Lit More Jacen Apologist Thinking re: Darth Krayt

Darth Krayt likely would not have been able to rise without his army. He most certainly would have looked silly going up against Luke Skywalker.

Skywalker fights gods now, not fallen Jedi manipulated by a chicken

Of course I guess Krayt fought that god as well. Just not as many times as Luke

 

I do not think, for a second, that Jacen's choices and actions can be considered 'justified' in any way based on a convoluted set of things that may or may not have occurred and that he may or may not have foreseen. That's a bunch of temporal paradox BS and by the same status you could justify most of Palpatine's choices as 'Yuuzhan Vong Invasion Prep.'

If anything Jacen is a formidable example in that trying to do good by being bad doesn't work, at least when the Force is involved - the road to Hell is paved with good intentions in the Star Wars galaxy too. There are several examples in LotF of Jacen/Caedus engaging in starkly villainous actions that had no connection to any future prophecy or his overall plan, starting with his torturing Ailyn Vel to death during interogation (that he got away with that bit, despite witnesses and the fact that it violates an ungodly number of law enforcement regulations is one of the early red flags that LotF hasn't got its head screwed on straight).

 

It seems to me that in Apocalypse they were pretty much equals...

 

I got that impression too.

 

Jacen's actions delayed Krayt from rising, but they did not stop him.
Jacen probably had good intentions, but I do not think the things he did made so much of a change.
The only thing that did have an impact on Krayt was the destruction of Centerpoint Station and the release of Abeloth.

 

There's also the fact that he directly drew attention away from the One Sith with his actions, as said by Krayt himself.

 

I don't really see Jacen doing much to slow down Krayt's schemes, as we don't really have any details on what Krayt's schemes are during the LotF and FotJ timeframe. Not that details or logic are ever the novels' strongpoints.

In the Legacy comic, we get a somewhat detailed idea of Krayt's rise to power- instigate a war by sabotaging the Ossus Project and blaming the Jedi and GA, manipulate the Empire into declaring war on the GA and getting them to rely on Sith power to counter the GA's Jedi support, and then use the Imperial fleet, GA bureaucracy and his own One Sith to maintain order. And that's not even going into his Sith Troopers who probably are still very early in development.

In LotF, does he have an army of Sith yet? Is there a strong enough united fleet to maintain order in the galaxy? Is he in a position to take over the galactic government? Well, considering a legal droid figured out how to take over the galactic government in five minutes, guess taking over the galaxy is pretty easy. No backups or safeguards to avoid another Palpatine-style takeover.

Oh, I know, because the Lost Tribe used up the Jedi spice cartel excuse to take over, Krayt couldn't use, so it took him another few decades to come up with another excuse to blame everything on the Jedi and turn the galaxy on the Jedi. Well, make the Jedi even more hated and distrusted than they normally are.

I don't like the "ends justify the means" message, honestly, and Abeloth's release does seem to outweigh any possible benefits from delaying Krayt. Sure the Throne of Balance vision changed from Krayt to Allana, but without any details, still don't see how Krayt's rule was delayed. Also, taking over the galaxy is really easy in the post-NJO novels, so its hard to see why Krayt took so long actually.

I wasn't a big Jacen fan after NJO, but if they had just had him as a heroic Jedi, fine, but instead they had to ruin him in LotF, and even after his death, his mistakes just keep getting worse, and still not really any absolution for him. We barely even see any of his reaction to these revelations/retcons, since that chapter ended abruptly (but then most of the major plots end abruptly anyway).

 

Off topic, but what does Caedus mean?

 

No idea- I think it was a contest winner name.

 

Cockroach in Huttese.

 

I would have liked to see Krayt give Caedus a proper beatdown.

 

It's based off of the Latin verb "caedere", meaning "to kill, to murder, to slaughter". Whoever came up with it may have believed that it was the past participle of caedere, when in fact that would be "caesus".

 

Thank you very much.

 

Jacen's actions could have all the good consequences in the world and they'd still be evil actions. The moral of the films isn't "it's okay that Anakin turned evil because he killed Palpatine eventually".

 

The first one for me. He had to see something.