"You fought in the Clone Wars"

I thought there may have been some discussion of this A long time ago in a post far far away, but I could not find it. I was wondering how people felt about the pluralization of War as it applies to the Clone Wars.

What statements and intel do we have?

"You faught in the Clone Wars?" - Luke, ANH
"Begun, the Clone War Has" - Yoda, AoTC
Clone Wars cartoon.

The Galaxy at large and us, the viewer, at large knows the event as The Clone Wars. However, we only see one War. I had a great Grandfather that faught in The World Wars. I had a Grandfather that faught in A World War. WWI and WWII were two distinct wars faught for different reasons with somewhat different participants with a period of peace between them, thus we have two World Wars. In Star Wars, we seem to have 1 War that involved Clones that occured over a small time period involving the same cast of characters and the same purpose. So uhm, Why wasn't it "The Clone War." It could have been chalked to up a continuity mistake between the OT and PT, yet we have a Cartoon series not called "The Clone War" but "Clone Wars". Yoda refers to it as Clone War, singular, in AoTC.

I see two possible reasons for the pluralization. #1. Wars is actually taken to mean "Battles" in a GFFA or #2. The subsequent Purge of the remaining Jedi by Vader, Sidious, and Clones was considered a Clone War on it's own.

It's a pretty trivial point really, but it bugs me sometimes, so I figured I would see if anyone else had any input.

Carnage

 

Luke's pluralization of "Wars" could have something to do with propaganda released years before his time. Maybe after the war Palpatine tried to portray the Clone War as a series of battles with several different participants so his involvement on the two real sides would remain ambiguous. If "War" became "Wars;" if a clear-cut struggle between two distinct sides became a jumbled mess of fighting, then it would be very difficult to pin it all on one person. Just a thought, of course.

 

Well as an explination I heard once that I don't really like, in Battlefront 2 there's a clone uprising that leads to Clones vs. Stormtroopers that I think was created as an answer to this question.

 

I believe it is both.

 

Obviously, Luke had knowledge that the Clone War spread far and wide and thus, you have the Clone Wars.

 

I suppose there could be a war for control of each planet. Then combined, the galaxy would be in the middle of the Clone Wars.

I know we usually hear those refered to as "battles" (i.e. the Battle of Endor, the Battle of Hoth, etc.), but it's conceivable that each side fought several battles on each planet to decide the victor.

 

yeah, that seems most likely. Cause whoever inhabits that planet is invloved in it's own war.

Whoever said the BF2 thing brought up a good point, too. But I think that is more of a single battle or a single uprising over an entire war.

But a planet-wide battle is big enough to call a war, so maybe every planet counts as a war.

Or...Luke was a dumb kid who spent too much time under the sun and had bad grammar.

 

i always took it to mean the idividual wars over different planets. sure it's all the same war, but once that gets on an inter-galactic scale i think war would pupate into wars.

 

To Luke, the Clone Wars are a myth, a far, far away legend. He cannot know how many there had been of this "event". So he just uses a plural form, because he doesn't know better.

That's my opinion.

 

While there is no indication of this in the films, perhaps "the War" (to quote Kenobi on Utapau)is an attempt by Palpatine to, as Curufinwe suggested, obscure his role in instigating the war. If Palpatine is trying to unite the galaxy under his rule after the Republic (now Empire) wins the war, he wants both sides, the Republic and Separatist citizenry, to be loyal without rebellion. How does one do that when one side, the Separtists, was clearly defeated?: Make it seem like there was a war for each side (there were, after all, "heroes on both sides") that both won, in a sense, by becoming part of the Empire that is now a "safe and secure society". Thus, each side has a stake in the Empire and Palpatine's way of doing things. He doesn't want the Separtists to feel like losers because he is to rule them as well. He said, "Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy, and we shall have peace." In order to have peace, of his kind, he has to have a population that is subdued into his rule without protest. He will say to the Separtist population that they were ill-served by their rulers, such as Dooku, a renegade Jedi, just like the Republic was ill-served by the renegade and treacherous Jedi who wanted to seize power. He will tell the Separatist citzenry that they were ill-servied by the corporate alliances, guilds and federations who were looking after their own interests rather than that of the citizenry, much like the Jedi only cared about their own power. What better way to make the Separatists to agree to his rule than by making them seem like winners of their war? He tells them, you may have lost the battles, but you won the war because you are now part of this glorious empire that will last for 10,000 years. We're all winners! The Republic defeated the Jedi while the Separtists defeated Dooku and the business, corporate interests. Now that we have all one to become an Empire, we will be ruled by me, your Emperor for life, and the Imperial Senate. He needs the population to have a stake in his rule, hence maintaining the "august body" of the Senate in name only, at least until the Death Star is fully operational.

 

Or, Luke is a naive farmboy in the middle of nowhhere
on a planet in the middle of nowhere in the Outer Rim
and he really doesn't know anything more than the
words "Clone Wars".

The animated series is called "Clone Wars" as well.

I'd side with those who suggest that since the
battles took place on many, many planets,
this justifies the plural.

 

If you happen to have the original TV trailer for TPM, taped off of TV not the one on the DVD, then you will hear Yoda say "Begun this Clone War has".

Obviously GL intended there to be more than one. That would explain the wierd reaction to clones as soldiers. He seems to have changed his mind along the way for some reason.

 

Very interesting. Dangerous and disturbing this riddle is. Meditate on it, I will. How would he originally have planned to show multiple Clone Wars in a single movie? I remember hearing he actually had a really hard time pulling AoTC together, no?

DS615: Everytime I post, you give me a reasonable and intelligent answer. When I see you answer other people, you are usually mocking and condescending. It makes me feel tingly inside that you don't make fun of me like you do some of the others. Well, actually, I kind of wish you would taunt me more, as your posts are usually pretty humerous.

Carnage

 

I think that Luke's pluralization of the word "wars" can be explained by the same way that Leia spoke about Obi Wan Kenobi serving his father, Bail Organa, in the Clone War.

At the end, we all know that Kenobi didn't served directly to Bail Organa, but to the Senate, and the Republic. Of course, Bail was part of the Senate and the Republic, so it is true that there was a relationship between those two characters, but not the way Leia is putting it.

This is just Luke's and Leia's own interpretion of the events that ocurred many years ago, and that have become part of their tales, since they were born after this.

Pretty much like hearing someone speaking of World War II when she/he was born many years after it ocurred. You'll see that things are not the same when heard by someone who really lived around those years, and experienced things the way they were.