Lit Time gaps, Timespans, Timelines, Dates, Lengths of wars in different publishing eras

This is a sequel to my thread about characters being split into distinct characters during the development of stories.

I think it's been talked to death that the Bantam-era books were working off of a timeline depicting the Clone Wars as ending in 35BBY, derived from 1984's A Guide to the Star Wars Universe by Raymond Velasco. This might be the most infamous and most cited timeline change in Star Wars publishing history, it's not the only one.

First, it's less-discussed as to how long the pre-prequels Clone Wars actually was, only that it came to an end in 35BBY. It's also rarely discussed as to what happened between the end of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Galactic Empire, which as far as A Guide to the Star Wars Universe is concerned, still occurred around 20 years before the OT alongside Luke Skywalker's birth and Vader and Kenobi's duel. We are told that the Old Republic is transformed into the Galactic Empire by Palpatine through fraud and seizing power through duplicitous means, which agrees with the prequels, but it is unclear if there is open war during this time and if so, against whom. Lucas may have always had some form of Separatists in mind, and we're told in some of A New Hope's supplemental material that Palpatine always had the backing of corporations (and Nixonian gangsters!) Beyond that, it's hard to say anything about this gap before the timeline was truncated.

I have another example of a significant timeline change in mind. As presented in Star Wars Insider 26 and old prints of Dark Horse's comics timeline, the first five arcs of the Tales of the Jedi comic series originally spanned from 4000-3992BBY, instead of 4000-3996BBY as the New Essential Chronology establishes. I'm not sure when this timeline was first changed, but had it not been, then it would have some knock-on effects for the Old Republic era (or Sith era as it was known) timeline as a whole. Also, the two prequel arcs originally depicted the Great Hyperspace War as a ten-year conflict, instead of being truncated to one year in 5000BBY. Personally, I find these extended timelines more realistic in terms of the scope that these stories attempted to tell, but indeed the way that they actually read does make it seem like that all of the events depicted happen in a very short length of time.

Another example I have could be spun off into its own thread: Luke Skywalker's age has not been consistent throughout publication. I have some older books in my collection released between Episode II and III that list Episode III as taking place in 20BBY. In addition to implying that the Clone Wars would only last two years, that timeline also implies that Luke was 20 during ANH rather than his canon age of 19. I've also seen an old Topps card where his age is given as 21 during ANH; this might seem miniscule, but the implication to me is that the inter-trilogy era could have been longer. How much longer or shorter can it be, at maximum or minimum? Luke and Leia's age appears to be the deciding factor.

This touches on questions of whether ESB and ROTJ's dates after ANH are stable. I have been looking for sources about West End Games working from a timeline wherein Luke spent eighteen months on Dagobah, but can only find mentions from this thread. Using the current Legends dates placing the Battle of Hoth in month six of 3ABY, that would definitely push ROTJ's year to 5ABY rather than 4ABY. And why is there only a one-year gap between ESB and ROTJ while there's a three-year gap between ANH and ESB?

Does anyone else have examples of the timeline changing, in large or small ways, in the history of Star Wars publishing? I'm probably forgetting some other examples I've been documenting while building timelines, so I'll post more of my own examples as well.

 

I don't remember Velasco's Guide suggesting a timeframe like that for the Clone Wars. I don't see it in the Clone Wars entry, which is... a little sparse. Can you point me to the correct entry?

Even this much of a timeline has to ignore or retcon Marvel's Star Wars #68, which thoroughly defeats any attempt to create an early, rational timeline for the Clone Wars, the rise of the Empire, and the birth of the Skywalkers if taken entirely as written and illustrated. (That said, the retcon that Fenn Shysa is actually being shown a photo of Padme, not Leia, works well enough.)

I don't remember any WEG source ever referencing Luke spending eighteen months on Dagobah. WEG was rarely direct with timeframes like that, although the three years between ANH and ESB is well known and the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook does tell us that "nearly four years" passed between ANH and ROTJ.

I don't know why there's only one year between ESB and ROTJ (maybe because any longer than that would really beg the question of why they waited that long to rescue Han), but WEG was the first to reference three years between ANH and ESB, and I'm 99% certain it was because they needed a period of time in which to base the RPG. Pre-ANH was off-limits; post-ROTJ was off-limits; the only option was to create a large enough gap between the films where GMs could set their campaigns. I don't know if any of the old-timey WEG writers have ever confirmed this, but it makes a fair amount of sense to me.

 

I still remember back when the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire originally attempted to be set 1 year after ROTJ and thus 5 after ANH, instead of 5 after ROTJ (and 6 for DE) as it is now. The jump from 1 to 5 after Endor, or 5 after ANH to 9 after ANH, confused quite a few people as some sources listed them different back when it was not clear yet if they should go for "after Endor" or "after ANH" dating.

Given other stuff released in paralell back then, imagine the Jedi Prince series could have been a leadin to Zahn and DE!!! In that regard it certainly makes way more sense. X-Wing and many other stuff only came later expanding the Zahniverse via Stackpole and Allston when the timeline was clear, moved and had enough empty space to fit in X-Wing, Courtship and more!

Was the move from 1 After Endor to 5 After Endor intentional? Or an error when converting 5 after ANH to after Endor dates into the same timeline and it stuck?


It also may have to do with defining the gap between ANH, TESB and ROTJ, especially as the 0BBY debacle to this day is an unsolved, often retconned and altered mess. Year Zero? -1BBY to 1ABY? half a year -1BBY and half a year +1ABY with ANH in the middle? Year Zero with ANH in the middle to have 0BBY and 0ABY with mere months around the movie? ARGH!
The GrS dating was much better and more detailed, yet too complicated for many to beat ABY/BBY sadly.

 

Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith said that the Sith were born from the “First Great Schism”. Star Wars Gamer 5 revealed that the “First Great Schism” occured ~25,000 BBY and The New Essential Guide to Characters restated both of the above, but also said that a seemingly unrelated event called “the Hundred-Year Darkness” occured in ~7000 BBY.

The New Essential Chronology said that the Sith were born from the “Second Great Schism”, which it says occured in ~7000 BBY and is the same event as the “Hundred-Year Darkness”. When asked about this on the starwars.com forums, Leland Chee said that the birth of the Sith was “always” in 7000 BBY, although that was never said anywhere before The New Essential Chronology.

 

I thought this was more a mistake in the timeline - Fall of the Sith Empire, dated to 4990 BSW4, opens exactly where Golden Age of the Sith, 5000 BSW4, ends, so there really isn't room for a ten-year time-skip.

Luke's age and the ANH-ESB gap goes back to the novelisations - he's "twice the age of the ten-year-old vaporator" in the first, and by the second he was "barely twenty-three years old" and "found it hard to believe that only three years ago he was a wide-eyed farm boy on his home world of Tatooine."

Personally, I don't find that that retcon makes much sense. It works as a "nod", but doesn't at all explain why Shysa would say what he does. It was weird to begin with, even in 1983, but I feel like there must have been a better way to go - maybe Shysa was telling his story out of order?

It also ties into "the Emperor's side" in the Clone Wars apparently meaning the CIS. Which is technically true, but it's a bizarre way of putting things and I think the Republic would have fit better.

 

The Padme retcon certainly doesn't fix all of the problems, but it at least drags Fenn's memory back to the correct era. Otherwise his entire narrative, such as it was, is practically unsalvageable even in the face of the little bit that was known back then.

The fact that even David Michelinie was as confused about how all the pieces fit together shows how little any of this had really been thought out in those early days, in terms of specific timeframes, sequence of events, etc. It was all just vague backstory for "present" events, not as a story in and of itself.

 

You're right, I appear to be missing something--I thought it was extrapolated from Ben Kenobi's entry, but that doesn't give a time frame either. Bail Organa's entry is sparse too. Maybe I have the wrong edition, or I'm just plainly missing another entry, but I double-checked on the web and some places do list this book as the origin of the 35BBY Clone Wars date. It could be a date that WEG originated, but I don't know for sure anymore.

If the Guide is indeed the originator for the 35BBY date, then I don't think this is problematic. The Guide contains almost no references to the Marvel comic material unless it was established elsewhere. The writers may have been working with different information, and in different directions.

What I've been told is that the eighteen-month figure apparently originates from an internal document circulating WEG, but that's not very helpful. I imagine some part of it may have surfaced by now.

The way that I've heard the story is that TTT was always meant to be placed at 5ABE, and it was Dark Empire's initial plan to be placed at 1ABE that threw a wrench in things and began the Zahn-Veitch schism throughout the Bantam era.

Oh, I agree with you--the first five arcs have this problem too, where even explicit timeframes of a few weeks and months are given where the Dark Horse/Insider sources claim year intervals take place. I just think this is an interesting problem where a longer timeline might better reflect larger events, even though the comics make it seem like the Great Hyperspace War was a few blitzes between local systems.

This one is a strange one indeed; I don't know the exact real-life introduction for the detail that the Sith were connected to the Second Great Schism, but I know that TOTJ's sourcebook references three great schisms, the last of which was tied up in Shayoto recalling the Vultar Cataclysm and the Gank Massacres in TOTJ's Dark Lords of the Sith. This last schism has basically never been elaborated on, though. KOTOR still makes references to the Sith potentially having been founded in 25,000BBY, and Ajunta Pall might be referencing the Sith controlling the Star Forge following the Infinite Empire's collapse.

 

The way I like to read it is that Shysa's telling the story of how he ended up in the service of the future Emperor during the Clone Wars, then goes on a digression about how he became familiar with Leia years later, before going back to where he left off. He also mentions that the war was won, another piece that makes more sense if he fought for the Republic.

Just working off of ANH, Luke doesn't talk about the Clone Wars as a recent event, and if you give it a bit of thought you can deduce that they were probably over before he was born.

Still, it's kind of interesting to imagine the Clone Wars as a conflict with the Empire and Mandalorians on one side, and the Jedi and rebellious House Organa on the other, though that doesn't explain where the actual clones come in.

It doesn't help with the why, unfortunately, but it seems like that number was in some internal LFL bible prior to the NEC.

 

Maybe i'm wrong, because it's been a long time since the last time i read Alan Dean Foster's ANH novelization, but wasn't Luke originally supposed to be 23 years old around the time of Episode IV?

As for the early EU version of the Clone Wars, before the PT i had the impression that Palpatine's rise to power was supposed to happen not during the conflict but after it.

Gesendet von meinem TA-1053 mit Tapatalk

 

TTT and X-Wing both make implicit references to a Clone Wars timeline that puts the end around 35BBY, yes. I thought this was a solid, explicit year but now that my source is in doubt I'm not sure where they derived this from. I think it could have been in an internal bible, but I thought this number was public too. Maybe it was a WEG source that I'm thinking of?

I also happen to have a screenshot of what I believe is a Topps card putting Yoda's age at 973. This doesn't particularly affect the placement of stories, it just makes Yoda's age more exact than a literal 900 at his time of death (another personal crusade of mine, deviating away from round numbers on the timeline!) I'm curious if anyone has any more of these, because I don't own any and I know I've seen one that marks Luke as 21. If I recall, Vader and Obi-Wan used to be significantly older than the canonical timeline dates them. It's possible that the 35BBY figure for the Clone Wars is derived from them being older than before.

 

Well technically I like the retcons that smaller scale wars happened before 35BBY like the Mando Civil War, Stark Hyperspace War and likewise. Maybe even a smaller scale regional only minor Clone War? That'd make the second Clone War the PT one and the third the post ROTS operations Rimward with the Empire vs Separatist holdouts refusing to stop fighting despite leadership and unity gone, in addition with the Spaarti Clones turning on the Empire and non-Spaartis like Bad Batch and others defecting for their own reasons.

How could one tie in old lore to the original Clone Wars to such an early pre-TPM regional clone war and what region may work for it?

Canon's attempt at High Republic operations/wars before the Republic abandoned its fleet in favor of Judicals is not the same.

Could the Hutts be involved given their larger expanded sphere of influence and territory in PT times as per Clone Wars era map from FactFiles? Given the high piracy of the era that lead to Corporations needing security and to arm themselves or ask for Republic military buildup to defend themselves instead, which lead to the taxation of the trade routes, a major Hutt influence behind coordinated piracy expansions could be worked into a war with Hutts instead of Sith pulling the strings behind the scenes.

There was a timeline conversion error uncorrected to this day:

 

ROTJ was originally six months after TESB. I think this makes more sense than a year. My own timeline follows this: https://buddyscartoons.blogspot.com/p/the-star-wars-watching-order.html

 

I recall that too, but I can't come up with a source for where I first read it. Closest I've gotten was the first edition of Galaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi, which places ROTJ at "a few months" after TESB.

I don't particularly mind a year between TESB and ROTJ, as that allows for plenty of time for the development in Luke's and Vader's characters that we see going into ROTJ. As long as the story between films paves that road, and provides a reasonable enough explanation for why the heroes waited that long to rescue Han, it works for me.

 

ROTJ novelization is the source. For me a year makes no sense.

 

I guess you could interpret the first comment to mean as old as nearly 22, but it seems pretty clear to me that the intention was that he was 20.

It looks like this is another one from the novelisations, though it's six Tatooinian months, specifically.

 

I guess that makes sense about Tatooinian months.

 

I've owed the ROTJ novelization a re-read for, oh, a couple decades now. Might be time...

 

recalculating the character ages and timeline dates based on local calendars, months and years as we got them from Essential Guides, Atlas and the like should be fun... messy but fun!

 

For what it’s worth, the second edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, released in March 1994, gives “35 BSW4” as the ending date of the Clone Wars. Furthermore, it says the twins were born in 18 BSW4.

 

One of the really early ANH drafts is called The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, part 1: The Star Wars. I like the idea that the wars orchestrated under Darth Sidious are all collectively called the Star Wars.

So this is where I'm getting mixed up, confusing the older edition for the newer one.

 

I feel like I've imagined it but I swear an announcement at some point that everything was being shifted by a year and the Clone Wars were going to last 4 years not 3.

 

Not an announcement but a discussion back then when exactly in the year AOTC and ROTS take place, cause depending on that the gap between them could be almost 4 years long indeed instead of 3.

But the placement of AOTC exactly could potentially have shortened the time between TPM and AOTC and thus the clones age, and the ROTS placement was relevant for the twins birth and ANH age. So it went kinda nowhere really.

 

I just read this twitter thread in full and then watched EckhartsLadder's video on the subject (weird coincidence that I made this thread at the same time.)

Personally, I sympathize with the view that 0BBY/0ABY constitutes a single year called 0BY and that the Battle of Yavin does not reflect a day-zero event. This makes chronology easier to keep track of out of universe, and in-universe makes more sense than changing day one of the calendar when the Battle of Yavin calendar starts getting invoked in later Legends works as well. Really, we should call it "Year 1" and work from there, but I guess we're playing with what we've been dealt.

Going by the modified GrS calendar from the Essential Atlas, the Clone Wars lasts three years but passes through four years on the calendar from May 21 of GrS year 13 to May 23 of GrS year 16 (the Reconquest of the Rim notwithstanding.)

Interestingly, I don't think the Battle of Naboo or the Battle of Endor ever got GrS dates. I've been trying to decipher an approximate month for the Battle of Naboo based on Anakin's age, but my trail went cold a while ago so I'll be revisiting that later. The Battle of Endor must take place at least two weeks after Han is rescued, based on my reading of the Bounty Hunter Wars.

One more thing: there's an interesting conversation going on in the High Republic thread on whether the exact century before TPM matters for the chronology of the High Republic era, or rather: is it really important if the stories are set in 232BBY versus 732BBY, and if so then what changes? I want to extend that same question to the Sequel trilogy. Trevorrow's script for Episode IX was set closer to ten years after the previous two movies, instead of the one-year gap that TROS has been settled on. While the scripts were radically different, does anything actually change if TROS takes place ten years after TLJ rather than one? If that date has only been established in reference books, could TROS quietly be slid over to make room for more stories set between the films? I know a lot of people are still hoping for some TCW-like treatment for the Sequels, and that timeslot is where to do it.