until the moment everything collapses: during the attempted capture led by Bastila Shan, Malak fires on Revan’s ship, and the weapon is treated as destroyed in that attack.
In Legends, Red Blades Came From Synthetic Crystals, Not “Bleeding”
Secrets of the Sith basically spells out the old-school Sith explanation: a red blade doesn’t need a kyber “bleeding” ritual—because the Sith can forge an artificial crystal from scratch. The book describes raw elements being cooked in a brood furnace until they form an artificial crystal that ignites into a bright crimson energy blade. Then it even shows the process of removing the “dross” from the forged crystal, like you’re refining metal.
And the Sith don’t treat that crystal like a neutral battery. The book frames it as something shaped through dark side meditation, meaning the crystal is supposed to carry the imprint—the “essence” of the user’s will—not just a color change. It’s not “nature turned corrupt,” it’s “I built this, I dominated it.”
0The funniest part is the Sith propaganda angle: Secrets of the Sith leans into the idea that a red blade is better—claiming it can even break the green and blue blades of Jedi. Whether you take that literally or as Sith flexing, the takeaway for Revan-era logic is clear: red = synthetic/forged Sith crystal tradition, not Canon-style bleeding.