Lit Formation of the Republic date

As we all know, Obi-Wan makes his "for a thousand generations" comment in ANH, whereas in the PT there are remarks (by Palpatine, for example) that the Republic has only existed for ~1000 years. Now, Obi-Wan's line could have easily been retconned as metaphorical, if not for EU entries like Tales of the Jedi which had the Republic formed c. 25000 BBY and engaging in Sith Wars in 5000/4000 BBY. So the Ruusan Reformation was made up in order to account for the discrepancy.

I'm wondering: with the Tales of the Jedi now passed into Legends, will the 25000 BBY date be maintained? Or will there be a "re-imagined" Republic having emerged only after a cataclysmic War that also gave us the Rule of Two dispelled an earlier Sith anarchy, a vision that we somewhat glimpsed in the G-canon-inspired portions of Terry Brooks's TPM novelization?

 

Obi-Wan was just a liberal thinker opposed with the Core's humanocentrism and calculated the history of the Republic in dog Wookiee years.

Even though I'd like to say I'm completely joking, but... funnily enough, I had actually been thinking about this just yesterday when I was watching a documentary about video game generations, and it struck me that in a galaxy full of aliens, it never got asked "A thousand generations... of what?"

 

There have already been various mentions of the Republic as being a thousand years old, but I believe there are also a few things that imply the possibility of another republic before it. Personally, I favor the former.

 

I tend to support the view that the Republic is 25,000 years old, but the most "recent" incarnation was organized +/- 1000 BBY. The EU made that nice little retcon and I think it should be adopted in the new canon.

--Adm. Nick

 

Master Huyang claims to have trained younglings for "a thousand generations" in TCW at least.

 

Obi-Wan could have been referring to the geographic area that ended up being ruled by the Republic government, not the government itself. If I say that a species of dinosaur lived in France, it doesn't mean that a country called France existed in the time of dinosaurs.

Nonetheless, Pre Vizsla mentions "the fall of the old republic", meaning that the republic that we see in the prequels isn't the first republic.

 

This I completely forgot about it but now that you say it

I also think it was a nod to the KOTOR games but now that I think about it

It was not the first Republic.

 

Here's how I understand the situation in the new canon: 1000 generations ago (however long that is), the Jedi became "guardians of peace and justice" in the service of some unspecified government with galactic scope (retroactively called "the Old Republic", which needn't be strictly true -- I guess it would be equivalent to referring to the Kings of Latium that reigned in Alba Longa centuries before Rome was founded as "Kings of Rome"). Then, thousands of years later (at least 5000 years ago), the Sith were formed. The Sith conquered the galaxy. 1000 years ago, the Sith were defeated and the Galactic Republic was formed.

 

Tarkin mentions at the start of chapter 4 that the "earliest era of the Republic" was a thousand years earlier (when the "galaxy's dark age had ended" and "the Sith had been defeated and driven into hiding") but then immediately equates that with "a true republic" and "a pan-galactic Senate" which seems to imply that there would have been an earlier (apparently not-true) Republic and a presumably not-galactic Senate.

 

Wow the with ruled for a long time.

 

not necessarily

 

Also we learn from Sio Bibble in AotC, that "there hasn't been a war like this (the one threatned by the Seperatist-crisis) for a thousand years". Considering, that the very existance of the Republic was on the line here we can assume, that at some point 1,000 years ago there had been a kind of new start.

 

Actually, that's two separate lines - Bibble's, and Palpatine's:

PALPATINE
I will not let this Republic, that has stood for over a thousand years, be split in two.

SIO BIBBLE
It's unthinkable! There hasn't been a full-scale war since the formation of the Republic!

from which people deduced that "the Republic" has had 1000 years of existence, and no full scale wars during that time.

 

Well, the Ruusan Reformation gave birth to the version of the Republic we all know and love(?), but the first formation of a Galactic Republic was ca. 25.000 BBY.

 

Can we even trust Sio Bibble? Anyone with facial hair like that is a dubious source at best.

 

If you count the EU but at the moment we don't no what came before the Republic.

 

Yes, but in real life states are also geographic bounderies besides being governments. It's convenient to say that dinosaurs roamed such and such a state because there's no other convenient way to describe the geographic boundary of that state.

Obi Wan would already have a convenient geographic descriptor word for the galaxy. It's called...the galaxy. So..he would have said "guardians of peace ansd justice in the galaxy."

As someone already mentioned though, the Clone Wars has already established the existance of a Republic before the prequel Republic which was known as an Old Republic by the time of the prequels. It's not a stretch to imagine that because the prequel Repulic is so young in comparison, most people equate it with the former Republic when talking about history in broad strokes.

 

Yeah, it's been all but confirmed in a definitively canon source (TCW) that the Galactic Republic has had at least two iterations. The Ruusan Reformation is a pretty sensible retcon. It would be weird if they chose not to stick with it.

 

I agree with this. It's pretty sensible to assume that when people talk about the former republic, they mean the republic before the Ruusan Reformation.

 

Yeah, but wasn't the Republic constantly expanding and adding new member worlds all the time? That sort of makes that idea moot.

 

For all we know, Jedi and Sith battled without any breaks from 25,000 BBY to 1000 BBY.

 

Good grief I hope not.

 

That's basically the direction the old EU was headed, given ten more years of the same trend.

 

Makes me wonder if there should be limits on exploring new eras.

 

So France is still part of Pangea, even if Pangea doesn't exist anymore?