An Essay
Whose Galaxy Is It Anyway? Between Fandom and Canon
In my About there's a throwaway line about the 'four canons' of Star Wars. Like most throwaway lines, there's more than a grain of truth to it, but it's also significantly more complicated than whatever it implies.
There's 'Lucas' canon (all six movies), there's 'Legends' canon (content that Lucas licensed before selling to Disney), there's 'Disney' canon (which is usually considered distinct from 'Visions' canon), and then there's 'Fanon.' You can break the canons down even further: between Original Trilogy canon and Prequel canon within Lucas; between Sequel canon, the 'Mandoverse,' and Andor within Disney; and between the countless sub-canons of Legends and Fanon. To prevent this discussion from dissolving into potentially infinite canons, we'll take them as four: Lucas, Legends, Disney, and Fanon, with Visions mentioned apocryphally if it has anything relevant to say.
Every fan has their own personal relationship with Star Wars, and I am by no means an exception. I've been watching Star Wars since before I can remember; it was omnipresent through my childhood. I wanted to devour all the information I could, so I'd spend hundreds of hours on Wookieepedia while lurking on forums. When I first got social media, tumblr and reddit in particular, I was obsessed with the Star Wars tags and subreddits. I've been roleplaying in Star Wars games off and on for sixteen years (SWG → SWTOR → SWTOR plus SWGEmu; I tried forum roleplay, but I've gotta be honest, I like that I can dress up my character model too much). I've written fan fiction, designed sectoral and planetary governments, DMed campaigns in the Galaxy, and read more books in Legends than I can count. I can see the colors, smell the aromas, feel the fabrics, and taste the cuisine of a galaxy far, far away, and I'm not embarrassed to admit I have strong opinions about them.
I want to be transparent about the place I'm coming from, but let me also be clear: I don't think I'm some authority on Star Wars. No one died and made me Pope of the Church of the Force! You can disagree with everything I think about the franchise, and that's valid, and I'd still love to chat with you about your perspective. Maybe it'll even change my mind! I've shifted dramatically on parts of the franchise as I've gotten older and re-engaged with things.
If you've indulged me this long, I appreciate it. This brings me to my first example: Han Solo. What's not to love? He's a handsome trucker they found at a dive bar, who runs drugs for the cartel because he owes them money. He tells the boy-scout midwestern farm boy, who dreamed of joining the military his entire life and has suddenly decided to get really into Druidry because Merlin's his uncle (his grandfather?) or something, that he should probably spend more than a week away from his place of birth before signing up for the revolution. Han's got a sick ride, a sensible head on his shoulders, and a heart of gold that sends him back to help his farm boy and the Princess. The terminology might be different, but the general story is shared by all canons.
Legends and Disney share his background of training at the Imperial Academy on Carida, but diverge sharply on whether he completed his service. Legends maintains he didn't, refusing an order to kill a Wookiee (Chewbacca) and being forced on the run. Disney instead has him expelled from the Academy and posted to Mimban, essentially a theatre that crossed the Western Front of the Great War with Vietnam, and it is on Mimban, in Disney's canon, that Han rescues Chewie. I prefer Disney's version, though I confess I have always had a weird affinity for Mimban.
Now. Did Han shoot first? I'd wager that no question has divided the fandom more over the decades, in part because the 'word of God' directly contradicts itself. I personally believe he did shoot first, not because it was the original, but because I like what it implies about his character more. I like that he's a little impulsive, and a little rougher around the edges. So on this I disagree with Lucas' own preferred canon, and with Disney's. Controversially, though, I prefer Disney's handling of the Solo surname: a 'gift' of the Empire, bestowed to make a kinless street urchin more legible, feels truer to 'Solo' etymologically than royal pretenders living in genteel poverty.
That's Han. But what about Dooku? Eleven and a half minutes of characterization against Han's hour and twelve and a half? He's a noble. He was a Jedi Master, trained in the Jedi arts by Master Yoda, and he himself trained Qui-Gon Jinn. He left the Jedi Order, and is one of the 'Lost Twenty'. The Jedi Order perceives him as a political idealist, not a murderer. Despite his opposition to corruption, he is in bed with war profiteers, and he or his allies are building the Death Star. Though he's willing to execute the assembled Jedi en masse, he also seems completely willing to burn Sidious if it will convince Obi-Wan to trust him, having told him the Senate is controlled by the Sith. In Attack of the Clones there's a sense that he's playing both Obi-Wan and Sidious. In Revenge of the Sith he's executed by Anakin Skywalker at the urging of Chancellor Palpatine. Besides his immaculate sense of style and his lightsaber form, this is the bedrock of Dooku's characterization in the Prequel trilogy.
Some things are immediately apparent: this character contains multitudes. Depending on the narrative you want to explore or the archetype you want to represent, there's ample fodder. There's Dooku the Villain, which is fairly straightforward to arrive at: he's an entitled (literally!) aristocrat aligning with war profiteers to overthrow a democratic republic. There's also Dooku the Tragedy: the passion of the prodigal son drove someone who was once among the best of us to desperate measures, until in the end he became what he himself hated. Both are in the text, and which one you focus on is entirely a matter of taste.
Let's say you like Dooku the Villain. Well then, you're in luck! Legends and Disney have this Dooku aplenty. Turn on almost any Clone Wars episode at random, Filoni's or Tartakovsky's, and you're likely to find him. Pick up your average comic, regardless of canon, and you're also likely to find him. And if he shows up as a secondary character in a fan fiction? This is probably who you're meeting. It's super easy to lean into, too. I mean, his religious beliefs involve the worship of entropy, mixed with a fascistic reinterpretation of the Übermensch and a cult of violence and action. He has co-signed the enslavement of entire planets and species, directly and indirectly. He has tried to kill the protagonists again and again. And he's in bed with the devil, so to speak.
I'm not saying this is a bad interpretation of Dooku. I'm also not saying that if you prefer this Dooku, you're wrong.
What I am saying is that I don't vibe with this reading of the character as much as I used to. Part of this is my strange sympathy for the CIS (which we'll get into in the next part), part of it is my desire to understand where villains are coming from, and I'm sure part of it is that he has a cool lightsaber and dresses like a Jedi who didn't have to give up his trust fund.
Let's say you're sympathetic to Dooku the Tragedy, though. What does he look like? Is he the stoic albeit loving father of Qui-Gon Jinn we see in Disney's Tales of the Jedi? Isolated from the Order and further alienated by the death of his apprentice, the marginalization of Jinn's warning, and being passed over for a seat on the Council (a Council led by his own Master!)? (Though, if you'll allow me an aside, I personally don't think he would have killed Yaddle that early into his corruption.)
Or is he the estranged son we see in Legends' Dark Rendezvous? Justifying his actions through an internally consistent philosophy, revealed in debate with his Master after he concludes the war has spiralled out of control? His jealousy flaring up violently at the mention of Obi-Wan and Anakin, so much so that he'd throw someone out a window for fear of being replaced? Waxing poetic about the melancholy of his life, because everyone he ever loved, including Yoda, has forsaken him?
I think I see both in Dooku. I can see him compensating for his rejection by his father figure, Yoda, by embracing an identity that was wholly his, yet rooted: Count Dooku. I can also see his failure to protect his son leading him to desire revenge. His son died protecting Republic commercial interests, so why not use those same interests to destroy the Republic? Conveniently ignoring, of course, that he is now in bed with all of his son's murderers: the Sith and the Trade Federation.
Ah, the Confederacy of Independent Systems. In almost every portrayal, the CIS is an evil general, a droid army, and a nefarious scheme that involves the oppression of a local people. How could anyone have sympathy for these guys?
Fair warning before we go any further: the films and shows give us maybe twenty minutes of Separatist interiority, combined, across two decades of content — so most of what follows isn't me weighing Legends against Disney. It's me extrapolating from first principles.
Let's think about what it would look like if we weren't getting a greatest-hits reel of the Jedi during the Clone Wars. Battle droids are funded by corporations; different corporations field different droid armies; many of them test the weapons they design on civilian populations. This is deplorable and shouldn't be done by any armed force, in our world or in a galaxy far, far away. We can all agree these guys don't really have a leg to stand on.
But what about the sympathizers? Most Separatists weren't Ventress, Gunray, or Lok Durd, or even Anto Kreegyr (Disney) or Horn Ambigene (Legends), though the latter two would have been far more common than the former. The average Separatist is a disenfranchised near-human or alien in the Outer Rim who works a dead-end job, worries about Cartel violence, and lives in fear of being captured and sold into slavery; who lived through the Naboo crisis (all four canons agree on that one) and also remembers, or knows someone who remembers, the Stark Hyperspace War (Legends).
If we think about what the CIS would be if it arose in the Star Wars galaxy, not necessarily as it is portrayed, but as it would have to be, the CIS is essentially a national-liberation popular front: oppressed racial and geographic minorities and the impoverished economic classes, being manipulated by an entrenched oligarchy for its own ends.
Such an alliance would be politically uneasy. It would be defined primarily by negation of the Republic rather than affirmation of a shared vision. It would still contain the Trade Federation, the Banking Clan, and other financial interests, but its ideology, if explored, would include your planetary autonomists, your sectorists, your galactic partitionists, and armed anti-corporate movements like the Nebula Front (Legends and Disney) and the neo-Nihilists (Disney), who just want to accelerate social collapse. I can see how a person living in the Outer or Mid Rim, or even the internal peripheries of the Core, would be drawn to Separatism, and I understand why someone like Helgait (Disney) would look back on Count Dooku as a champion of democracy, especially with the Empire as the direct outcome of the Republic's victory.
Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that the above is, if not acceptable, then understandable. What about the politicians of the CIS? They've gotta be a bunch of mustache-twirling villains, right? Let's look to the Filoni episode Heroes on Both Sides (aired before the sale to Disney, so it's both Legends and Canon). Allow me to introduce one of, if not, my absolute favorite Glup Shittos: Mina Bonteri.
Mina Bonteri is a dyed-in-the-wool true believer in the Separatist cause. A former Senator of the Republic disgusted by the corruption of the Senate and the state, she was an early supporter of the Separatists and a prominent leader of the Peace faction, which desired to settle with the Republic diplomatically. They were opposed by the War faction, led by Voe Atell, and aided by the Independence faction, which desired simply to leave. Tragically, none of these politicians in the Separatist Parliament have any actual power; all the emergency powers (and all the up-to-date information) are consolidated in the Separatist Council, which is composed entirely of corporate backers. Bonteri is in many ways the heroic counterpart to Dooku: she was the surrogate mother and mentor figure of one of the main characters (Padmé), and she was led to the CIS by anti-corruption concerns and prevented from achieving her goals by her compromised choice of allies. It is perhaps fitting, then, that it is Dooku who kills Bonteri to maintain the status quo of the Clone Wars.
So let's grant that the average supporter is understandable, and grant the same for the ignorant politicians. But what about the guerrillas? The first is essentially moral support; the second is participating in a script they don't know is written. But armed insurgents kill people for ideas, or at least for a job. Still, I get why someone might defend their home from invaders, especially when those invaders present as an army of slaves bred for war, led by religious zealots. And if you're economically struggling and a revolution pops up, there's a potential hope for social advancement; indeed, part of the Sith Grand Plan (Legends and Disney) was disrupting the economies of the Outer Rim precisely so they would grow desperate and revolt.
I think Ambigene and Kreegyr (okay Kreegyr never officially joins the Alliance before he dies, but he swam in the same pond), two generals who were both Separatist and Alliance, are interesting wrinkles in the narrative of the Alliance as the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Especially if we incorporate aspects of the Sequel trilogy: the capital that rotates between planets, the weakened Senate, the office of First Senator. Much of the Disney canon portrays a New Republic very much in line with Separatist criticisms of the old one.
Speaking of a continuity between the CIS and Alliance.
Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker. She's my favorite character! There's no point in not coming right out and saying it. She was raised, essentially from birth, to be a politician and a public servant. She believes in people; she believes that people, underneath it all, are fundamentally good; and she believes it so much that she literally dies for this belief. She wants to trust people even when they've given her every reason not to. I used to be so disappointed that we never got the Padmé from the concept art, the one who pulls a dagger on Anakin, but now I get it. She's not the kind of person to try to kill a potential tyrant; she's the kind of person to try to appeal to their shared (metaphorical) humanity. She's a fairy-tale princess crossed with the ideal Roman Senator; she's Cicero, if his younger lover were only five years his junior instead of forty-five. Everything so far you can extrapolate from the Prequel trilogy. This next part is just my personal read of her.
She's more than a little neurodivergent. She comes from a world of etiquette where everything is spelled out: there are literally books telling her what to say, how to say it, what to wear and how, how to act, and why. This is an environment in which neurodivergent people, autistic people in particular, thrive. I think Anakin and Padmé's love story is beautiful, though tragic and a bit toxic. I think they trauma-bonded during the Naboo crisis, and each felt like they could finally let down their guard and be themselves. And I think a lot of the dialogue makes sense when you read them as two heavily emotionally repressed people.
Padmé's surname is itself a place of contention: is she Padmé Amidala Naberrie, or Padmé Amidala Skywalker, or Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker? I default to all four names, because I think her reign is integral to her character development, she never severs herself from her family, and she joins herself to Anakin's.
She was, in many ways, the Rousseau or John the Baptist of the Rebel Alliance, as leader of its de facto ideological predecessor, the (ironically named) Loyalist Committee, and of its own successor, the Delegation of 2,000. She heralded the coming of a new revolutionary order by imparting to the aristocracy an ideology that was in many ways sympathetic to the political programme of the CIS (through Bonteri's influence) while maintaining an attachment to Republic nationalism. But Padmé, as a staunch institutionalist and a quasi-pacifist, had no theory of change when confronted with the reality of the Empire. This led to internal divisions between her two chief ideological successors. Bail Organa armed militias on Alderaan (all four canons) that would become the backbone of the Alliance military (Legends); Mon Mothma secretly bankrolled focos in the Outer Rim (Disney).
Despite this disagreement on methods and on the level of direct involvement, there was a quasi-Blanquist quality to their shared worldview. It is only natural, after all, that hereditary nobles and wealthy heiresses should decide the fate of trillions over a glass of squig and a plate of stuffed candlewick flowers. This likely arose from security concerns as much as from their class character and the invisibility of privilege, but it also came from Padmé's theory of change: it's just one more committee deciding policy, right? It takes the dissolution of the Senate and the destruction of Alderaan for the Old Guard to consider widespread popular mobilization and the empowerment of aliens and non-humans, who, incidentally, reinforce the pre-existing pro-CIS sentiments within the Alliance.
Between two owners, four canons, hundreds of licensed authors, thousands of fan fiction writers, and millions of fans: who owns the Star Wars canon? All of them, to a degree. We each have our own personal canon pieced together from a canon of canons. My hermeneutic is by no means universal, nor the best, but it brings me great joy, and if your engagement with Star Wars brings you joy, even if we disagree on every take, then I think you're doing it right. We're all drawing on the archetypes of a shared tradition, playing with our action figures in a collective toy box. It all has the same canonical fluidity as Visions; Visions is just the only set of stories where that fluidity is acknowledged in its very conception.
Just, whatever your head canon, please try to remember: teddy bears brought down the Galactic Empire, and it was awesome!
Explicit