Fanclub Mara Jade Skywalker Fan club

BUT SHE DID! Lol.

In the Mara Jade comics, when she felt the emperor’s death and saw the vision of Luke and Vader “strike him down”. She was sapped of strength and unconscious when admiral Daala showed up to arrest her (cause of evil girl pettiness). Mara was imprisoned and hella close to throwing in the towel... but the ONE THING that she latched to kept her going in anger...

The Last Command. That was now her purpose. And it’s pretty cool that you compare her to a samurai; an artist on Pinterest has this Asian inspired painting that is multiple canvases of star wars persons as feudal Japan characters... and on the emperors panel you see a dainty female samurai with magenta blade and flame red hair. WANT IT.

 

This is actually a big theme in my fanfic: "why are so many people loyal to the Empire, even long after Palpatine's death?" And the answer, unfortunately, is mostly that propaganda is easy to make and very effective. Daniel Kahneman explains it best when he says (paraphrasing here): "humans have a hard time distinguishing familiarity from truth." (Which I wonder might be one of the reasons why the Empire was so pro-human, because perhaps Star Wars aliens are not so easy to warp...)

So it wouldn't be that hard. You raise her from childhood, repeat over and over that she's special and needed, that the Empire—this great entity which saved the galaxy from total calamity—needs her in particular. Everyone around her repeats the lie ad nauseam, most people having forgotten it was a lie to begin with (another concept from political science, "blowback", or just even people who know they're lying will over time come to believe the lie), and says over and over that Palpatine is this great, indispensable man... raised in those conditions, Palpatine might not even need the Force (but he certainly used it anyway).

What's remarkable really is that Mara ended up as little warped as she did. Either the Force was protecting her (possible, it does like balance and probably would not have taken kindly to Palpatine warping her in this way), or Palpatine didn't want her totally broken (which is where I come down; it's easier to sell the lie that the Emperor is good when the Emperor's Hand genuinely believes it).

 

So a question I have is why does Mara say that her force abilities are starting to “atrophy”when the emperor died? While she’s a prisoner? Is this part of the force Glamour: to empower her and give her focus only when she’s acting on his wishes, to confuse her abilities and sense of purpose with his will? It’s something so subtle that she wouldn’t be able to detect, being untrained in the force… But a brilliant deception that would leave her wobbly and atrophied when he’s gone. Maybe she just wasn’t using the force on her own strength, honing her own mental abilities with it. Luke wasn’t kidding when he said she needed training. She was a superior warrior and strategist... and mechanic... just CRAZY gifted... yet hobbled in the force usage to keep her manageable enough to be shaped and deceived.

 

What would have been a neat story is Mara assuming the role of Heir to the Empire, to take the throne as Empress. Imagine if TROS was about Mara Jade instead of Rey!

I may have a fan fict to write biw.

I need to see this panel of a Samurai Mara Jade! Her last name Jade invokes the Jade Empire Video Game.

 

Look up mara jade on Etsy, you’ll see it right away. These forums are not image friendly unless you are using a third party image hosting site, and that just annoys the crap outta me. So you’re on your own!

 

@AllTheSingleMaras

Is this the one?

 

That's the one! There's more that have Luke, Han and Chewie, Vader and Emperor, Leia... they are lovely.

 

Nice play on words.

 

Got that Mara art (+Luke from the same artist) on my wall!

Back in the day, folks made SW mods for Jade Empire, there was a pretty good green robes Mara.

 

I would have loved to see that.

 

BUMP

 

Is it still allowed to post in here? The appearance of Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand in the mobile game Galaxy of Heroes today is happening!

 

Huzzah! New Mara content. I am glad she is not being forgotten.

 

I shall never forget Mara! She is still the best character to come out of Legends in terms of amount of awesome content.

 

We remember! She lives on in us fans and our hearts.

 

Well newer generations will have to rely on us Jade fans to “pass on what we have learned” about Mara since it seems Disney like GL wants nothing to do with her (so far).

My concern of forgetting her lies only with a generation of NU Canon fans who know nothing of her.

 

Always! "Hang on a minute, I'll come with you!"

I love Shannon's commitment to Mara! And I think the Galaxy of Heroes art is very solid - wish she had sleeves, but I've kind of given up that battle, sadly. Wish there was a way to farm her shards, though - I'm stuck at 3 stars, and have made a promise not to spend money on mobile games.

I have some plans about that last, but we'll see if they bear any fruit. I think given the absolute popularity of the Thrawn Trilogy, Mara will never truly leave, thank Zahn!

 

I hope Zahn can re-insert Mara into canon. I mean Revan and Thrawn are so popular in Legends, they got canonized.

*Crosses fingers.*

 

I think it would be nice, but I wouldn't bet on it. There's a couple of factors against Mara (not in my mind - in my mind, they should do a lot of things, including deleting Sacrifice from existence): 1) her story simply cannot work with what Luke's story is, and though it's of course not at all the extent of her story, her relationship with Luke is a big part of her journey. Restoring Mara without some kind of journey like that would feel like a truncated character. 2) There does seem to be some institutional bias against her - aforementioned Sacrifice, the rumors/jokes of Lucas's dislike of the character, the whole "no attachments" thing that lead people to think she simply doesn't fit with the Jedi, the fact that she was systematically excluded from materials like the X-Wing game when they were updated after Disney was more settled into control of the franchise, and the fact that only now has she been included even in a legendary capacity in any ongoing promotional material such as Galaxy of Heroes (though the hilarious "blinded by love" effect on Jedi Knight Luke does indicate that at least on the dev team there's some people who know and love her history. 3) some fans have pointed out that a lot of characters have "taken her place" (most prominantly EckhartsLadder) (I MUST stress here that I do NOT agree with this myself, but I can see why they say it).

The addition of Mara into Galaxy of Heroes does give me a lot of hope, but I just don't think there's a lot of chance of her in canon, or that she might not get the Rukh treatment and be pretty warped and truncated.

 

A way to fix Luke’s story is that Mara and Luke meet in the interim between ROTJ and TLJ, that she went into deep cover as The Emperor’s Hand to to find and kill Luke, when she learns The Emperor is no more.
I mean if Filoni can add Inquisitors, Mara can somehow be inserted into the story. It would even be neat if Mara attacks Luke while he trains Grogu, you could then build a relationship and retcon some things. Then the reason she is not in TLJ is that either a) Kylo killed her, or b) she goes to Exegol and faces Palpatine.

 

I've heard that proposal - that one of the reasons Luke is the way he is in TLJ is because he's lost that universe's Mara...but I have ZERO desire to see any type of Sacrifice style storyline played out again. It killed my love for Star Wars as a whole for an entire year, and I still cannot reread the book without it affecting me profoundly negatively for days. Having them bring Mara into the current continuity and then repeat that storyline would very likely kill my love of Star Wars again.

 

I understand that. Perhaps Mara instead of dying, joins Ahsoka in trying to destroy Thrawn? When I mean join, is they both have the same goal.

 

That would certainly be better. I just think that as a company, Lucasfilm/Disney is biased against Mara, though of course I cannot prove anything. So I don't think it's likely that we'd see a Mara that would have a satisfying arc or portrayal. Sadly. I'd love to be proven wrong - I just am very pessimistic post 2006.

 

Except this is the Era of Resurgent-Amazonia, tough and powerful female characters are vogue, and Mara Jade was among the first in Star Wars of badass women. To bring her into canon would be to acknowledge that she like Leia paved the way for female characters to be a focal point.