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

I don't think we can judge regarding the High Republic until it's over, but an extended time gap between TLJ and TROS wouldn't make a ton of sense, because the changes between the end of the former and the start of the latter are pretty small. The Resistance has rebuilt some from being just 30 guys aboard the Millennium Falcon, but their biggest ship is still just a corvette. Rey has advanced her Jedi training but hasn't achieved any major breakthroughs. The First Order has more control over the galaxy but it's weak enough that almost all the higher-ups, not just Pryde, jump at the Sith Eternal's deal. All of that doesn't imply anything close to ten years has passed.

 

Yes one of the biggest disappointments of the sequels is how tight that era is in terms of gaps between films, which substantially limits the chance for any world/character-building between movies.

 

Well, one can easily shift TROS around. The question is rather what of its characters it introduced and their backstory and where it intersects with others (Shadow of the Sith) etc. and if there is anything contradicting the move. But so far I recall not much aside character ages.

As for DotF set 10 years after TLJ, I do wonder if one could resurrect it for OneCanon purposes. Keep TROS at 1 year after TLJ and add DotF 10 years after TLJ, aka 9 after TROS? What would have to be tweaked and twisted of DotF to make it work?

Kylo resurrected? A Clone? Make him a clone akin to Luuke in Legends, that the Emperor had created in secret for himself should Kylo betray him. Hence added rumors of resurrected Kylo clone is Palpatine, or Kylo back truly, or just a bad clone of Kylo and not the good (dead) Ben Solo.
Hux? Replace Chancelor Hux with a Snoke Clone as Chancellor and a Council of Snokes!
Leia? Replace her character with her grown up "daughter", Kaydel Connix who is revealed to be Ben Solo's sister. When Han left Leia she was pregnant but he never knew about it (paralells to Anakin and Padmé) and after loosing Ben and other kids being kidnapped by the First Order like Landos she raised her under an alias to not draw attention to her. If anything contradicts that, her backstory could be fake like

Spoiler: Andor spoilers

Cassians was

. And Han and Leia may have behind the scenes talked about it when he was back in TFA briefly.

The rest works fine.

 

Here's something that might be worth bringing up:

The Battle of Naboo and the Battle of Endor were never given explicit GrS dates by the Essential Atlas. The Battles of Geonosis, Coruscant, Yavin, and Hoth are all explicit and down to the month/day, but not the bookend film battles. This is interesting and vexing, for anyone interested in the timeline specifics. At the very least, Endor is the same month as the rescue of Han (Month 3 or March), but that was never nailed down and depending on how you read the Bounty Hunter Wars, it doesn't work well.

Without an explicit date for Endor, it's hard to generate explicit dates for other battles in 4ABY. Of course, it's not that complicated: Bakura is the week after, the visit to Corellia by Rogue Squadron that same week... Interestingly, nearly every online source for Shadows of Mindor dates the novel to 5ABY, but it pretty explicitly says that the events occurred six months after Endor, so isn't that in Month 9 of 4ABY?

I had a pretty promising lead on when during the year the Battle of Naboo takes place, based on Anakin's stated age, but I lost the notes to that so I'll have to work from scratch again.

 

I do personally feel like TROS works better if it takes place one year after TLJ rather than ten years, especially since it feels like the First Order is still struggling with resources after the losses during the Battle of Starkiller Base and the Battle of Crait. That's why Palpatine's offer of a fleet is so tempting to the First Order, because they're thinly stretched as it is and they're still trying to make up for the loss of Starkiller Base and the Supremacy. Following the Battle of Exegol, the First Order was quickly overthrown on other worlds across the galaxy.

As for Kaydel Connix, I am more fond of the idea of her being Leia's surrogate daughter rather than Ben's secret biological sister, especially since the "secret blood relative" twist has been done to death at this point.

 

Depending when in 0ABY/BBY ANH was, Endor may be at the end of 4ABY. I know the Zero debate was often mistaken, changed around and interpreted differently.

Year Zero BBY/ABY existing with ANH in the middle?
0BBY and 0ABY being both 1 year separate?
No Zero but 1BBY flowing into 1ABY neatly with ANH just the zero point between them?
Some even advocated ANH being not in the middle nor between years but in the 5th month aka "May" to fit with SW release date in '77. That is even more crazy if you ask me. But the trend to use real world months and dates always annoyed me here.

Depending which view one took, ANH to TESB being a 3 year gap, and TESB to ROTJ being a 0.5-1 year gap in addition, you got Endor/ROTJ at the end of 4ABY rather than earlier which would push any post Endor stuff into 5ABY if not directly after Endor for a month or less.

I do wonder, did any calendar change aside renaming the system and placing a Year Zero or beginning at different events actually alter the calendar in other significant ways like alter length of year or even at which month a year begins or ends?
The Year Zero debate sure tried by making 0ABY/BBY either each a half year or less even. But that oddity aside, f.e. compare the roman calendar to later medieval revisions with december (decem = ten in latin) the 10th month and not the 12th and the year starting at different months in different systems, be it roman, or even jewish, chinese, etc. calendars of other cultures!
Is such feasible for SW even if complicating things? Did ANH change the month a year begins? (And what does that tell us about character ages, eh?) Or how about other medieval revisions, if you study them closely, some revisions even removed entire years from history or added them. Imagine that for SW? a few years on the timeline that did not exist but were added by some rulers revision? Others removed entirely? Ouch! Well it would explain the Halcyon/Horn family's timeline issues for sure lol, or maybe move some Clone Wars and PT dates around to pre-PT earlier datings of the original plan. Longer Clone Wars that history revisions later shortened?

The Timeline right around TPM was always crowded given the quick inception of the Clone Army, the beginning of cloning the first batches, finding the template Jango Fett, Dooku leaving the Jedi or being influenced by Qui Gon's death, etc. If TPM takes place earliest in the year and thus having more leeway before reaching the next year would help a lot.

 

I think that was more of a mistake on the writer of Golden Age of the Sith of thinkning that the schism of 7000 BBY was the first one, and the origin of the Sith, instead of the second one, not that the timeline of the Sith's origin, as percieved by LF, changed in any significant way since the moment their history from TOTJ got established.

About ROTJ: Nearly every Post-ESB and Pre-ROTJ story is stated to take place in 3 ABY, the X-Wing comics take place months after the movie, with the first arc taking place yet they never reach 5 ABY, the series is stated to take place in "4+ ASW4" in the original releases, with the "4+" indicating that it is late into the year. Shadows of Mindor is the first to reach the 5 ABY landmark, and it takes place some time after the comics (or at the very least Mandatory Retirement reaches 5 ABY), so i think ROTJ should take place early in that year to accomodate for all the time jumps in the post-ROTJ Marvel stories and the X-wing comics, so ROTJ being in Month 3, with the Marvel series ending in Month 4, and the X-wing series.

Could anyone explain to me the supposed contradiction with it taking place in month 3 from the Bounty Hunter Wars? I have not read the trilogy yet.

 

One could interpret "4+" meaning just and undisclosed time "after 4ABY" which technically would then be 5ABY or later. Back then they just established stuff as after and did not yet hammer in stone how much after, merely later timeline works cemented it there then. So going to the original intent, why not read 4+ as 5ABY? Mindor was released much later and they knew when to place it firmly in 5 ABY.

 

That's a good point, it could mean that, but given:

1. The X-wing series as a whole is implied to take place not long after ROTJ, especially in earlier arcs, and those are still marked as 4+ ABY

2. Later timeline additions specified that Shadows of Mindor took place after the entire comic series, and none of the characters from it appear as part of the squadron, just some from the original members (you know, Tycho, Wedge, Wes, Hobbie), it might be "an undisclosed time after 4ABY" but it is definetly before Mindor which is firmly set in 5 ABY, probably early on the year due to the Jedi Prince stuff taking up most of it, so it can't be "later" than 5 ABY, and the absence of the expanded Rouge Squadron indicates that some time happened between the comics and the novel.

I think it's more logical to read 4+ ASW4 as late 4 ABY instead of 5 ABY for the most part, like i said the last story arc could have been into 5 ABY, but most of the series is set in the second half of 4 ABY, and at most it reaches month 1 of 5 ABY. spanning 7 months total across 10 story arcs.

 

GAotS doesn't specify a date, or suggest that there were multiple schisms. It just has the first producing the Exiles who conquered the Sith, and I believe was the first source to ever reference the schisms. The 25000 and 7000 BBY dates for multiple schisms weren't introduced until years after the comics.

 

Yes but even if it wasn't explicit or set in stone they were probably referring to the same conflict that ended up being the 100 year darkness not one so far away as was the First Schism, given the statement that it was "always 7000 BBY" it seems it was always the intent for it to be 2000 or so years before the comics..

 

I suppose the comic's background notes could have placed the FGS in 7000 BBY but not been passed on to Abel G. Peña, that would be one explanation for Chee's weird "always 7000 BBY" comment.

 

The Essential Chronology, which KJA co-wrote, doesn’t give any date for the “First Great Schism” (which it says produced the Jedi Exiles).

 

My guess is still that "7000 BBY" was a half-hearted compromise with Lucas' Sith being thousands of years old, not tens of thousands.

 

There is a good reason for 7000BBY. But the history of these and other dates is complicated.

TOTJ and Golden Age respectively exploring the distant past were set 4000 and 5000BBY for a reason often overlooked that is tied to their reference style for architecture and clothing. While technologically the GFFA has had a status quo like forever, style did not and was used as a marker for temporal differences. Golden Age going egyptian motif and TOTJ rather antique greco-roman was deliberate. This grew more apparent with the PT placing Darth Bane and the NSW in the 3000-2000BBY "Dark Age / Middle Ages" stylistically with Lords and knightly armor as per Bane's TCW look.

Pablo Hidalgo likes to use a real world calendar for SW dating. Lucas and/or early LFL EU folks working off of his bible also approached it like the 70s paralell the OT, PT is more 20s-30s and Solo movie 60s aesthetic etc.

Star Wars is Earth History retold in a fictional Space Fantasy setting after all, a MODERN MYTH. And like with Indiana Jones, Lucas loves his esoterics that heavily influence his world in SW.

So there always was, since Lucas, possibly in his secret bible, reference dates like 7000BBY approximately. Just not published in an Expanded Universe source until later Timelining became popular. With pre-egyptian times for the shism and foundational history of Jedi and Sith, what date is there one could use? Biblical times which are dated to 7000-6000 years ago aka 7000BBY. And before that the flood, the preastronautic ancient aliens Rakata, paralells to Atlantis and else etc.

Thing is Legends worked with "over a thousand generations" meaning 25 years an approx. generation equals 25000 years. The PT's Darth Ruin to Darth Bane setting much closer redefined a generation being born every year, aka 1000 meaning 1000 years. A lot of compromise later we had the NSW and older times easily preserved both despite fan worry that the PT retconned them. But did it actually? Nah, maybe it was always intended as an addition, especially with the TPM christian analogy of Anakin's Jesus-birth. A paralell to a modern return of christ some wait for? A Chosen One returning that lived before some 2000 years ago?

Maybe, if one had let Lucas continue, we'd have gotten Dan Brown authoring a GFFA Da Vinci Code with an ancient Chosen One lineage down till the Movie Era... which some fans already speculate about and connected themselves and Legends wasn't hiding well after all with many potentials.


Back to the 7000BBY, yes it was a compromise between the hard interpretations for 2000BBY and 25000BBY, too. But I believe it existed prior, just unreleased, and got published and used because a compromise was needed.

What I find more interesting though is, lets look at the complicated history of Xendor and other Shism related intel we had over the years. How did the shisms and its protagonists get moved around and more shisms and different Jedi Exiles added to not have to move them again? Could one technically conflate Xendor, the Legions of Lettow and others with Ajunta Pall and the Hundred Year Darkness ones? How would it all have fit together had there been only 1 shism? Xendor at the beginning of the Hundred Year Darkness, Ajunta Pall at the end?

The many paralells between Xendor, Pall and Ruin and other Sith Histories and origin stories from Lucas over the years be that in his original scripts or Archives interviews certainly are interesting to create a merged version if possible. But history in the GFFA is cyclic and repetitive like in real life after all.

 

I wonder how this very forum reacted to the TPM novelization saying that the Sith were founded 2000 years before the movies at the time. Was there anger from Tales of the Jedi fans? Did everyone guess that it was a re-founding?

That was the implication before The New Essential Chronology was published.

 

Alternatively, wouldn't it have been possible for Pall and Xendor to be peers? Neither The Emperor's Pawns or KotOR names either of them as leader or founder of the Sith, and Pall is actually suggested not to be, while still being one of "the first to rebel."

I wonder if the Hundred-Year Darkness was always intended intended to be the "century of bloodshed" that followed the FGS - Dark Lords of the Sith #3 sort-of implies it took place before the Great Hyperspace War.

 

Are you saying that Xendor lived later on in the conflict than commonly thought?

If so, The Essential Chronology doesn’t say so. The only pre-New Essential Chronology references to “the Hundred-Year Darkness” that I’m aware are Shayoto’s dialogue in Dark Lords of the Sith #3 and the timeline in the beginning of The New Essential Guide To Characters, which says it’s a separate event from the “century of bloodshed”, the “century of bloodshed being in 25,000 BBY and the “Hundred-Year Darkness” being in 7000 BBY.

 

Inuniverse Creationists believe in a conspiracy theory that the galaxy is not 25000+ years but only 7000 years old and was created after the sinfall of the Prime Jedi, whose student ate a forbidden fruit from the holy Uneti tree... merging both events and "centuries" of bloodshed/darkness.

Some extremists go even further and believe the GFFA galactic disc is flat. Oh and evolution does not exist, it is a conspiracy by Arkanian geneticists that attempt to fake evolutionary missing links via artificial cloning experiments.

At least some conspiracy theories turned out to be true though in the GFFA:
-celestial planets being alive (Zonama Sekot etc.)
-Evil Abominor Technology trying to kill humans
-Zombies existing
-there exists a planet where trees are alive (Neti) and rocks are too (Geode). Basically do not touch or eat anything unless it is a meaty animal but check for sentience first, then doublecheck and do not use Imperial catalogs for your check, last but not least, apologize for the mistake and enjoy your meal!
-...

 

The Emperor's Pawns just says he lived during the FGS, 25,000 years before the end of the Jedi Purge, so depending on whether you interpret the FGS as the conflict in general or just the initial split I think it could be read that way. "Xendor at the beginning, Pall at the end" definitely makes sense too, though.

I hadn't realised the 7000 BBY date for the Hundred-Year Darkness was around before the NEC, that's really interesting. Given Naga Sadow's entry in the same guide, that date must have been assigned before the Darkness was linked with the Sith origin, which shoots down my Emperor's Pawns-TPM novel compromise idea.

 

Yeah. The ancient looking styles were one of my favorite aspects of TOTJ. Just wondering how a story arc about the founding of the Old Republic (around 25.000 years BBY) would have looked like, if Dark Horse kept on trying to use motifs from our history to make this era seem older than everything we've seen before. Instead of using a similar style as in DOTJ.

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Well historically they would have to use pre-historic times without going space-cave-men. So either it is Edgar Rice Burroughs style half-naked Pulp Scifi, or going with the status quo space age technology throughout the SW timeline they might have opted for preastronautic vibes akin to Däniken and others, which would use historic looks reinterpreted as technology instead of shamanistic religious stuff. Like Maya and Aztek murals depicting ancient spacetech rather than weird religious interpretations or Indian Vimanas from the Vedas. Given the Tho Yors and the love of clear geometric shapes in Ufology and preastronautic (Saucers, disks, larger cigarre mothership UFOs, spheres and pyramids or doublepyramids), more of these may have appeared? But SW relegated those more to the superancient times pre-Republic rather than the early foundational Republic itself. A good compromise may be DUNE universe's spacecraft and Force Astrogator guilds. Or even BSG (classic one, not the terrible remake). Though BSG is closer to the movie era I'd say and Burroughs style closer to the Golden Age comics of 5000BBY.
Clothing-wise though, 25000 BBY might use stuff seen only in statues and "god" imagery throughout the galaxy in later eras. Angelic statues on Coruscant? Have them be bodysuits with MCU Falcon style wings and jetpacks like for later era Rocket Jumpers. Naboo giant head Kummumgah statues in the Gungan Holy Grounds? Keep clothes simple, and have people mostly for safety reasons like spaceflight or dangerous work dress up more elaborately (which later was reinterpreted religiously by archeologists).

While I can't see the ancient GFFA use space vikings like the MCUs Asgardians, the MCU is a good example of how ancient culture stuff gets spaced up in a more colorful spacey version, too. But SW needs something simpler. Stargate also used egyptian gods animal faces as spacehelmet-masks. Maybe lets differentiate the modern spaceage with more practical, moneysaving and decoration reducing clothes and architecture, from ancient times where decoration and glorification/personalisation of clothes, gear and all was more en vogue and money mattered less. Aka, Space Cathedral ships of the Pius Dea era being full of useless extensions for the looks and impression only in a space gothic style. Ancient spacesuits being highly personalised and fashioned to look after animals or other deities rather than being just utilitarian?
Another example would be ALIEN universe with the Engineers wearing these elefantian gigantic spacesuits with their humanoid shapes hidden within. Giger-ian designs are interesting if a StarWarsified version of them may work, less dark and more combining different looks via one functionality.

PS: I saw fans headcanon Dune as a possible post-Legacy contination in the GFFAs far future beyond droid revolutions etc. A counterproposal would be to use Dune as a pre-Republican version. The last Force Astrogator Guilds before the establishment of hyperdrives and hyperlanes, Tatooine being a desert that slowly turns green may sound like a post Legacy dream come true (much like green Mustafar in canon) but imagine its spice influential in Force Astrogation and it being a desert world before the Kumumgah turned it into a paradise only to be glassed by the Rakata again later on.

 

Good thoughts, overall. I'd not mind a little more time added to the Sith War - plus the Cron Drift supernova cannot travel instantaneously, so that could be months to a year or so for the blast to fully hit Ossus. Still, that was obviously not the intent of the comic authors, at the time.

I think one of the Adventure Journals hinted in an interview, that they were considering Luke had been on Dagobah for 18 months. Still, by the time of Tales of the Bounty Hunters (Of Possible Futures) this seems like it had been cut down to only a month. We can pretty safely assume most of the TPM events unfold within a week or so, although adding time within ROTS may aid some plot points (including how far along to term Padme is)

0 ABY and 1 ABY basically are the same, to all intents and purposes, I think. We also have Leia giving wrong age in Children of the Jedi, that may move that more toward 13 ABY, which may help or hinder some things.
Most LOTF statements support Ben being 14 and it being 40 ABY, meanwhile, but not all of them.

As for other age differences, one could put it down to differing calendars. Leading up from Han's rescue to Endor is probably only one, or at most two weeks again (using some ambiguity from the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy) and that did seem to be how Jason Fry treated it, too. Still, with only eight months in-between ESB and ROTJ, that period could get pretty crowded, pretty fast. So far it's pretty reasonable, though.