Iden Versio is a human Imperial special-forces commander from Vardos, created for the 2017 relaunch of Star Wars Battlefront II and introduced ahead of the game in Christie Golden's novel Battlefront II: Inferno Squad (Del Rey, 2017). Janina Gavankar provided her voice, performance capture and likeness.
Manufactured
Her father is Admiral Garrick Versio, Inspector General of the Imperial Security Bureau; her mother made Imperial propaganda and used her daughter as a model for it. Iden grew up as a poster. That is not an incidental detail — it is the whole reason the character works, because the game is about a person discovering that the images she was raised inside were advertisements.
Inferno Squad
Golden's novel is a straight infiltration story: Inferno Squad — Iden, Gideon Hask, Del Meeko and Seyn Marana — goes undercover inside a partisan cell called the Dreamers and destroys it from inside. It is notable for being written entirely from the Imperial point of view, with no cutaway to a sympathetic Rebel, and for making the rebels the ones who lose.
Operation Cinder
Then the Emperor dies, and the posthumous order comes down: burn the Imperial worlds. Vardos is on the list. Iden pleads; her father carries it out. The game's turn is not a discovery that the Empire is cruel to other people — she already knew and did not care — but that it is cruel to hers, and that the loyalty she was raised in was never reciprocal.
Defection
She and Del Meeko leave, fight for the New Republic at Naboo and at Jakku, marry, and have a daughter, Zay. Garrick Versio dies aboard the Eviscerator at Jakku, refusing rescue from the daughter he hunted.
The ending
The 2018 Resurrection campaign moves her to 34 ABY. Del is captured, tortured by Kylo Ren and handed to Gideon Hask, who kills him. Iden dies at Hask's hands in the same story, and Zay is left to carry it. The whole arc — Imperial, defector, Resistance parent, casualty — is one of the more complete character journeys the franchise has told outside a film.
Why she matters
Because Operation Cinder gave the post-Endor period a subject. "The Empire lost" is not a story; "the Empire's last order was to kill its own citizens, and here is the officer who had to choose" is. Iden Versio is the reason a great many readers know what the Contingency was.
Where to find her
The novel first, then the game's campaign. Neither requires the other, but the novel makes the first hour of the game land considerably harder.