Lit [Legends] Making sense of the Hand of Thrawn books

"The kids are safe on New Alderaan!" That was probably the only in-comic dialogue that definitively put the comic years after ROTJ.

 

I do remember how strange it was having Pelly on the Chimera after what happened in Darksaber. With Wedge what made me laugh was that he was a General in charge of just a fighter squadron under the command of another General who happened to be one of Zahn’s OC’s

But re-reading those books it’s amazing how much the referenced minor things from the TTT like Mara and Luke comparing going through a cave to hacking through the jungle in Wayland, even though they’ve been through a thousand jungles since then.

Essentially Zahn made a 10 year gap feel like just 1 year to the TTT while using those books to take shots at other Bantam Authors.

The first book defeitnely feels like a short story dragged out. The whole Pirate base infiltration plot by Luke goes no where and could be cut out and you wouldn’t miss anything.

To me the Hand Of Thrawn Books where Zahn’s version of Return of the Jedi - genuine greatness (the Luke/Mara scenes were genuinely great and yes they should’ve married sooner, mixed in with awfulness, whether it’s Han Solo wetting his pants at the mention of Thrawns name and how Mara was never on the dark side despite being one of Palpatine 3 fave people and Palps rise to Power was all part of Thrawns master plan ! and where he starts to copy himself. Where Lucas had a 2nd Death Star Shada is the 2nd Mara - even with the same character journey !

 

I can't get behind the "Shada is Mara 2.0" claim. I remember talking about this in the 181st Imperial Discussion Thread on Specter four years ago, so after a bit of googling I'll just quote myself from it.

Is Zahn really not allowed to create another powerful female character? Is Rey Leia 2.0 because they're both women, even though Rey has so far nearly identically paralleled Luke? Something to chew on.

 

We will leave aside the idea of breaking into someone’s house, to enlist seeming really stupid for now and seemed more a plot contrivance so she could listen in on Karrade and Lando. Il let that go.

To me the characters seemed vastly similar, like how Mad Martigan,in Willow was Han Solo with a sword (leaving out Indiana Jones being Han Solo with a whip comparison) . Shada seemed like Mara but without Force powers or a Lightsaber. That didn’t matter though because we know she had similar mad skillz cause there was a scene every other chapter of her showing them off complete with the same Snarky tude to go with those skills.

Shada also had the same plot arc as Mara in TTT. She suffered a life altering problem in the past, then she discovers what she thought was the truth was actually a lie. She even kills the bad guy (Tierece) at the end just like Mara does with C’boath (that should’ve been Leia in Jmo but that’s another post) and at the end she goes off with Karrade just like Mara in TTT.

You saying they aren’t even just a bit similar ?

 

To go back to the original question, I'd explain that Wedge is in command of the entire fighter complement of Bel Iblis's fleet and is just flying as Rogue Leader because he's Wedge and he can do it if he wants to (and at this point, the squadron can really run itself under Tycho, so it's not like he really has to be tied down by a bunch of squadron-leader admin work). Presumably he stepped down as chief of staff but since he didn't want to retire just yet, he moved to a combat command as the general in charge of one of the numbered fleet's Starfighter Command components, directly under the fleet commander, Bel Iblis.

As for the rest of them, the core Rogue veterans seem to have very little appetite for career advancement; they'd much rather remain in the cockpit, with their friends, at the medium level of responsibility they're familiar with and comfortable with, rather than go off somewhere and work to be squadron leaders and colonels and generals. And as long as there's very little pressure for them to go out and take on responsibility, no one like Wedge or Ackbar telling them, "I know what you want to do but the New Republic needs you to make a sacrifice," they don't. Because for the past ten years or so, the NRDF has essentially been a peacetime military. They've got the Empire beat, and though the occasional crisis may flare up, the meaningful phase of the GCW is over and there's just no pressure to force people like Hobbie and Janson to move if they don't want to move. This is especially the case since they're core personnel of Rogue Squadron, the single most iconic unit in the New Republic, and so they can get cut a lot of slack when it comes to career progression. If the famous faces of Rogue Squadron want to stay in Rogue Squadron, that's all good from a public relations standpoint; Rogue Squadron can stay directly connected to that Rebel Alliance legacy. It's also probable, given the great degree of continuity we've seen in assignments within the NRDF, that the NRDF is simply much more comfortable with commanders and personnel staying in place with a single unit with which they identify than something like the US military, which is very much into rotating everybody around. It's probably related to their background as an irregular Rebel military staffed primarily by freedom fighters based in their own sectors, and always short of expertise and therefore willing to essentially embed key personnel in their positions for life once they've found someone who fits. The Rebellion didn't have the luxury of rotating personnel, and I don't think it ever fully got into the habit as the NRDF.

 

A bit similar? Yeah, of course. But that's miles away from 'Shada is the 2nd Mara, even with the same character journey.' I really do think that Zahn spent some of Specter making the similarities between them obvious just so that he could flip them on their head at the end of the book. Kind of like how Allston starts Wraith Squadron off with Kell's story being exactly like Corran's from Rogue Squadron, but then pulls the rug out from under it and launches into a crazy ensemble piece.

Basically, Zahn presents this character with a life-altering problem in her past, but then does the inverse of what he did with Mara. She breaks into the good guys' house one third of the way into the duology and says "Yeah I'm ready to be a good guy now," and that's when the parallels with Mara end. Shada and Karrde's journey into the Kathol Rift is nothing like Mara's character arc in Zahn's earlier trilogy. Her killing Tierce isn't at all the same as Mara killing C'Baoth and Luuke --- for Mara, it's the climax of a trilogy's worth of rediscovering her powers and abilities; for Shada, it's a simple thing that happens simply because she's there. It's not the crest of Shada's character arc. The primary similarity between the two cases is that they're both women.

And Mara doesn't go off with Karrde at the end of The Last Command. She goes off with Luke and realizes that her future is with the New Republic. Mara leaves Karrde's service at the end of the trilogy, while Shada joins it at the end of the duology. Another inversion.

They're different enough that I really do believe that them both being female characters is what influences, however unconsciously, most claims that Shada is Mara 2.0.

 

Shada was a background character in the TTT, serving with Mazzic's group. Specter sees her leaving Mazzic's and joining Karrde's.

 

I need to recheck but Mara didn’t join the New Rep until Vision. In TTT she’s still part of Karrades organisation. She followed Luke but that was only the end scene and nothing else.

I know in JAT they set her up as having her own business (and the potential Lando relationship) but Zahn retconned both. I remember in Spectre Karrade saying she never left and it was all just part of him setting her up to take over the business. As for the Lando thing, I always thought the retcon unesscary. It was 10 years between TTT and HoT , for me it was what ! , Mara never had boyfriend in that time frame ???

 

This statement is always true.

 

The Lando retcon was not only unnecessary but absurd in its specificity. Luke is asking Mara about the Star Wars equivalent of a phone call between Mara and Leia that occurred seven years earlier that Luke wasn't even a party to.

 

Luke doesn't ask about that event specifically when he says "What about Lando" after she criticises his long string of relationships - he's heard that Mara and Lando have been going around the galaxy together. It is Mara, that brings up the "embarrassing moment" that she remembers from that period.


Zahn, having read that book (Children of the Jedi) - including That Moment - thought it was out of character for Mara - and chose to explain it the "masquerade for Vicebaron Sukarian" whom Mara and Lando had been trying to get info from.

 

Doesn’t take away from the fact it was an unesscary retcon

 

To readers, maybe. To Zahn, it was necessary. Plus, it tied in with the whole "Karrde searching for Car'das" subplot.

 

This strikes me as a somewhat tautological defense, given that writers rarely put things in stories that they DON'T feel are necessary.

 

OOU, it’s Zahn retconning a relationship he didn’t want to have happened, but who’s to say Mara isn’t doing the same thing? Maybe if Luke asked Lando he’d get a different story. The truth depends greatly on one’s point of view, after all.


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That's the problem

 

Yeah, this is how I've always taken it, even if it was clearly not what Zahn intended. It just fits too perfectly as Mara not wanting to admit to Luke that, yes, she was in a relationship with his womanizing close friend.

The same with her opinion on the clone Palpatine. "The Emperor was in town and didn't give me a call? Obviously not the real Emperor, then!"

 

Eh, that’s one I always sort of understood because the initial decision was so weird. Mara had spent the past three books telling Lando to get lost, showing no interest whatsoever. And then all of a sudden, she’s sleeping with him? Zahn had spent three books setting her up with Luke and was poised to make them a couple, KJA had had Mara rejecting Lando for three books, and then Hambly comes along and is like, “I think I’ll have a throwaway scene where Mara completely reverses herself for no reason and Luke’s love interest/future wife sleeps with his friend instead. That’s not awkward.” If I were Zahn, I’d be annoyed enough to go out of my way to undo it too.

Consider, too, that the original scene forcing Lando and Mara together came in a book in which Hambly replaced Mara as Luke’s love interest with a new character of her own creation (Luke’s body-possessing ghost Jedi lover). Why’s going out of her way to shunt Mara off with someone else while Hambly introduces her love interest never denounced as petty authorial interference? The whole thing was ugly to begin with; I don’t really blame Zahn for wanting to write his way out of it.

 

KJA's "final sabacc game" scene (book 2) where Mara reevaluates Lando after seeing him give the Falcon back to Han, might have been what was being taken as foreshadowing.

Also the banter between Mara and Lando in the battle against the Death Star Prototype:

"You'd think destroying one Death Star in a lifetime would be enough"
"I prefer men who never settle for enough."

Those were probably what Hambly took as licence to put Lando and Mara closer together.


That said, crediting Luke with destroying the Sun Crusher, is a bit odd, if book 3 had been read closely. Maybe she only read a synopsis of that one?

 

Mara was not originally intended to get with Luke, and Hambly created Callista because she was specifically directed by Lucasfilm to give Luke a love interest. Then they realized how popular Mara was becoming and changed their mind midway through the Callista trilogy.

 

Zahn on the subject:

http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/zahn.asp

TFN: Did you expect Luke and Mara to get married?

TZ: Yes. I always intended that they would be getting together at some point. She seemed to be, from my point of view, the perfect match for him. The problem I saw was that as I was finishing up "The Last Command", they had already contracted twelve more books: they'd realized the series was taking off. Other authors were going to be doing them, I wasn't, so I figured whatever they decide is out of my hands now: it's licensed material, I've had my fun. I had to say goodbye to Mara, whatever happened to her was out of my hands. Then when they came back at the end of '93 and asked me to do one more book to sort of "bookend" the Bantam series, I thought about it for awhile and came up with two things I needed to do if I was to the book: one was to end the war between the New Republic and the Empire, and [two] to get Luke and Mara together. If we're going to do some kind of closure to the Bantam series, those two events needed to be done. At first they were unwilling to have Luke and Mara married, engaged, whatever. They wanted it left ambiguous. I said those were the two things I feel are needed for closure: if it wasn't agreeable someone else could do the book, that's fine, and it was one book originally. And they came back and agreed to let me do that. So it was immensely fun during the next few years to watch all the rumors starting that Luke was cursed, he could never get married because Lucasfilm had decided Luke would never be married, all the time knowing that, yes he WAS set up, and all the authors knew he was set up, and so they were bringing it that direction. So any woman they brought in would eventually be written out or put into "friendship mode" or whatever. So it wasn't a matter of Lucasfilm was saying "no", it was a matter that the other authors were aiming the same direction I was. And everyone was keeping it a secret. It was very well done.


And Children of the Jedi was fairly late - May 1995.

 

I could be wrong on this but didn’t KJA originally ask Zahn about puting Mara and Luke together and it was Zahn who said no ?

 

Possibly it was "Not till the end of the "twelve book run""

Given that a point was made of how single Luke was in The Crystal Star (December 1994) - it was fairly obvious that, whatever happened before that, was going to go nowhere.

Same with Black Fleet Crisis's Akanah - given that the Corellia Trilogy, published before that, showed a single Luke.

 

Either way it’s not something that needed to be retconned. She had a relationship and it didn’t work out. It’s a 10 year gap, more than likely.

Changing the subject but I always thought the whole Karrade/Cardas thing and Cardas giving Karrade his blessing as very much meant to be him and Lucas and that’s how Zahn saw it . Would you agree ?

 

Well, according to Hambly, "my original mandate in Children of the Jedi was to create a love-interest for Luke (it was only as I was finishing the book that I was told things would go in a different direction)".