Jedi Prince Series

I bid you all dark greetings! Welcome to my thread on the Jedi Prince series.These books were my first venture into the EU. Ah, memories.

So many things to discuss. Will there ever be any more books in the series? What happened to Ken? Did the Prophets get lung diseases from all the chalk flying through the air?

Also, my personal questions:

-Did the Empire know Palpatine was a Sith? The movies suggested different, but every Imperial in this series knew very well. Even if he could never achieve perfection with only two eyes.

-Is the Wook correct in saying that the Prophets in these books are imposters and there are real Prophets somewhere else in the galaxy?

-Is the Wook correct in saying that Triclops was a failed experimant and not actually Palpatine's "child"?

Also, there will be waladon meat and zoochberry juice in the kitchen for anyone interested.

 

Shameless self promotion!

We discuss the Jedi Prince series in that one so....yeah.

 

DOUBLE POST....NOOOO

Yeah but anyway, I haven't read the Jedi Prince series but it is definitely one of the most....memorable of the Young Reader ones.

Trioculus, Whaladons, Ken, the Prophets of the Dark Side, Mount Yoda, Zorba the Hutt...definitely memorable.

 

Man, back in the day, all I knew about post-ROTJ was what was in the SW Databanks, and then this series. I thought Trioculus was this huge villain that was in all of the EU, because I saw a pciture of the HTTE/DFR covers and mistook the tiny Thrawns on them to be Tri. It was great. I loved that Leia robot thing and Grand Moff Hissa, the best villain ever.

 

^ Pretty much the same for me. The GoDV books were all I knew about the post-RotJ EU for many, many years, and I always used to think those books would be the basis for the sequel trilogy. Of course, I was only 7 years old at the time, so I used to think they were pretty cool.

 

Things were doubly odd for me, because I read the Thrawn books (and possibly The Courtship of Princess Leia) before I read Jedi Prince. Even though I was in the target age bracket for the JP books (I was in second grade in 92, but I could swear I didn't read GODV until 4th grade or so), I could tell that there were some jarring... inconsistencies between the SW universe in the adult books and the books with not one but two three-eyed characters. Even at that age, I liked the adult novels better... but that didn't make the kid books any less fun.

That being said, the YJK books are a much better example of how to write a kid's series that can be taken more seriously.

 

I remember reading the books and walking around the house wearing a glove on only my right hand and saying "I'm the Emperor". My parents thought I became a fan of Micheal Jackson with that glove on.

 

You eat sentient meat?
You can't whaladons, they're intelligent!
Not this one, he blew all his money on lotto tickets.
Oh, all right then *digs in*

There may have been a retacon that this is just a version that Leia and Han told their kids (hence the Empire being so openly Evil)

Though that raises further questions, namely why Leia would describe such graphic death and possible deaths to her kids as a bed time story.

 

Meat ceases to be sentient when it's in a sandwich.

 

I feel like I've heard about that retcon, too. I think it's not an official retcon, but I also think it was suggested by someone like Dan Wallace or Abel Pena, so it could end up carrying weight at some point.

And I haven't read these stories in a long time, and then only a couple of them, but I don't remember it being too graphic (just loud sound effects). But if it's Leia telling the story, and you know she, Dad, and Uncle Luke are all alive and well, then maybe the possible deaths wouldn't be as suspenseful or hard for a kid to swallow.

A lack of Ken has got to be one of the big missed opportunities of the EU. I can understand wanting to avoid any and all things having to do with this series, but the son of the Emperor is out there and wants to be a Good Guy--that really deserves some coverage.

 

OP -- I can wholeheartedly recommend TalonCard's article "Everything You Ever Wanted to Learn About GoDV, but were afraid to ask" -- found here. It does a great job of tying up the series with the larger fabric of continuity, reads very quickly, and is hilarious throughout.

There is also another really good article here, courtesy of ris_jsarek, which does a great job pinpointing the numerous references found in the greater EU to the GoDV series.

 

Note that that webpage is now years out of date. There have been a lot more references since then, so many that it really hasn't been *necessary* to show how the books have been referred to by more reputable sources.

 

That retcon was created by Bill Slavicsek and Michele Carter in their article "Prophets of the Dark Side: Villains for the Star Wars: New Republic Campaign, Part One" in Polyhedron 103. It contains a short vignette (like those in many of WEG's books) in which Anakin and the twins (all still very young) "Wanna hear about bad Kadann and nasty Jedgar!" as a bedtime story. Leia agrees, but simplifies the story and removes the scariest parts. The rest of the article gives the lowdown on the Prophets as they really were. The article (and part two in issue 104) is very cool and I hope it'll eventually be fully incorporated into continuity (as it stands, it's in continuity limbo). Elements from the article have been cited elsewhere, such as Abel referencing the Church of the Dark Side and the Prophetess Merili.

 

Well, actually, it's very possible that some of Palpatine's genetic material may have been used in the experiment...so he could still be his "son" of a sort. Here's a quote from Abel (the originator of the retcon) on the issue:

Well, Ken can't really be Kenth Hamner without significant timeline retcons, due to the ages not matching up; he's older than Luke, yet Ken is almost ten years his junior. I don't know if his disappearance is a "missed opportunity," but it definitely is a mysterious omission from an in-universe point-of-view. Perhaps Luke, realizing that he couldn't really raise Ken himself (dragging a twelve-year-old around with you everywhere, including in war situations and top-secret meetings, is not really ideal, or a good environment for the kid), sent him to an orphanage or boarding school until he came of age, or else had him adopted. By LOTF/FOTJ, he could likely be a Jedi Knight or even maybe Master in Luke's order...though it's always possible he settled down as a farmer or something instead. I mean, not all Force-Sensitives HAVE to become Jedi, and if he's paranoid about his Palpatine heritage, he may have intentionally not cultivated his powers.

Of course, given the cliff-hanger ending of Prophets of the Dark Side, he may also have gotten back together with his father Triclops at some point. There's really no way to know.

But yeah, I'd love to see him in a recent story, even just as an off-hand mention ("Han and Leia passed a group of Jedi in the corridors, including Jaden Korr and Ken."). Until then, though, he's basically in canon limbo.

BUT, if we accept the retcon that GODV is a story told by Leia to her children, then we could always just say that Ken never really existed, and was just a character Leia made up for her children to identify with and in order to explain complicated stuff to them.
But that's just no fun.

But the biggest question I have is: what happened to Zoochberry juice? In the Jedi Prince Series, it's pretty much the most popular drink around, with every major character from Bounty Hunters to Rebel Admirals drinking it almost exclusively...but it never appears again after that. Did the planet where Zoochberries were grown go through some kind of cataclysm?

And is Zoochberry juice alcoholic or not? You'd think if you were marketing an alcoholic beverage you'd name it something other than "juice".
And how then do you distinguish it from non-alcoholic Zoochberry juice?

 

That;s one of the things I don't like about the book: Everyone is addicted to zoochberry juice! What is it?!?!?!?!?!

Also, has anyone else noticed that almost every book in the series involves some sort of environmental issue? Here's the evidence:

GODV: Whaladon hunting
LCOTJ: Burning of a rainforest
ZTHR: Braze
MTMY: Toxic easte in DUro
QOTE: The weather on Chadra Fan

 

Right--to be clear, I DON'T support the "Ken = Kenth Hamner Retcon." What I do support is some exploration of what became of the Grandson of the Emperor. You're right, needn't have become a Jedi, but if he didn't because he was too nervous about his heritage, then that in itself sounds like a story that should be told.

I take it back--THIS is the story that needs to be told.

 

Maybe Ken became Zekk...

 

You imply it's somehow possible to NOT notice.

My skull is still aching from the anvil with which those books hit me over the head.

 

But... Luke's a Jedi Knight. Dragging small robed children around with them everywhere is what Jedi Knights do. I remember I kept thinking, in LotF, that Ben seemed mighty young to be doing what he was doing... then remembered, "Oh, no, wait, he's basically just Jacen's Ahsoka, it seems much more reasonable now!"

 

And I haven't read these stories in a long time, and then only a couple of them, but I don't remember it being too graphic (just loud sound effects).
Grand Moff Hisa was sentenced to be starved for as long as possible, and then fed one last meal of dirty water and hard bread, filled with horrible parasites that slowly eat you from the inside out.

Perhaps not blood and guts graphic, but the sheer horror of that kind of death terrified me as a kid.

And while not fatal, there was that time that Hissa had his legs melted off, or how Trioculous got third degree burns (for a plant he needed in order to stop his body from rotting -very graphic illustration of that in the book- because he used a device which kills people in rather nightmarish way itself.)

 

Ditto to the last two. Those depictions of Hissa melting in that pool of lava and Trioculus's burns horrified me as a kid. And I could never get used to seeing Triclops on any page. And that image of Trioculus frozen in carbonite on the cover of Mission to Mount Yoda kept me away from that book for a long time.

 

Allow me to introduce you to Green Aesop. It's really useless in a galaxy with infinite energy and millions of inhabited planets, but I expect a Nelvaanian to cry at litter. Well, a Nelvaanian played by a human who looks vaguely blue.

 

Thanks! I've been toying with the idea of doing an updated video version, ala the Nostalgia Critic, but was unsure about rights issues...

TC

 

Don't bother, I've been planning on that for the past month. It's been all the rage in the JCC.