Little is revealed on the past life of Princess Shao-La other than her true name is Princess Shaola von Darragon and she was a noted princess, warrior and noblewoman who abandoned her birthright from the throne to enter a life of theft and assassination in the galaxy.
Shaola was rescued by Lobo from prison after nearly being tortured to death on the whereabouts of gems she lost in a poker game. Prepositioned among other mercenaries and maniacs with Lobo into a secret armada under the secret employment of L.E.G.I.O.N. and Brainiac 5, would Shaola work to stop a military junta and crazed war general in Planet Kannit from expanding to the universe for a million dollar reward.
Upon arrival to Planet Kannit, despite the demise of select team mates battling with other mercenary troops to the planet, the mastermind general of the operation was revealed a renegade clone of Lobo who defected to become his own warlord after abandoning a dangerous mission previous with LEGION. The clone Lobo was made during Lobo’s earlier abilities to make clones from spilled droplets of his own blood to regenerate into a new Lobo with full abilities and memories but lacked his immortality. Brainiac 5 neutralized Lobo’s clone abilities later on with an isotopic poison, but the cloned Lobo set to use the blood of the original Lobo to create his own reckless clone army to eliminate LEGION and Brainiac 5 with it.
Jaded by circumstance, Shaola abandoned the operation upon learning that Lobo and Brainiac 5 would kill her regardless if the mission succeeded prompting her to let both Lobo’s as well as many other clones beat each other up. Upon learning further that Brainiac had been spying on Lobo and knew about his clones’ crooked plans launched hundreds of space-ship missiles to destroy the castle the Lobo clone stronghold from, but the original Lobo escaped unscathed hiding in a bomb shelter. Shaola otherwise ended up taking her 7 million credits from Brainiac 5 by force on return to his spaceship.
Princess Shaola would crop up later in a bikini beauty pageant guarded then judged by Lobo where she would quickly steal the trophy and prize money before the original contestants turned to be frauds, killed, or alien predators themselves leading to the contests’ destruction- not done by Lobo.