Palpatine's Royal Guards - the Clone connection?

We all know by now that nearly the entire majority of stormtroopers are clones, with a few exceptions, ie: the Carida Academy, etc...

The ARC Clonetroopers are a special breed of Clonetroopers. Is this the same case with the Red Royal Guards of the Emperor? Are they even a breed cut above the ARC troopers? However, the Red Royal Guards made their first appearance chronologically wise during Episode II: Attack of the Clones, before Obi-Wan Kenobi discovered the clones of Kamino... so factoring in this, how does it all fit in???

 

Zinergy:

We all know by now that nearly the entire majority of stormtroopers are clones...

I don't believe the exact ratio of recruits to clones has ever been firmly established. Maybe the overwhelming preponderance of them were clones back in the day, but by Return of the Jedi, or better yet, the Thrawn Trilogy, all bets are off. Survivor's Quest heavily alludes to the Rebellion destroying the cloning facilities, so the actual percentage of them inundating the Stormtroopers' ranks could be darned-near anything.

There was a thread about this a while back, but I can't remember what it was called or what the eventual concensus was on clone/recruit numbers.

 

Read Visions of the Future and Specters of the Past it talks about one of the Royal Guards and I don?t remember him being a clone

 

Survivor's Quest heavily alludes to the Rebellion destroying the cloning facilities...

I think I remember SQ hinting at one of the four stormtroopers being a Jango clone.

 

From what I've seen, it appears that clones outnumber recruits 2-1 or so.

 

it could be that the first royal guards were not clones, but pulled from the ranks of the senate guard... and possibly added to from Palpatine's sithly connections -- once they are masked, no one will know their true identities.

later, as the empire was established, palpatine had the facility built on Yinchorr where perhaps both clone and recruit trained and were selected to be among the elite Imperial Royal Guards. It's been a while since i've read Crimson Empire, but i don't recall the guard candidates appearing to be potential clones... did any of them mention any pre-training background? Kir Kanos? Carnor Jax? any of the others?

it is quite possible that Palpatine realized that clonetroopers made for poor IRGs because their regular training had them serve the Republic and the Jedi first, and not protect the Emperor and the throne. and so, IRGs came from the recruits who were found loyal and worthy (through the training at Yinchorr)

 

I'd say clones-Jango is a near-Jedi level fighter, and the IRG are rumored to be at this ability level. Carnor Jax and Kir Kanos however, I'd believe are recruits; obviously, Force-sensitivity is not one of Jango's characteristics, and Carnor is just this; Kir doesn't look anything like Jango, hense he's probably a recruit too.

 

I'm not the expert at the Decipher CCG that many people are, but didn't most of the cards for the Endor stormtroopers give home planets for each trooper?

I suspect the imperial war machine had grown large enough by ROTJ that they depended more heavily on recruits and conscripts, as they could only produce a finite number of clones per year.

 

Yep, it's hinted that at least one of the Aurek-7 stormtroopers is a Jango clone. I wouldn't be surprised if all of them except Grappler were...

Which, in turn, implies that Thrawn shifted some Spaarti cylinders to Nirauan...

Kir Kanos and Carnor Jax look identical, don't they? But they're not Jango clones... so - who?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

How could that be though?

By that point Jango has been dead for over 50 years, making any of his clones 100 years old with their rate of growth.

 

Well, couldn't they just take genetic samples to keep on cloning the Jango clones? (though I'm not sure how sound an idea that is)

Or they could just clone the original clonetroopers with the Spaarti technology.

Someone on these boards actually suggested that Kir Kanos and probably Carnor Jax were clones of none other than....

you guessed it, Kyle Katarn.

 

By that point Jango has been dead for over 50 years, making any of his clones 100 years old with their rate of growth.

Some of the stormtroopers seen in the OT are indeed clones of Jango but they are not direct clones but rather, clones of clones. That is why they are such bad shots IMHO. Also, GL has said that by the time of the OT stormtrooper ranks are made up of clones of many individuals (including Jango), many chosen due to the political standing of their families rather than actual combat ability. I believe this was discussed in the Q&A section with Pablo in SW Insider a few issues back.

As for Kir Kanos and Carnor Jax. I always thought that they were both clones of the same person: their trainer Kennedy. Carnor Jax was only able to use the Force because he had met and been trained by Lumiya.

 

Read Visions of the Future and Specters of the Past it talks about one of the Royal Guards and I don?t remember him being a clone

I very highly suggest you reread the HoT duology as the guy you're talking about is indeed a clone. The real guy died years earlier, during the Thrawn conflict if I remember correctly.

 

I thought it was a well known fact that cloning a clone is not a sound idea. It's like photocopying a photocopy. The more you copy something the more "static" there is and any mistakes would be multiplied by the copy.

And I'm not refering to A New Hope stormtroopers. They would only be 60 years old, and judging by how long people seem to live in the GFFA that seems fairly reasonable.

I'm talking about the stormtroopers in Survior's Quest. I guess it is possible that some form of original Jango DNA was kept preserved. I would have to assume that it would have been harvested before he died, as I doubt they know where Boba buried him.

 

Which of the EotH stormtroopers is hinted at being a Jango clone? I sure as crap didn't pick up on it...

 

Don't the royal guard turn up far earlier than the first clones?

I mean, they're already well-established in their role in the Chancellor's Office by the time AOTC starts.

 

Were they well-established, or were they relatively new as of Attack of the Clones--that's the question, I guess.

 

In AOTC novel, Kaminoans insist on regularly taking samples from Jango for further use. They have no wish to make clones of clones; because according to them, this lowers the quality of the genetic material and results in imperfect specimens.

Well, their prime source died on Geonosis. I don't believe there were many Jango clones left by the time of OT. If they didn't actually begin producing clones of clones...

 

Maybe they were cloning, like, his close friends and business associates?

 

Maybe they contact the children of ARC troopers, like Jangotat, and extracted DNA from them?

 

Pelranius: you guessed it, Kyle Katarn.

You know, that makes a bizarre sort of sense... though is there any way that Kyle himself could be a clone?

Hmm... if Mara is Lumiya, and Kyle is Carnor Jax...



QG: Don't the royal guard turn up far earlier than the first clones?

I mean, they're already well-established in their role in the Chancellor's Office by the time AOTC starts.

Sure, but the Kaminoans are businesspeople... it's entirely concievable that Palpatine bought a batch for his own personal use, quite independant of the Army of the Republic...

Remember, as of Acts of War, the Ynchorri are still on Ynchorr, and if the Marvel series has been retroactively reincorporated into canon, Randy's old story showing Wessel as governor of a not-yet-purged planet during the OT has to stand...

As to SQ and clones...

Mara's initial POV (p. 56) is that all stormtroopers are clones... later, we get a hint that at least one of Aurek-7 is a Fett clone - "just a glimpse of an intense, dark-skinned face" (p. 75)...

Later (p. 78), to Mara's surprise that the troopers aren't just numbers, Chak remarks "We all have names here". Possible hint that (a.) Chak is a clone; (b.) "Chak" is a warrior name, like "Grappler", "Watchman", "Cloud" and "Shadow"...

Then, however, he says that a stormtrooper unit can consist of "a set of freshly trained recruits"...

And then, of course, there's Grappler - and a couple of hints that the Empire of the Hand doesn't have anything like the number of troops that it would like...

But... if the problem with cloning clones is caused by the same Force resonance effect that causes clone madness, then the ysalamiri on Nirauan would take care of that...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

They're tag names, the way fighter pilots have them. Why shouldn't ground troops? Even the Wraith unit had tag names. Tainer was called Demolitions, though I would have just truncated that to Demo.

Why do writers do that? Say a dark skinned face is dark? You don't see them describing "normal" people as white or fair skinned. When will Earthians get out of this habit? It's utterly biased, not descriptive.

 

I've never found being described as "dark skinned" offensive.

You've never a read a book describe someone as "pale skinned" or "fair skinned"?

You need to read more.

 

How else would they describe it?

I dont see it as a description nothing to get insulted over.

 

Uh, I have read books where they do describe "light" skinned individuals as "light skinned", "copper skinned", etc. Now I haven't read the book, but I don't see anything wrong with saying "dark skinned", because it is a description of the way a person/character looks that hasn't been seen before.

I mean he could have just said the guy looked human and left it at that, but that is a very (and I mean VERY) vague description. Humans come in all shapes and sizes and describing them from eye color or skin color helps to give them some depth (even if it isn't a whole lot).

Isosceles