Lit Reading 'Young Jedi Knights' and 'Junior Jedi Knights'

Off-hand I can't remember when it was revealed to the rest of the galaxy. It wasn't a big secret, I don't think. Like even back during the Thrawn trilogy, when the Noghri called her daughter of Vader, its not like Leia panicked about someone else overhearing them. Mara didn't know about it at that point but then she had been out of the loop on a lot of news (and when the Noghri mentioned to her that Luke was Vader's son, it was a big shock to her).

Seeing the young Jedi each assemble their own lightsabers was a lot of fun, as well as all the personality they put into them. After the prequels standardized things (and most other eras copied the prequels), I missed the individual lightsaber designs. I think back then just about any decent jewel or crystal could have served as a lightsaber crystal. Something like an Adegan crystal would be best, but a lot of Jedi relics had been lost by that era. I think back in the Shadows of the Empire novel Luke just made his own crystal in a little oven/forge too. Nowadays every lightsaber has to have a kybur crystal or something like that.

Ta'a Chume was never nice but then they ramped her evil back up later on. Not to mention what they did to Teneniel Djo too (and Isolder later on).

And this book had a lot of plot development too, with the main group finding out about Tenel Ka's true position and everything that comes with it, as well as Tenel Ka losing her arm. Of course in Star Wars that's not such a big deal (especially for Hapan royalty) but choosing not to get a prosthetic is a good reminder of humility. It does stand out that they didn't inspect the lightsabers better earlier but oh well. Partially its a kid's book and partially for plot reasons.

 

It's in the old Marvel Star Wars comics that, at least in the early post-Yavin stories, they're portrayed as keeping it secret for a while:

Star Wars 92: The Dream

Leia: "Luke ... have you told anyone else about this?"
Luke: "How could I, without explaining to them why it upsets me so ... who Darth Vader really was, and what he was to the pair of us. We haven't even told anyone besides Han about our being brother and sister, because we didn't want people to begin asking questions about our parentage."
Leia: "And the truth would make us so unpopular. No man was ever more hated than Darth Vader, unless it was the Emperor himself..."
Luke: "He was the Dark Lord ... the one who always did the Emperor's dirty work for him..."
Leia: "But Luke, even if most people choose to forget it, he turned back to good at the end, and helped topple the Emperor ... for you! You don't need to feel ashamed of him."
Luke: "I don't. But in my dreams, I'm afraid of him."

In the The Glove of Darth Vader series, which is set between Marvel SW and the X-Wing series, however, it seems pretty widely known, at least among the Imperials.

Queen of the Empire

"The Dark Side is strong in you, Leia!" Trioculus continued. "It has control of you now; I'm certain of it. You shall marry me, and together we shall celebrate Zorba's death!"
"Dream on, Trioculus," Princess Leia said with clenched teeth. "I'm a Jedi, protected from the evil power of the Dark Side and the likes of you."
"Your father was once a Jedi too - a Jedi Knight named Anakin Skywalker. But he turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader. Being a Jedi didn't protect him from the powers of darkness."
"I'd rather die before I'd marry a lying, ruthless Imperial tyrant."


"I hope Trioculus isn’t making a mistake," Grand Moff Muzzer whispered to Grand Moff Thistleborn. "It’s a bit too soon to know for sure whether Leia has embraced the Dark Side."
"He knows exactly what he’s doing," Thistleborn replied with a nod. "Consider how loyal Darth Vader was to Emperor Palpatine and the Dark Side. We must never forget that the Princess is Vader’s daughter - his flesh and blood."
"Yes, but so is Luke Skywalker," Grand Moff Muzzer replied softly. "And a more nettlesome troublemaker than Skywalker we’ll never find."


Presumably, at this point, that Vader killed the Emperor is not widely known, despite Luke's account of events on the DS2 being fairly open about that.

 

My first YJK book

We see them use some kind of "shock-staffs" or similar to train with in other books and they don't seem unfamiliar with how to use them in Shadow Academy. So I would say yes on the first one, and don't know about the second one.

We have to remember that this is before it was established that there existed different kinds of lightsaber-forms

I really don't like that Ta’a Chume had Teneniel killed, if she did not respect her and believe she would be a worthy successor to the throne so would she had killed her of long before Tenel Ka was born.

I have to say that the prequel did not standardized as much as people like to think - the PT Jedi we see dress differently (if similar), and even if they have to use the same crystal for their 'sabres do we see different designs regarding the hilt (both visually and technologically).

 

One of my favourite moments in this book is Brakiss's stunt with the Denarii Nova - making gas across an entire solar system dance to his tune:


Gazing at the stormy suns, Brakiss raised his arms to each side, spreading his fingers. His silvery robe flowed around him as if knit from silken spiderwebs. He stared into the swirling flares of the Denarii Nova. "Observe, Zekk - and learn. "
Closing his eyes, the Master of the Shadow Academy began to move his hands. Zekk watched through the observation port, his green eyes widening.
The ocean of rarefied incandescent gases between the dying stars started to swirl like arms of fire ... writhing, changing shape, dancing in time with the hand motions Brakiss made. The dark teacher was manipulating the starfire itself!
He whispered to Zekk without opening his eyes, without observing the effect of his work. "The Force is in all things," Brakiss said, "from the smallest pebble to the largest star. This is just a glimmer of how Naga Sadow reached out to the stars and delivered a mortal wound five thousand years ago. "
"Could you make the sun explode?" Zekk asked in awe.
Brakiss opened his eyes and looked at his young student. His smooth, perfect forehead creased. "I do not know," he said. "And I do not believe I ever want to try."
Zekk remembered the way Brakiss had enticed him to experiment with his innate Jedi powers, by giving him a flarestick and showing how simple it was to draw shapes in the flames with the Force. Here in the Denarii Nova, Brakiss had done the same thing - only on a scale the size of a star system.

 

I simply read it that Leia did not have as close a relationship with Jaina as Mara did. Simple musings of a mother who realizes that her daughter is growing up. I never got the 'adore' feeling from that paragraph.

Well, Finn was able to hold his own against a more formidable opponent the first time he picked one up...so maybe practice isn't needed? You're right, though, some basic fencing techniques would be fundamental. Same with 'quality control'. Although, since the kids were unsupervised most of the time, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

I'd forgotten about this, actually. I also never understood her desire to bump off Teneniel during the Vong War. Teneniel had been Queen Mother for 20-ish years by that point and would probably be better at rallying a defense of Hapes than an 18(ish)-year-old woman who had just suffered a catastrophic defeat over Myrkr. Smells like a cheap plot device, methinks. Ta'a Chume would have been much more interesting if she were simply conniving and plotting instead of killing off the Queen Mother on the eve of an invasion.

 

I'm smelling the same thing.

 

And I'm going to have to disagree. Teneniel is committed to being a Jedi, an ally of the New Republic, a friend of Luke. This has led to the Hapan fleet being badly damaged, and now she's offering Hapan space as a place for the defeated enemies of the Yuuzhan Vong to regroup. Ta'a Chume believes that this is a risk, and that she's protecting Hapes.

Jaina, on the other hand, is not a Jedi. Ta'a Chume instinctively recognizes this. Jaina's repudiation of Ta'a Chume may not entirely change this.

On the other other hand, maybe what Ta'a Chume really wanted was Tenel Ka in charge.

Simultaneously, when one of the princess cousins makes a clumsy assassination attempt, Tenel Ka calmly has her take away to be shot. Even though she realises that the whole thing was set up by another cousin, purely to remove that princess and strengthen her claim to the throne.

The chess game in Dark Journey is what makes that book so good. Everyone is seeing things wrong.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Hmmm, I see. I haven't read Planet of Twilight. Isn't that book from the "Callista" trilogy? Which from what I can tell isn't particularly...liked. Might have to give it a look, though!

Ah, the inevitable frustrations that come along with the fact that the SW universe was developed "out of order." In Lightsabers, Luke does say that the best lightsaber crystals are "Kaiburr" crystals (which I'm assuming is an alternate name for kyber crystals), but that other types of gems will work as well. Personally I rather liked the New Jedi Order's "less-standardized" approach to lightsaber creation-I liked the variety of colors that were available as opposed to only green and blue in the PT-era (with the notable exception of Mace Windu, of course).

Isolder's death was just...horrible. For a lot of different reasons.

I would think that would be the logical approach-I feel like it would undermine Luke and Leia's status in the Rebellion/New Republic if people knew who their father was. While of course people shouldn't be judged by who their parents are, people aren't always logical and I imagine there would be some backlash against the twins once the news about their father was made public. In Bloodline (one of the nu-canon novels), an important storyline is the fallout from Leia's heritage getting exposed, I think...in the nu-canon timeline the twins definitely kept their parentage under wraps, and it's easy to see why.

True-I forgot about that.

Wait...wasn't Teneniel already comatose/catatonic by the time the strike team from Myrkr arrived at Hapes?

I personally don't understand why Tenel Ka didn't get rid of Ta'a Chume...she allowed that woman to run around for way too long, IMO. With all the crimes Ta'a Chume had committed, surely Tenel Ka could have sicc'ed some kind of 'investigative service' on her and found enough evidence to justify a life imprisonment sentence or even an execution sentence. Or she could just have disposed of her grandmother the "Hapan" way...after all, Ta'a Chume DID murder Tenel Ka's mother.

 

To be fair to them, I think they did mean to tell a different and contrasting story from Anakin's. Anakin doesn't have a hell of a lot of time for abstract principles, his main loyalty is simply to the people around him, as well as to his own selfish wants, and he ultimately goes over to the dark side out of a combination of those two (wanting to save Padme, while at the same time having so little respect for her or understanding of her that he doesn't realize she'd rather die, if given the choice, than watch him tip the galaxy into fascism for the sake of her life). Jacen is the other way around - he's all about the big picture, the deep philosophical thinking about it, and the sitting around listening to the Force, and so when he goes to the dark side, it's for a "greater good" cause of (supposedly) preventing an even worse war.

It's not a bad concept. The point being that there are many possible paths to the dark side, and that running in the opposite direction to Anakin Skywalker's is no guarantee that you won't end up there anyway, just through a different route.

The problem is that at the end of the day, you're still telling the story of another Skysolo kid falling to the dark side and devastating the galaxy and his family in the process, and, well, neither the characters nor the audience deserve that. There are ways to explore dark side temptations without destroying the Skysolos' chance at a happy ending.

 

**Tenel Ka Voice** That is a fact!

 

I think there was a chance for that in NJO, have Jaina actually go dark, have her maybe find others who just want to kill the Vong and their collaborators like the peace brigade. Have her go all out on these things, have her be a darksider but techincally on the side of her family, this would be a different spin on the dark side than the Jedi vs Sith we normally see.
And you could have still have her be redemed at the end, have her realize that vengance doesn´t make anything better.

But no, one conversation with Kyp and its all gone in an instant, Jaina becomes utterly boring and Jacen is made the darksider instead. Not to mention LotF teaching us revenge is great, as long as you don´t do the kill yourself, manipulating someone else to do it? That´s how a true good guy acts.

 

While a lot of the responsibility for this falls squarely on the Solos (at least the grown-ups - the kids are still learning), the thing I'm really curious about is why Peckhum hasn't done more. He's pretty clearly the adult in Zekk's life, the closest thing he has to a parent, and he's already got a business arrangement of sorts with him, what with Zekk scrounging all that still-functioning garbage for him to sell. If nothing else, you'd think he could simply take Zekk on as a full-time crewmember, and it wouldn't be charity (given the age of the Lightning Rod, no one would deny that Peckhum could use a partner who knows his way around machinery).

It's been years since I've read a YJK book, but I remember noticing, the last time I did a reread of them, that the Solo twins' privileged status comes up a lot. It's usually put into the mouths of the bad guys, but they're not entirely left off the hook either.

 

That would have been fun to see, and she would have been a pretty sympathetic "dark-sider"...you can't really blame her for being angry after the Vong butchered her younger brother and had (apparently) killed her twin brother as well.

That's a really good point-I didn't notice that. Yet another plot-hole that was left unplugged for the sake of the story, I suppose.

That's true-the instructors at the Shadow Academy speak at some length about how the Solos are too 'spoiled' for them to work with...hence why they start going after the under-privileged kids as potential recruits.

 

Back then, there was a super-sized gem called the Kaiburr Crystal, found on Mimban (Splinter of the Mind's Eye). There were a few fragments from it - those were the Kaiburr crystals Luke was talking about.

 

Not the fact that Daala was running with them in secret and still got elected Chancellor years later? That Daala vs. Ackbar dance must be an epic fail of Fleet intelligence. They didn't even know who they were really facing. Maw irregular fleet and all backing the Second Imperium all the time,

Daala aside though...

One major point the Legends EU in hindsight drives home is that 90% of conflicts and troubles the characters face are either directly or indirectly caused or tied to Luke's lovelife and exgirlfriends. No wonder Lucas wanted him to stay single! Even if it is nobody he fancied it's those that fancied him.


but back to Hapes: Diplomatic immunity is such a nice concept, they really embrace it there especially among royality. Kill, backstab and no legal way of getting back to you unless someone kills you directly too. The only risk is if your attempt at intrigue fails, then you can be prosecuted it seems as Tenel Ka did with her cousin.

And Ta'a chume commanded a lot of followers (probably all bought fake likes on hapan instagram but who cares), half of the cluster still backed her which is why nobody risked a civil war in the midst of the Vong invasion.

I still think it is absurd that the Legends way to solve these problems is to bring in the Jedi and return them to lordship over problematic kingdoms... be it the Felpire or Hapes, both forced to change and quietly accept Jedi rule. At least both had some/half of their people backing it apparently and the rest forced to comply.

 

Really appreciating the nice things people are saying about WARFARE. Though I'm pretty sure those campaigns against the Deep Core warlords were from The Essential Chronology - they'd always been placed in the 24-25 ABY bracket simply by the timeline position of the Shadow Acaedemy novels in 23-24 ABY.

The evolving narrative of lightsaber crystals in the '90s is an interesting topic, and one that ties into a much longer process of plot develompent that runs all the way from mid-1975s story work on The Star Wars to The Force Awakens and Jedi: Fallen Order.

In the early drafts and outlines, a "kiber" crystal was a gem which channelled and amplified the Force - originally a unique McGuffin, later something which had once been widely used by Jedi and Sith (Darth Vader had stolen Ben Kenobi's). The idea was discarded from the movie to place the emphasis more directly on the Force, but the concept reappeared as the McGuffin of the Splinter of the Mind's Eye storyline which Lucas devised as an alternative low-budget sequel and was then written up into a novel by Alan Dean Foster, in the form of a single "Kaiburr crystal" located on Mimban.

Flash forward to the 1990s, the High Bantam era. In the Dark Empire endnotes, there's a mention of "Ilum crystals" from the "Adegan system" being used to focus lightsabers (I believe this reference first appeared in the original comic run in 1991-2, although the text is perhaps better known from the 1993 tpb). Then in the YJK story Lightsabers (1996), which is almost on-topic here, Luke refers to "kaiburr" crystals as the best type of focusing gems for lightsabers.

Hold those thoughts. These two references prompted all sorts of complicated continuity. The Adegan system was equated with Ossus. All kinds of different lightsaber jewels were described, with different qualities, including real-world gems, and synthetic crystals used by the Sith. The Mimban crystal was also brought into the storyline - Abel and Pablo's continuity piece The Emperor's Pawns (2001) established that a fragment which Vader had captured in the novel was subsequently used as the focusing gem in Lumiya's lightwhip, and the reference to multipe "kaiburr" crystals in Lightsabers was explained in terms of Luke cutting up the rest (this idea goes back at least as far as 2005's The New Essential Chronology - misattributed by Wookieepedia to Ryder Wyndham's Essential Guide to the Force from 2007).

Then in 2006-7, the novels of the Caedus storyline portrayed substantial quantities of "Kaiburr Crystal" forming replacable components in the actual lashes of Lumiya's lightwhip, which doesn't seem to fit that neatly with the previous continuity - this can be retconned as an upgrade (or an in-joke), but she's cerainly got hold of a lot more of this material than was ever on Mimban.

Meanwhile in the Prequel material, there was an odd step back and to one side - Jedi Quest, the lead-in comic/novel storyline for Attack of the Clones, introduced the idea that Jedi traditionally built their lightsabers with crystals from the remote planet Ilum, and then in the Clone Wars cartoon, these were described as "kyber" crystals - a spelling which had emerged into view in the script for Attack of the Clones, when the weapon that Jango uses to assassinate Zam was originally called a "kyber dart". Reboot continuity has run with these ideas - lightsabers now generally use kyber crystals from Ilum.

This isn't just new canon, though - this looks like a refocusing on those original references in the Dark Empire endnotes and Lightsabers, but here with more direct involvement from George Lucas. What gives?

My personal theory is that the mid-1990s references to "Ilum crystals" and "kaiburr crystals" were introuced because Ilum was already supposed to appear in Ep.VII. I could be wrong - this is just fan speculation based on old spoilers that I found online - but I'll just mention that for fun.

Tenel Ka is probably trying to be a good person, a Jedi - she doesn't want to be like Ta'a Chume (although Dark Journey already shows that she doesn't always see this risk as clearly as she should in other contexts). She's perhaps also conscious that the Hapan monarchy will be weakened if the PR image of Ta'a Chume is called into question.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I agree with this, actually. Dark Journey probably should have been a longer series of books to delve into the political maneuverings of Hapan politics...we're left with large gaps in plot.

Sure, but there is no reason so believe that she would have remained in her depressed (my reading of her condition) state forever. She was a Jedi after all, so I think she would have been stronger emotionally than we are led to believe. To Thrawn's point: even if Teneniel had not started to allow refugees in to the system, there is no reason to believe that the Vong would have left it alone...Hapes would have been attacked at some point. Who would you rather have running the defense? A warrior woman in her late '40s or an 18-year-old kid? I adore Tenel Ka, but she would have been in over her head, I think. And for Ta'a Chume to think that Tenel Ka wouldn't simply continue her mother's 'open door' policy to refugees is unrealistic.

And the invasion does get in the way of justice...at least short-term. Although, after everything had settled down, there would be no reason for Tenel Ka to not launch a formal investigation and eliminate a political threat. Again, I think a longer 'Hapan' series inside of NJO would have been fascinating...we could have gotten closure on this particular plot-hole.

 

I think the gaps are part of the point. I like the way that the storyline is deepened in a specifically non-linear way by the side-narrative of "The Apprentice", which indicates that there are even more gaps. That said, I would have liked to see the follow-up Zekk novel that was cancelled.

My thinking runs as follows: Ta'a Chume almost certainly believes that TK is better-trained for the role of ruling Hapes than Teneniel can ever be. We see this in her calm willingness to have her cousin executed. As you say, her lack of practical experience is a weakness, but I think Ta'a Chume would see a positive advantage in a ruler who needs to depend on others - she and her proxies can advise and manipulate her, and thereby persusade her to modify her position.

Throwing the Jedi out, making clear gestures of hostility to the YV's enemies, would also make Hapes much less of a priority for the YV. Not only would that give them more space to prepare, but the YV might break themselves through attrition in other fights.

But how do you get TK to throw the Jedi out? Well, I'm now wondering if Ta'a Chume's real plan was for Jaina to stage a coup and then have Tenel Ka overthrow her, thereby wrecking cooperation between Hapes and the Jedi, and meanwhile getting a level of vindictive revenge against the SkySolos. She may even have intended for TK to marry Jag.

Not saying this is right, just that I think this would make sense to Ta'a Chume.

I do think you're underestimating the impact of this sort of action in a system where the stability, consistency and uprightness of the dynastic monarchy forms the centrepiece of the political and ideological structure.

Also, Ta'a Chume will not be moving against Tenel Ka. And simultaneously, she controls the anti-Jedi, anti-NR "opposition" faction. So long as she does, the oppoisition will not try to overthrow TK - in fact, they can do nothing except watch with discomfort as TK modernises; but removing Ta'a Chume risks the opposition merging with one of the smaller splinter factions led by TK's cousins, whose entire agenda is about overthrowing her. And that will simultaneously mean that TK becomes the focus of all those cousins' hostility, rather than having Ta'a Chume and TK as two separate obstacles to them.

Is that how TK thinks? I'm not sure...

EDIT: please note, this is not how I think. This is just how I think the Hapans might think.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Since when was Teneniel a Jedi?

What? When was Jaina not a jedi?

That's not how diplomatic immunity works, also you can't have diplomatic immunity in your own realm, and being royal don't automatically give you diplomatic immunity.

 

She's not one in the literal, formal sense. I don't think I did this consciously. But as a Force-user who supports Luke Skywalker and his ideals, she's part of the wider Jedi movement.

Also, even more unconsciously, but still I think deliberately, I was rhyming what one of the courtiers says in Dark Journey at the start of Chapter 28. "No more Jedi queens." From the Hapan POV, Teneniel is "Jedi".

This was entirely deliberate - she's throwing around Force lightning and acting in ways that do not agree with Jedi principles. She may call herself a Jedi, but I'm not sure she truly is one...

There are political/constitutional theories that a sovereign ruler enjoys something very similar, though. I'd imagine that those views apply on Hapes.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

O-kkkay....I think this is a bit of a stretch. Which, to me, points to why we needed a bit more story to go with this...would allow us a bit more framework to use with our debates!

I do agree that Ta'a Chume probably wanted someone more...malleable...on the throne, but doing it right before an invasion seems like folly. A strong leader would be needed in such a case.

 

Based on CoPL and YJK do it really not feel like they considered her a Jedi and she has always presented herself as a warrior-witch not a Jedi. But NJO did lots of decisions I disagree with...

I disagree. A presented in CoPL so did she want somebody strong, if she had not approved of Teneniel so would she have had her killed of long ago.

This I agree on

 

Oh, this is definitely speculative (I'd tried to make that clear), but I think that fits with the characters and the themes of the story.

I think Ta'a Chume definitely regards TK as the stronger candidate than Teneniel - and she'd envisage that being backed up by her own strength, too? She thinks there needs to be a change of policy, and she goes for the candidate she thinks can achieve that?

By "they" do you mean the Hapans? In Courtship, I don't think the Hapans realise that Teneniel is a Luke fangirl, and I'm not sure if the issue comes up directly in the YJK, except that there's general sense of Hapan "opposition" hostility to foreigners and Force-users. I don't think this contradicts the idea that Teneniel is perceived as "Jedi", and her pro-NR (i.e. pro-Jedi, pro-Luke) position in the NJO really brings that into focus as a perceived problem.

- The Imperial Ewok