Mara *hearts* Lando?

I was flipping through my old Star Wars Encyclopedia and I came across the Mara Jade entry and just out of curiosity I read it. They said that Mara became romantically involved with Lando at one time! Now in the books that I read where they interacted it didn't seem like sparks were flying to me. Did I miss a book where they got together? If I did where is it?

 

I don't think so, but they did work together for a while, and I *believe* that they posed that they were a couple on one mission.

 

The posed as a couple sometimes, and Lando was definitely interested, but Mara wasn't.

 

Lando wanted sparks to happen, but he was never lucky enough. Or as many would put it, he was lucky that he got away.

I think there might have been one instance where Jade actually considered Lando, but wrote him off.

 

So basically the Encyclopedia just misinterpreted the stories?

 

No, Zahn retconned it in HoT. It was originally supposed to be a romance, from what KJA wrote in JAT.

 

The encyclopedia is an in-universe document, check the introduction. It's a matter of the people in-universe thinking there was something up with them, when they were going undercover (which was precisely what they wanted people to think, as it was their cover).

 

Also it can easily be implied that Zahn wanted Jade and Skywalker to have a relationship, but the following authors did not go down that path. So when Zahn wrote his duo later, he decided he would have them get engaged himself. This way he knows that there won't be another woman/man in their lives.

But Val is correct that the encylopedia is an in-universe document, so it would just be part of Lando's cover.

 

They were just posing as a couple, in order to get closer to Jorj Car'das.

 

Also it can easily be implied that Zahn wanted Jade and Skywalker to have a relationship, but the following authors did not go down that path. So when Zahn wrote his duo later, he decided he would have them get engaged himself.

Ehh, I could swear I read in something that it was decided long before HoT by the editors that Luke and Mara would end up together, and that was why none of Luke's other romances ever panned out. Then when they wanted Zahn back onboard he said only if he got to pen the engagement. I'm fairly sure of reading that, though I can't provide a source...

-Paul

 

Before the Lando-Mara relationship was retconned, there was a lot of complanining that the two were wrong for each other, especially that Mara would never go for a guy like Lando. For that reason and that Luke and Mara were meant to get together, Zahn did the retcon.

The Lando-Mara relationship was set during that bleak stretch of novels where the authors couldn't give a @#$* for what Zahn had done in his trilogy of books (which was a surprising lack of respect, considering Zahn's work started the whole book line!), and Mara, Karrde, the Noghri, Garm Bel Iblis, Winter, and other concepts and characters introduced by Zahn, which all seemed poised to be major elements to the novels, were all abruptly gone, barely mentioned, or drained of all purpose or coolness. In the meantime we were fed utter dreck such as Waru, the cloned Emperors, Thracken Sal-Solo, Hethrir, and Kueller.

 

Actually Dark Empire was written before Zahn's trilogy, and was released around the second or third book of that trilogy as I recall.

If anyone had unoriginal dreck it was Zahn, because he used the idea of clones himself, and he new very well about the existance of Dark Empire.

I highly disagree that Dark Empire is dreck...

 

I thought they were banging each other in the Correllian Trilogy.

 

The clone Emperor spoiled Dark Empire for me, which I thought was otherwise entertaining (I like the planets Byss and Nar Shadda). By having Palpatine return, it kills the greatness of Anakin Skywalker's sacrifice and return to the good side. I never said DE was dreck, just the clone Emperor idea.

 

It was explained in Zahn's duology that it was all a cover story

 

"By having Palpatine return, it kills the greatness of Anakin Skywalker's sacrifice and return to the good side. I never said DE was dreck, just the clone Emperor idea."

Not quite, the greatness of Anakin's Sacrifice had nothing to do with killing the Emperor, but rather the fact that he saved his son, and that he turned to the light.

"No Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his own life for others."

Had his son died, there would have been no more Jedi, and Vader would have remained dark, and then went on to corrupt his daughter based on the the information he took from his son. The fact that he layed down his life insured that the Jedi would survive, and that Palpatine would never regain the power that he had before his death on the Death Star. Anakin insured that balance was in the favor of the light, and that the Jedi would be able to prevail against the dark from that day forward.

"bleak stretch of novels where the authors couldn't give a @#$* for what Zahn had done in his trilogy of books"

Before you put any words into KJA mouth, and slander his good character, perhaps you should read his own reasoning as to why the land thing happened(you'll probably be surprised to hear that it was Zahn's fault, and done with Zahn's good permission);

What preparations did you go through before writing the character, Mara Jade?

Pretty much the same preparations as writing any of the characters in the books. Obviously the things we study the most are the characters from the movies, because you can watch the movies over and over again. But in the entire fiction series, what we had to do is take all the stuff together, including the characters that were created by other authors, like Mara Jade. I read all of Tim's books. In fact I read the second one before it was released, and I read the manuscript for the third one as soon as Tim finished with it. So you study what material there is, and draw from there. You get your picture in your head who Mara Jade is. Now, some of the fans have asked me about the kind of thing Mara Jade and Lando Calrissian were having, in my second book in the "Jedi Academy" trilogy, Dark Apprentice. That's because when Tim had just finished writing The Last Command, I spoke to him on the phone. And I said, "clearly you're setting something up something between Luke and Mara" and at the time he said, "No, I don't think so. There's nothing there." So I said, "All right, do you mind if she does something with Lando?" He said "fine," because he wasn't planning to do anything else. I think it was most of the fans who came back and said "It's Luke and Mara!" So Tim came back and did his other books, the way he ended it. And in fact, some of the big Mara Jade fans, you're probably one of them (Who, Shada and Mazzic? Never! ), were angered when Barbara Hambly came up with Callista in her book, who was the first, or the great love of Luke's life. Well that was meant to be the great love of Luke's life because Tim had said Mara wasn't going to be the love of Luke?s life. But, you know, like real romance, things change. So, I got to get rid of Callista in Darksaber. See, we're all working together, and I helped clear things up. At the end of the day, we like to pretend that we had a big plan all along. And sometimes we did.

-Jadecrusades

 

Ah, but a cover story for who? That is the unanswered question. I have already posted on another thread that someone who wanted to bring down Luke Skywalker and return the Empire to its former glory was using the image of the Emperor to unite the factionalised Empire. They worked totally behind the scenes, and their identity has never been discovered...

I think it was Lumiya!

Her, or one of the Taage family...

There is a COOL story in there somewhere...

 

Who is putting words in KJA's mouth or slandering him? I didn't notice/do any of that, I don't think. I was just commenting on the stretch of novels where Jade and company were barely used and should have been, as their presence and development would have been preferable to what we got instead. If anything I have posted can be misconstrued as an attack on Mr. Anderson, that was not my intent.

Okay, so I was wrong that the dissing of Zahn's concepts led to the unlikely Lando-Mara relationship. But her and Luke make a better couple anyway...

 

"bleak stretch of novels where the authors couldn't give a @#$* for what Zahn had done in his trilogy of books"

specifically; "authors couldn't give a @#$*"

Specifically by saying, you were saying that the authors didn't care (with masked language no less), when infact that wasn't the case. Anderson cared enough to talk to Zahn, and asked him what his plans were(he even wanted to add to the direction of Luke and Mara), but at the time there were no plans. So he also asked if it was ok for Lando and Mara to get together, at which point Zahn said it was ok. To claim that the "authors couldn't give a @#$*", is to put words into their mouths, and slander their character, when infact it was never their fault in the first place, it was Zahn's.

 

Jedi_Corran_Horn...
"So basically the Encyclopedia just misinterpreted the stories?"

Oh no, the encyclopedia presented the stories quite correctly.

As the "cover story" story is also in-universe, we quite don't know what happened between Lando and Jade.

It's rather a matter of "he said, she said."

We have the Corellian Trilogy having them going at it. We have the official reference books suggesting they were romantically linked with one another.

And we have Mara telling her current beau that things weren't quite like what he thought. Which, to be sure, Mara isn't an uninterested party. She had a lot riding on Luke believing her story about her and Lando.

 

Ah, but a cover story for who? That is the unanswered question

I think that it was sort of explained. Mara was looking for someone for Karrde, and Lando was hopping around the galaxy at the time. Convinent cover story

 

Ccorran summed up how Mara feels for Lando in I, Jedi. Something along the line of her buying him for the amount she thinks he's worth and selling him for the amount he thinks he's worth.

Maybe she should have given that a try. Definitely easy credits.

 

The cover story I was referring to was not Lando and Jade's story but the cloned Emperor and what the truth behind all of that might be.

As for my comment on writers after Zahn discarding his creations, I never singled out KJA.

Think of all the instances of Leia running around with no Noghri bodyguards, in practically every book after Zahn's trilogy, contradicting what he had set up with no explanations given, and Zahn having to explain the Noghri's absence when he returned to write the tail end of the book line.

That's just one example. Perhaps my criticism of Zahn's ideas not being used/explored should be directed at editors, not writers? Editors should be overseeing continuity, after all. They wanted all those books to seamlessly tie together and they don't in many ways.

There are many excellent things to come out of the non-Zahn books. I enjoyed the Jedi Academy trilogy, and the Black Fleet Crisis is pretty good, as is the Corellian Trilogy. The Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina anthologies are also very entertaining.