Books Thrawn Alliances Book - Summer 2018

I always took that remark as "Oh God, another young fool that wants revenge for me killing his family. What's that make, 634 and 635? I can't remember".

For you, the day Vader killed your family was the worst day of your life. For him, it was Tuesday.

 

Mind you, that's my big issue with canon's portrayal of Vader. They never show any hint of the good man he used to be.

It's like they don't trust us to know Vader is a bad guy.

 

Quite the opposite from Legends, which often portrayed Vader as almost too conflicted. On the whole, I prefer his portrayal in canon.

 

Yeah Rebels did the same thing. Oh you thought Thrawn was a noble officer who didn't kill civilians? Well, we're going to have him bombard an entire city to prove how evil he is!

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And he would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those damn kids (and the Whales)
The only real saving grace on this is that Zahn will write Thrawn how he normally writes him and not how he is on Rebels. He proved that with the first Thrawn book

 

I never thought I'd hear people complain that Thrawn was portrayed as too evil.

 

"Thrawn keeps being portrayed as Too Nonevil by Zahn" has been a very common complaint over the last few years. Rebels has shown us what happens if those complaints are listened to and followed, maybe?

 

You are wise. Not a Muun, are you?

 

The only particular case of villiany towards the rebels the I thought was particularly out of character was the orbital bombardment of lothal, but he does tell Ezra he didn't intend to have to do that, leaving the door open for it being a direct order from Sheev.

Far more jarring IMO is the way he just casually tosses away the lives of his own forces over and over again.

 

I didn't see anything out of place for Thrawn in Rebels.

He is, after all, a guy who works for people who blow planets up.

 

If my only exposure to Thrawn in the EU were the Thrawn Trilogy - and as it happens, it is - I never would have suspected him to be a "noble officer who never kills civilians" given that he did exactly that during his first visit to Wayland.

 

Well, technically, at this stage they haven't done that, yet. And the new book excerpt...

Spoiler

... expressly states - from Palpatine's view no less - that Thrawn is very much opposed to the Death Star. To the point of perhaps reaching open resistance.
Granted, it does not say he is opposed on moral grounds.

I have been meaning to write a longer review of Thrawn in Rebels as I am a bit in conflict with parts of his portrayal in the show. But it is a show consisting of many short episodes (finale apart), so I guess there is no time for a more nuanced approach (cue Kallus super-quick flip from nasty exterminator of species to hero-spy).

All Imperials are evil without any redeeming features (the "you think you can just take what you want... you don't deserve this art" speach by Ezra was the cherry on top in the final episode for me - for crying out loud, is it so hard to keep the guy civilised in at least one respect? He is not a Nazi stealing French pictures!) . A bit grating, so I keep my fingers crossed Zahn puts Thrawn's actions a bit into perspective.

Right, off my soap box.

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When? A sniper shoots at him from a building - he has the building demolished. An armed man (the owner of the building) accosts them, shoots at them (C'baoth intervenes) - he tries to have that man killed, but fails thanks to C'baoth's second intervention.

I'm not sure if either of those qualify as "successfully killing civilians". That said, he does make threats.

 

Well, he does threaten retaliation for non-compliance to his request to be taken to the Guardian before the sniper attacks.

 

While my only exposure to Thrawn before Rebels was the comic versions of his original trilogy...
It should be noted he once ordered Rukh to execute one of his tractor beam operators for incompetence.
My understanding is Thrawn has no problem doing in those who are incapable of learning, but when someone shows initiative he will be far more generous, even if they fail.
Not the mark of a particularly compassionate person, Thrawn might more accurately be described as a pragmatist.

Doesn't say much about his having killed civilians (Though as others have said, the implication is that he only did it on Sheev's orders.), but it offers perspective on his willingness to sacrifice his underlings for efficiency.

 

Technically, that literally is what he is.

Sorry, it's not literally that.

It's a statue.

I remember also that Thrawn, by Zahn, enslaved the Noghri and also exterminated a race. He also attempted to kidnap babies and give them to a mentally unstable pseudo-Sith Lord. I prefer the Star Wars that doesn't attempt to whitewash the enemy.

I write supervillains, professional assassins, Ringwraiths, and morally ambiguous antiheroes but I try to remember--villains can have good qualities and heroes bad without making them one or the other.

 

Even if you want to argue that the guy who fired the arrow at him on Wayland wasn't a civilian, Thrawn didn't exactly go out of his way to ensure there were no other non-combatants in the building before he had Rukh destroy it. Whether things changed in later appearances of the character I can't say, but in his earliest incarnation he was perfectly willing to kill civilians to achieve his purposes.

 

And keep in mind that, for the most part, any whitewashing of Thrawn was done by others (Pellaeon, Cardas, Mara Jade), and his less ruthless self is seen during the PT era in the novel "Outbound Flight." While he may not have been "ruthless" in Choices of One, he was still only a captain and not put in a position where we would have to see his ruthlessness/leniency in action.

 

Fully agree with this! While I personally am ok with a "softer" version of Thrawn, as written in Zahn's later Legends works, it is the ruthless, ingenious Thrawn-Trilogy character I first encountered and who instantly became my no. 1 villain (ah, that was a long time ago...). Villain, not misunderstood hero.

I can definitely see the younger Thrawn (from last year's novel) develop into TTT Thrawn, because of his motivations and his willingness to accept the Empire's & Emperor's serious flaws. But I was expecting a more gradual development (slippery slope) from the Thrawn novel onwards. Maybe this is why I am a bit dissatisfied with Rebels Thrawn.

In any case, I am curious about what they are planning to do with him, now that he is for all intents and purposes gone from the Empire. And not exactly with a stellar record, either. So, I hope by Christmas Timothy Zahn will surprise us again with news of yet more books.

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I think it's why I like DJ the most of the new canon characters after Kylo Ren and Rey. DJ is a character which arguably has no point whatsoever but I totally buy his humanity in giving back Rose's amulet--and how he doesn't hesitate to throw them under the bus because it was advantageous.

I think Star Wars could do with a bit more "there's a spectrum of these sort of things" with their evil works. Thrawn should definitely be evil. He's a man who doesn't believe in freedom and actively supports a military dictatorship across the galaxy. However, he's the guy who should be depicted as being willing to use soft power over hard power whenever possible--just because it's easier.

But I think he's not the guy who would hesitate to push the button if it meant winning. Destroying Alderaan is a waste but if he could get the entire Rebellion on a planet with a sentient population, he'd do it. It's why I like the attempt to bond with Hera over their cultural history a great deal. Thrawn thinks he's being a "good" man and that he can reach an accord with the natives--but Hera knows there's no accord to be reached because he'll always just be an invader.

In Star Wars terms, I think he should oddly enough be like Vader most of all Imperials. Which is ironic because Zahn saw him as a contrast.

 

It's fitting that Thrawn fits the cornerstone of the Tarkin doctrine: "rule through the fear of force, rather than force itself." While the Thrawn Trilogy Thrawn would use force on occasion (such as ordering the destruction of the building with the sniper and threatening the destruction of that village when they refused to cooperate in taking him to the Guardian), he seemed to prefer to rely on the fear part (ordering Pellaeon to only target an area outside the Noghri village for the demonstration; using the cloaked ships as a means of capturing Ukio).

However, that would most likely be the pragmatic side of Thrawn: why be bloodthirsty when you don't need to be?

So, he shouldn't be considered a "misunderstood" or "more heroic than we thought" type of villain, but neither is he on the more sadistic/savage scale of some of the Imperials (Tarkin and the Ghorman Massacre, for example).

 

I actually liked this. Thrawn had no particular desire to kill civilians, but he felt he had to (and he did this in Legends too, there's an offhand comment on how he destroyed an entire species in the Thrawn trilogy).

Furthermore, this and the 'Jedi are predictable, often doing what they feel is morally correct instead of what is strategically sound' totally explained why Legends Thrawn wouldn't even waste his time asking the New Republic and Luke's New Jedi for help against the Vong. It explains why he felt the Empire was a better choice.

Legends Thrawn foresees Luke and his Jedi quibbling over Vong slave and civilian casualties etc while the death toll of the galaxy goes to unbelievable numbers. And considering how the Vong invasion actually went and how many died on the NJO's watch, Thrawn wasn't entirely wrong.

 

I feel like both canons took extreme approaches on Vader, in which one tended to portray him too conflicted in way that he never was in the OT, and other tends to portray him too much of a one-note killing machine in a way that… he also never was in the OT. I feel like neither has mastered the middle ground with this character.

Those are perhaps the most frequent complaints on Thrawn from since he was reintroduced in Rebels. I don’t think “too evil” is the best way to put it, it’s more like his fans want his evil actions to be justified (or only presented when there is no other option), so that the idea of him being a misunderstood anti-hero can remain in some way.

I personally only liked Thrawn as a villain and not really as a “sympathetic” anti-hero, but I understand that some people have different preferences.

 

In short:

Thrawn was a lighter touch but that was a velvet glove on the same steel spiked gauntlet.

Captain Hydra vs. the Red Skull.

 

I'm just hoping the threat Thrawn and Vader have to work together to stop is the Yuuzhan Vong.....