What is the legacy of Anakin Solo?

Anakin Solo, the third and youngest child of Han and Leia, died as a teenage Jedi martyr during the Yuuzhan Vong War to save his friends.

Because of his name, Anakin was always worried about repeating the dark mistakes of his grandfather Darth Vader, but he died without ever falling to the dark side.

His death had a great impact on siblings Jacen and Jaina, his parents, his uncle, and Tahiri. His lightsaber found its resting place wit a statue of Chewbacca on Kashyyyk, to be put aside unless the need ever arises again to use it.

...

By the end of LEGACY OF THE FORCE, he seems a distant memory. The physical legacy he left behind, his impression on Centerpoint Station, is destroyed by the end of the latest galactic war.

The tragedy of his older brother Jacen far eclipses his own, and it is Jacen's death that haunts Han, Leia, Luke, and Jaina the most. Ben and Allana, the next generation, never really knew Anakin Solo. Jacen even used his brother's name for propoganda, using it as the name of his personal Star Destroyer.

Tahiri kept his memory alive during LOTF, being tricked into believing that Jacen's flow walking powers could bring him back. After Tahiri learns Jacen tricked and betrayed her, she leaves the Sith behind her, and finally lets her attachment and memory of Anakin Solo go.

...

Which leaves us with this question:

What is the legacy of Anakin Solo?







***This isn't a thread to debate his death, how they could have done things differently, whether or not his death was a waste of character, etc. This is about discussing what his legacy is, not what it may have been.

 

I think that Anakin's legacy is one of Hope lost. Anakin was the hope for the future of the jedi. He was right on the verge of discovering and important truth to the force, as several jedi around him realized, when his life was tragically cut short. He passed his hope for the future on to his brother, Jacen, and for awhile, he imbodied the future of the Jedi. Then he too, was tragically felled by murder. Once again, Hope was lost.

 

I have to say that Anakin doesn't have any apparent positive legacy whatsoever and little legacy otherwise. I can't really come to any other conclusion. I tried to think of things that he did and left behind and which might come to positively influence things, but there is none as far as I can see. His influence on YV and their society is one very remote possibility that might come into play, but I don't really believe that it would be explored in the future in the expense of let's say telling a story about Kol Skywalker's relationship to the YV.

And the little negative legacy Anakin has comes into play through several different paths indirectly. His death was part of the reasons why Jacen fell (and led him to kill Mara in the process) and died, after having been a "Sith lightning rod" that helped the One Sith to stay hidden. Anakin saved Jaina's life, and without Jaina in the picture, Luke might not have acted towards Jagged Fel like he did which opened the way to the renewed Empire. And if Jaina is an ancestress of the Legacy Fels, then without Jaina surviving SbS there would have been no Legacy Fels at all. (One has to also remember that Tahiri also fell because of Anakin's death and it indirectly caused the deaths of Pellaeon and Shevu etc.) So, Anakin's actions and death prepared the way for the current galactic conflict in Legacy, indirectly, but still.

Also, if Anakin wouldn't have died, he would have become a very likely successor to Luke, and that would have solved the problem of what happens in the Jedi Order when Luke steps aside. Now, Luke can't step aside even in death as Legacy shows. A strong Solo as a leader of the Jedi (and his possible offspring with Tahiri establishing another "Jedi dynasty") might also have helped the Order to cut it's umbilical cord to the Skywalker name and thus Ben's descendants similar to Nat and Cade (although considering how things would have changed, these two would not have existed, but some other Skywalkers in their place) might well have found their lives easier as the weight of being a Skywalker would have been less heavy for them.

When it comes to Anakin Solo and his legacy, Del Rey can declare "Mission accomplished".

 

Anakin Solo was the force that held the Star Warriors together.

Vergere, for whatever reason, chose the wrong Solo brat.

Anakin's legacy was to explode into the battle meld, and to break every Jedi on the Myrkr mission

Anakin's legacy was to break Jacen and Jaina, and turn them against each other; the next time we see them, they're transformed into conflicting opposites, Jaina and her heart (broken by her little brother) and Jacen with his rules (which is ironic considering that it was Anakin who described the lightsaber as "an instrument of Law", a tool to create justice, just before they came to blows in Vector Prime; but the real irony is that Jacen was the one who actually believed in Law - for him, it was Law that defined life, whereas for Anakin, life was about making Law happen, bringing light): that argument between the Solo twins aboard the worldship, caused in EVERY sense by Anakin's "going", was in turn the start of everything that happened after.

Anakin's legacy destroyed Mara Jade's faith in the Jedi Order and her husband, and the belief that she had found at second-hand through trusting them ("The Force didn't save Anakin."--Mara to Luke in Star by Star, sitting on a sinking X-wing), and put her on the trajectory that led through her over-rigid support of Luke and Jacen, to a wasteful, botched assassination attempt in the Hapes Star Cluster.

Anakin's legacy left the broken Galaxy without any way to fix.

Anakin's legacy is a simulacrum of himself in the mind of Zonama Sekot, occasionally visited by Jacen--based, one presumes, on his appearance in Nen Yim's copied memories. It's quite strange to think that this Anakin will be unshaven and wearing just a thong, because that's how he was the only time Nen Yim saw him.

Anakin's legacy is Tahiri.

Anakin's legacy is Conquest, the best novel in the canon.

Anakin's legacy is Han's ability to see through Luke's lies, and the entire chain of events that Han initiated to bring down the Galactic Alliance.

Anakin's legacy is the fact that Nom Anor saved the Galaxy.

Anakin's legacy is whatever genetic material, mental flash-prints and Force-aura the Yuuzhan Vong, Vergere, the Corellians, his own lightsaber, and/or Sinsor Kahl might have acquired.

Anakin's legacy is that his story-arc made the Galaxy a more interesting, unexpected, conflicted place. But I still feel that the only way to fix the mess is to bring the kid back properly.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Anakin's Legacy is the Jedi younglings whom he saved on Yavin who grew up to become Jedi Knights and who likely later served the galaxy in a multitude of ways in a multitude of missions and a multitude of wars throughout the years.

Anakin's Legacy is all of the Jedi who were saved because he and his team destroyed the Voxyn queen.

Anakin's Legacy is an example of heroism and courage for all future Jedi to emulate.

But I do wish that Anakin would have lived to enrich many more future Star Wars stories.

 

Hmmm, I made this thread thinking that maybe I overlooked some positive legacy that he has left behind, and now I feel even more depressed that he has no legacy (except the galactic shatterpoint his death turned out to be). He did die a Jedi, saving Jedi lives, but was it really worth it knowing what happened next now?


If Tahiri's character is redeemed, someway connecting back to Anakin Solo, could that create a positive lasting legacy for him?

 

Yet this isn't totally positive either. Seeing Karrde's Vonskr pets during the Yavin mission gave the YV the idea to create the Voxyns, and of the rescued students Seff Hellin and Valin Horn went crazy and gave Daala ammunition against Luke according to MF and Outcast blurbs.

If they know or remember him and his example at all. In FotJ it is supposedly Jacen who had been an example to the younger Jedi. There's no evidence that Anakin is at all remembered inside the Jedi Order in any manner. Ganner Rhysode at least got a chamber in the Jedi Academy on Ossus named after him.

Instead it was GA who gave his name to a ship, and through the ship his name was connected to the burning of Kashyyyk. It might well be, that in Legacy comic timeframe the words "Anakin Solo" don't mean anything to anyone except some historians and the inhabitants of Kashyyyk - to whom it would mean the ship who scarred their homeworld and not the person it was named after.

 

He doesn't get a legacy, he was 16. That's why it's a tragedy.

 

He was the inspiration for Jacen Solo to hold close to his values and, whatever the pressures on him, never compromise his sense of right and wrong and stick close to his vision of the Light even when it seemed hopeless.

Until he stopped, of course.

 

Yep.

 

Lies? Can someone refresh my memory?

 

It's best to just ignore him sometimes.

 

LOL K, didn't feel like skimming Betrayal again since I'm almost done with SoM.

 

Holy Excalibur, Batman!

Seriously, though, his legacy is a little pile of ashes, since as I recall they managed to recover his body for the traditional funerary Jedi barbecue.

 

A star destroyer.

 

I agree with that last point. I've never completely bought into the idea of emulating flawed heroism, though: Anakin did something wrong, somewhere, and I don't think the ambivalent outcome is entirely positive. There were other ways to deal with the voxyn, which I think is also part of the point.

I also feel obliged to point out that Karrde (and Mara) saved the Academy kids from Luke's ineptitude - and that Tahiri, Valin and Sannah would have been with the others if Anakin hadn't shown up waving his little blue 'saber around; Ikrit would have lived, too. But Anakin saved Qorl, saved Remis Vehn, and more importantly than either of those things, forced Karrde to stick around and Booster to come in with a superlaser, and saved all the slaves that were being used as the workforce on the Yuuzhan Vong colony on Yavin 4.

There's only ONE single scene in canon that Luke's vision at the end of Dark Empire II can refer to, and that's the conclusion of Conquest.

Since then, though, everything's gone wrong. Farmboy wasn't in the vision himself, emphasising the Solo kids as the core of the new Jedi knighthood, but the dead hand of Lord Skywalker has twisted the Galaxy away from that moment of hope.

Ironically, the one place Anakin's trajectory's continued is the place the Force, as understood by Jedi/Sith, can't reach.

The start of Betrayal. Luke's going off to attack Corellia, tries to pretend he's on holiday or something, but Han can see straight through, and rather than trying to knock some sense into the Jedi, decides to alert the Corellians instead.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Was that comment about me, or to the thread about the character?

See above for the answer if it's about what I said, anyway. I'm NOT Ewoking in this particular thread, Mike.

*snark* Well, that does show the effect that the kid still has on Caedus!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

In my opinion there are two things: Anakin's Legacy and the Legacy of Anakin's Death!

Anakin's legacy was the rebellion of the Shamed Ones, which helped bring the war to an end and redeem a part of the Vong. He also was the first one to feel the Vong in the Force through his lightsaber and therefore brought the first answers to the question of how to deal with the Vong.

The Legacy of Anakin's Death are all the consequences of the Mission to Myrkr: The Fall of Jacen Solo (although there are others who are also responsible), Jaina's temporary fall to the dark side, the dark nest crisis, Tahiri's fate, etc.

In the end I don't feel very bad about Anakin's legacy, but since the ending of the NJO the question has risen if the Legacy of Anakin's Death has done more harm than his sacrifice good...

 

The Ewok raises a point - what did Ikrit foresee from Anakin and Tahiri, really?

Ostensibly, they would've produced at least one Solo son - yes, the genetic material has stepped another generation forward in Allana, but there is no doubt that at present, there are no male Solo heirs.

(Unless Jaina has a son, and decides for whatever reason to name him Solo ...)

Luke's vision in DE (IIRC) was of his nephews and niece being the Order's future. Jacen - hobbled as he was by his inner conflict, of Rules versus The Heroic Ideal - might well have made an excellent archivist or consular, but wasn't what was needed for a future leader of the Order.

Jaina - before her emotional damaging, and the deadening she self-inflicted to survive the Vong War - might well have been a great leader of the Order. Instead, she's all but exhausted with the disaster that the Order has become - marginalized, feared in ways not seen since the propaganda of the Palpatinist government of the Clone Wars, with a rabid she-nek sitting in the COS office waiting to pounce.

Who can fault the idea that Jaina's destiny is Empress Fel I? It's a chance for some happiness, after the agonies she's endured.

Ben - wasn't even on the radar at the time of DE, and the Flanneled One has said, IIRC, that Luke wouldn't have married.

That leaves the dummy. The riotous, saber-swinging, defiant goofus who threw himself into the breach and wanted to help people. A kid whose heart was as big as the Core, and whose luck finally failed to keep up with him.

Tahiri was his cynosure, his guide-star. And he, in his own way, hers. She tempered and directed his fire. The ultimate weapon, the ultimate comfort.

Love.

Simple, yet deceptively difficult to grasp. Anakin loved.

But without brakes, without restraint - it killed him as surely as it drove his grandfather to a dark tomb.

Stover, IMHO, has the right of it when Obi-Wan talks to Mace in the ROTS novelization, about what felled Anakin Sr.:

Pg. 214: "I think," Obi-Wan said carefully, "that abstractions like peace don't mean much to him. He's loyal to people, not to principles. And he expects loyalty in return. He will stop at nothing to save me, for example, because he thinks I would do the same for him."

Sound like anyone we know?

It wasn't the wider galaxy Anakin Solo died for on Baanu Raas. It was his love; his girlfriend, his siblings, his cousin, his aunt and uncle, his parents.

A little more restraint, a little more wisdom - that's all that would've been needed to allow a boy to grow up and take the torch forward.

Instead, Anakin's death scarred so many. Most especially Luke.

He loves Ben, but the boy was sent away at age 8 to study with a cousin who was mentally scarred.

The Old Order's ideals still strangle and poison the New, with the exception of Ben, who at least tried to save Tahiri.

Cutting away the weeds of dogma.

That was what Anakin Solo's lightsaber - and his light, forged together with that of Tahiri, to create a partnership strong enough to champion a braver, wider vision of the Force - was meant for, IMHO.

- Onderon1

 

Well said.

Anakin Solo was definitely meant to be a hero, and has been lauded as such for good and bad reasons: a good reason like promoting Anakin as a savior among the Shamed Ones in their rebellion against Shimrra, a bad reason like naming a Star Destroyer after him to evoke a false sense of heroism (the GAG being a rather malevolent secret police force). So, the long and short of it would be Anakin's legacy as a hero and that drive toward heroism, which younger Jedi like Ben seem to be slowly picking up.

 

* Anakin recovered the Jedi Holocron stolen by Darth Vader.
* Anakin set an example for Uldir Lochett that made him a great hero of the galaxy (Emissaries of the Darkness allowed Uldir to defeat a Dark Jedi and stop a Yuuzhan Vong plot to destroy the universe).
* Anakin destroyed the Voyxn.
* Anakin defeated the Dark Side Spirit who tortured the souls of the Massassai Children.
* Anakin awoke the sleeping Jedi Master Ikrit.
* Anakin Solo saved the Jedi of Yavin IV and Tahiri, which helped teach the Yuuzhan Vong peace and thus helped defeat Lord Nyax.
* Anakin saved the entire Corellian Sector from destruction.
* Anakin helped destroy the Yuuzhan Vong fleet with Centerpoint.

Seriously, what more of a legacy do you want? Hell, Anakin DESTROYED PALPATINE and saved the entire galaxy IN HIS MOTHER'S WOMB.

No offense, but he has a bigger legacy than Corran Horn.

Just because he died at 16 doesn't mean he didn't live a full life. Plenty of young men gave their lives in World War 2 around that age and while it's tragic they died, they gave it in a good and worthy cause.

 

If you compare Anakin to Corran Horn, the latter has been a Jedi for over 30 years and before that a fighter pilot that achieved great things and even before that he was a cop: a total of 40 years of public service, who knows how many students (beyond his only named apprentice) he has teached and what he has done in recent decades beyond what little the novels tell of him. He is alive still, a member of the Jedi Council, could well live still for decades, perhaps half a century, and continue to increase his legacy. And then there are his two children, who are also his legacy, and through which his life will continue to have an active influence. Corran also hasn't got much of a negative legacy, as Ithor wasn't his fault. What negative legacy there is come from the PR problems Ithor caused the Jedi and what help it gave to the Peace Brigade and the YV, but those are not his fault.

Anakin loses to Corran Horn when it comes to legacy. DR has made sure of that.

 

Uh, how?

Corran Horn hasn't accomplished anything nearing Anakin's accomplishments. That's not a bad thing, Anakin just did huge and great deeds. Just because a guy lives to be older doesn't mean that he does anything. Corran Horn is a great hero, Anakin was a GREAT hero.

 

'You die a hero or live long enough to become a villain'

- This quote has been applied to Jacen, but the beginning part also fits Anakin.

Everyone in the Star Wars universe made their own choices years after Anakin's death - Tahiri, Jacen, Jaina, Leia. Although his death did affect all of them (duh), it isn't fair to blame Anakin for their reactions. Jacen made his own choices post Anakin's death through NJO and LOTF, and not because he thought he could bring his little brother back.


During that time period, Leia kept fighting for what she believed is right was the way she always has since she was a teenager and didn't go completely berserk although she was certainly devastated. The difference in behavior is due to their choices alone, not Anakin himself.


So I would propose that the legacy of Anakin Solo is what Star Wars characters and Star Wars readers choose to make of it - either the hero who died before his time or the scapegoat for everything that's wrong in the galaxy.

 

No, Anakin was becoming a GREAT hero when he was killed. It was like Luke would have been killed soon after ANH. It was his promise of great achievements to come and his charismatic nature more than his deeds that marked him out.

In his some 61 years in the galaxy Corran Horn might not have done a single thing as important as Anakin's greatest deeds, but in 61 active and fruitful years you end up having a greater legacy than one can have in barely 17 years. As long as one lives like Anakin, bravely, and doesn't go around assassinating heads of state.