Star Wars Star Wars Discussion Thread - LET THE PAST D-! Oh, wait, nevermind

I contest that one as a matter of personal opinion and beliefs.

The Mandalorian Wars was when the seeds of the Republic's fall started to be planted, but to be fair, it was the worst war the Republic had fought up to that point and such a destructive war would not be seen again till the Clone Wars. The Republic was desperate to get life back as normal and they started making certain compromises to get certain results, and the Jedi restricted their Code even further to try and keep Jedi from turning and becoming like Revan. Obviously, in hindsight, these were bad decisions that spelled their doom, but you could see the reasoning at the time.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
The biggest issue with the republic at least by the end was the fact that the Republic Didn't have a military and all attempts for systems to create their own local armies was squashed by Corporations. In the days where the Old Republic had an army, (men and women so tough the clones would have been proud to fight along side them) and/or when the Jedi allowed their master's to rule over planets as Lords (...) criminal and corrupt orginizations like the Hutts and Czertek were still around but they didn't have the Republic over a barrel like we see in the Twilight of The Republic.
I quite agree. Of course, it should be noted that the "hollowing-out" of the Old Republic was the product of a centuries-long effort by what we might call a "satanic" cabal of evil wizards. I mean... how would any government stand against that? (For instance, in the hypothetical event that the Republic's government had been stronger, the Sith would just have co-opted it and gradually morphed it into a tyranny. They'd have been done much sooner! But because the Republic was so opposed to central power, they had to corrupt and twist it slowly, over centuries, before it ultimately became weak enough to... devour.)

Bane really was an evil genius.


Part of what makes Anakin so tragic is that had he been taken in by the Jedi at just about any other time period, he would have flourished and could have easily become a legendary hero that could have founded a powerful and renowned dynasty that could have had influence over the Republic for thousands of years (and to be fair the House Skywalker was a very powerful and influential house in the Post-Imperial era) Anakin was sadly just born at the wrong time.
Absolutely agreed. Anakin in the setting of Knight Errant would be like a glorious succession of awesome triumphs for him. He was made for that kind of scenario.


I contest that one as a matter of personal opinion and beliefs.
Well, they were going all "exterminate those non-humans over there!", and that clearly wasn't justified in SW. Unlike in, say, 40K, where it's a pretty reasonable position...

Now, if the Pius Dea had been a bit more moderated on that, and had limited themselves to crushing the Hutts and otherclearly predatory alien powers, they'd probably have been embraced by almost everyone, and they'd have succeeded.

I do think Cathedral Ships are really cool, though.
 
I quite agree. Of course, it should be noted that the "hollowing-out" of the Old Republic was the product of a centuries-long effort by what we might call a "satanic" cabal of evil wizards. I mean... how would any government stand against that? (For instance, in the hypothetical event that the Republic's government had been stronger, the Sith would just have co-opted it and gradually morphed it into a tyranny. They'd have been done much sooner! But because the Republic was so opposed to central power, they had to corrupt and twist it slowly, over centuries, before it ultimately became weak enough to... devour.)

Bane really was an evil genius

While I do agree with that to the extent. I'll refer back to my quote above.

The Mandalorian Wars was when the seeds of the Republic's fall started to be planted, but to be fair, it was the worst war the Republic had fought up to that point and such a destructive war would not be seen again till the Clone Wars. The Republic was desperate to get life back as normal and they started making certain compromises to get certain results, and the Jedi restricted their Code even further to try and keep Jedi from turning and becoming like Revan. Obviously, in hindsight, these were bad decisions that spelled their doom, but you could see the reasoning at the time.

Absolutely agreed. Anakin in the setting of Knight Errant would be like a glorious succession of awesome triumphs for him. He was made for that kind of scenario.

he'd have been the textbook mythological hero that parents would tell their kids about at bedtime The little slave boy from a backwater planet in the Outer Rim that became a Jedi, pushed the Hutts back to Nal Hatta (if not defeated them outright) and ensured the love of a princess, became a lord and founded one of the most powerful Dynasties/Houses in the galaxy. A case of rags to riches.
 
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Earl

Well-known member
People bitching about the Old Republic completely lack any and all perspective. They paste the most outlying bad times and the exesses of the Republic's literal dying days onto all of its history, and dumbly pretend as if that's fair accounting
I mean I’d argue that’s because we only see the bad times because peace and harmony are boring and because 25,000 years is way too long for people to really take seriously. Mind you, if you manage to last a thousand years that the Russan Republic did, your still very hot shit, but I can see why people make the mistake.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
The Old Republic and the New Republic's ultimate downfalls were down to a lack of a large, professional military that could police and defend the galactic order. The whole shit shows with CIS and the First Order would not have happened if the Republic Navy was big enough to effortlessly remind them who was boss from time to time.

Also, professional citizen soldiers who don't have control chips in their brains won't turn on their generals on a whim, nor completely submit to the sudden appearance of a tyrant...

Essentially, the Ruusan reformation was the longest suicide pact in history.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
and because 25,000 years is way too long for people to really take seriously
A funny thing to consider: far from being a failure, the Old Republic is so ludicrously successful that it strains belief. Even I, an ardent supporter of decentralism, cannot ascribe to it the overly abundant victories that SW ascribes to it. Rather, I think that decentralism like that would wotk for -- say -- a thousand years at a time, gradually calcifying into the kind of situation we see in TPM, followed by a substantially shorter bout of centralist depotism that causes enormous bloodshed and suffering... which then turns people off that kind of thing, and makes them yearn for decentralism again... so that it comes back triumphantly, for the next thousand-year round.

(Realistically, something like the Galactic Empire would last for a century, maybe two, and then it would all collapse and we'd see a period of competing states, which would then coalesce into a loose confederation -- essentially the New Republic reborn -- because that kind of thing offers obvious benefits. Rinse and repeat. That's how I'd imagine a more plausible cycle of galactic history.)



Essentially, the Ruusan reformation was the longest suicide pact in history.
I think that's probably right, on the grounds that it set up the Republic's (very slow) self-termination in the same way that the "golden liberty" and its liberum veto set up the downfall of the vaunted Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We shouldn't inore, however, the role of the Sith in the Republic's decay. Without them, it would have taken much longer for the Republic to stagnate like that.

Of course, as I've argued above, the time scales given in SW aren't particularly credible anyway. But given the premises we are handed by authorial fiat, it must be assumed that if the Sith really had died out out, the Old Republic would have declined much more slowly, ultimately dying a few millennia down the line.

(Although given galactic history, that "death" would presumably involve a powerful and ambitious Jedi finding a Sith holocron or haunted tomb, becoming the Lord of a new Sith Empire, and plunging the galaxy into a war that the moribund Republic would be ill-prepared to survive. There would be an age of darkness and tyranny, then. But no doubt, some hidden Jedi would survive, and as the tyrannical empire ultimately became self-destructive -- as all despotic governments invariably do -- they would rise up. And in the end, the tyranny would be thrown off, and a more tolerable government would in instituted again. It would look remarkably like the Old Republic. And it would start off great, before gradually stagnating, thus inviting the cycle to begin anew.)
 
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Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
The Old Republic and the New Republic's ultimate downfalls were down to a lack of a large, professional military that could police and defend the galactic order. The whole shit shows with CIS and the First Order would not have happened if the Republic Navy was big enough to effortlessly remind them who was boss from time to time.

Also, professional citizen soldiers who don't have control chips in their brains won't turn on their generals on a whim, nor completely submit to the sudden appearance of a tyrant...

Essentially, the Ruusan reformation was the longest suicide pact in history.
Kind of why Mon Mothma was the absolute worst person to head the New Republic Government. She was part of the problem in the Old Republic. And brought those flawed ideas forward to be the core of the New Republic. In fact all of the New Republic leadership were Idolistic hacks. If more of the common people from the Outer Rim had a say in things during the foundation of the New Republic. The old ideas could have been done away with.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
I don't know about the Disney continuity, but in the original EU, the New Republic literally addressed all the issues that had beset the Old Republic in its terminal stage. Crucially, it answered Palpatine's evil centralism by being explicitly confederal and giving all worlds the right to unilateral secession (which was key to building trust and leading everybody to join voluntarily), but it also answered the pre-Clone Wars military weakness by getting everybody to agree that a strong fleet was absolutely needed. (If the NR had been more centralist, many key members would have been too fearful of central power to allow for a strong fleet. If the strong fleet hadn't been created, the NR wouldn't have been able to defend itself. Indeed, they struck a near-perfect balance. Contrary to what some think, Mon Mothma was evidently a brilliant diplomat and politician.)

Oh, and slavery was fucking banned. Respect for basic sentient rights was a prequisite for membership.



The New Republic was a staggering success, for such a young government, ultimately triumphing even over extra-galactic invasion (which occurred at a point when true, structural recovery from Palpatine's many depredations could not yet have plausibly occurred). The New Republic only failed, implausibly and suddenly, by authorial fiat, when that hack Denning basically hijacked the setting with his bullshit. (Which was no more credible than Disney's fanfiction.)
 
I know I'm going to get flack by a lot of people, but I didn't like Darth Cadeous, it really did seem like someone was trying to make a Vader copy OC that was " like Vader but bigger badder edgier and more extreme!" And yet despite doing something's so extreme even Vader would give a Leia type speech about "tighten your grip too much and the whole galaxy will slip through your fingers," he's still supposed to be the antihero that is justified because plot.

At the point they introduced "The Mother" Abiloth IE "What if Neil Gaman wrote a Star Wars book?" I knew the well had officially run dry and keep in mind for me star wars is like DnD it's a feat to for a story to definitely be NOT star wars. As bad as the sequel Trilogy was, the EU was getting run into the ground by the time Disney bought Star Wars. The authors really needed to take a tip from TOR.
 
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Skallagrim

Well-known member
I know I'm going to get flack by a lot of people, but I didn't like Darth Cadeous, it really did seem like someone was trying to make a Vader copy OC that was " like Vader but bigger badder edgier and more extreme!" And yet despite doing something's so extreme even Vader would give a Leia type speech about "tighten your grip too much and the whole galaxy will slip through your fingers," he's still supposed to be the antihero that is justified because plot.

At the point they introduced "The Mother" Abiloth IE "What if Neil Gaman wrote a Star Wars book?" I knew the well had officially run dry and keep in mind for me star wars is like DnD it's a feat to definitely NOT star wars. As bad as the sequel Trilogy was, the EU was getting run into the ground by the time Disney bought Star Wars. The authors really needed to take a tip from TOR.
Yes, the Denningverse was a disaster. Darth Caedus was an insane reversal of Jacen's whole arc, and the set-up for it ("Vergere was a Sith, ackshually!!!") completely missed the point that Stover was making with that character. The Dark Nest bullshit was already very off-putting, but it only got worse and worse from there.

I know some people don't like NJO, either, and that's their right, but at least it had some fantastic high points, and a well-rafted conclusion. I always tell people to definitely stop reading when they're done with The Unifying Force.
 

Batrix2070

RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
"golden liberty" and its liberum veto set up the downfall of the vaunted Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
More precisely, the Liberum Veto was an effect of the failing PLC rather than really the cause of its collapse, just as the Reformation was for the republic. LV itself was not a problem for long, in fact the famous period of anarchy as far as passing laws was concerned was short and concerned the second half of the reign of August II and his son August III and even then both kings were able to rule through the Senate bypassing the Sejm.
The problem was that just like the golden liberty, the Reformation was built in a different era, where everything was set up differently and people approached given issues differently that centuries later when the situation became de-legitimized people got so used to what it was that it was hard for them to walk away from it in a pressing situation, and the cancer of the great magnates/commercial confederations was able by virtue of their estates to cripple any movement of renewal.
The convergence of the reasons for the collapses of the two countries, one might say, is ironic.
We shouldn't inore, however, the role of the Sith in the Republic's decay.
As much as possible, without knowingly spoiling the Republic/Commowealth by the forces of evil Sith/Prussia*.

The system could take much longer to decay and it is even possible that it would regenerate, reversing the scale of the damage for a while and any possible shocks would be much less painful and deadly.

*I refers to the fact that the Prussians, especially during the reign of Frederick I the Great violently spoiled Polish coinage, read generated artificial inflanation which further threw Poland into chaos and hindered the regeneration of the Polish middle class of the nobility as well as the bourgeoisie after the destruction, which in effect hindered, for example, something mundane like reforming the army or increasing their numbers.
The PLC struggled with the problem of money in circulation until the end of its existence. Medieval Poland was more monetary than PLC of the 17th or 18th centuries!
 
Yes, the Denningverse was a disaster. Darth Caedus was an insane reversal of Jacen's whole arc, and the set-up for it ("Vergere was a Sith, ackshually!!!") completely missed the point that Stover was making with that character. The Dark Nest bullshit was already very off-putting, but it only got worse and worse from there.

I know some people don't like NJO, either, and that's their right, but at least it had some fantastic high points, and a well-rafted conclusion. I always tell people to definitely stop reading when they're done with The Unifying Force.


Honestly I developed a new love and appreciation for the Legacy of the Force timeline and I wish Disney had done something akin to it

If you are going to do Skywalker stories have it revolve around Skywalkers hundreds if not thousands of years later. That way you have essentially a blank canvas to do what you want without things going turning fanfic.
 

Batrix2070

RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
If you are going to do Skywalker stories have it revolve around Skywalkers hundreds if not thousands of years later. That way you have essentially a blank canvas to do what you want without things going turning fanfic.
This would be the best and simplest solution for Disney, you are very far from the canon so you can write what you want and no one can attach, ba you can even make yourself an old trilogy 2.0 change here and there. Then you sell it as, the cycle repeats itself again, the old problem we already have, will the new characters fix it like the old ones again?
And you can always insert old scenes on a fanservis basis, hire old actors for single scenes from the past that the heroes discover so they get ideas on how to defeat the new but old evil?

And any complaints that it's the same thing again can be silenced more easily because the history of mankind is all the same thing all the time but in different variations.

The only problem is that you can't rewrite everything that was cool that way as part of Woke's anti-culture agenda. ;)
 

Earl

Well-known member
Honestly I developed a new love and appreciation for the Legacy of the Force timeline and I wish Disney had done something akin to it

If you are going to do Skywalker stories have it revolve around Skywalkers hundreds if not thousands of years later. That way you have essentially a blank canvas to do what you want without things going turning fanfic.
The only thing good even in comparison about Denningsverse is that you had a far more competnent and menacing villian in evil Jacen. Otherwise? total shit. I want to say again, dont turn skywalkers evil. Allow Luke and Leia to be good parents and die happy for the love of god. Also, no suffering porn, (like almost not metaphorical here).
 
The only thing good even in comparison about Denningsverse is that you had a far more competent and menacing villian in evil Jacen. Otherwise? total shit. I want to say again, dont turn skywalkers evil. Allow Luke and Leia to be good parents and die happy for the love of god. Also, no suffering porn, (like almost not metaphorical here).

to be fair The Male Skywalkers seem really bad about choosing women. Anakin picked a politician that he actually had very little in common with him and their relationship ended up coming across as more abusive than romantic. Jacen's seemed a lot closer to Lumiya than he should have been and I still can't help but wonder if some sexual seduction (I mean she was a cyborg BDSM sith lady complete with a lightsaber whip that's not exactly subtle). Kol hooked up with an imperial agent who was essentially Tarkin with boobs who honestly would have felt much more at home with Sidious's fascist empire than Fel's Golden Age of Philosophy empire. Luke was probably one of the few Skywalkers that actually picked a good wife for him and low in beholding Ben for the most part was a good kid.

Let it be a lesson not to not just think with your crotch.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
I don't know about the Disney continuity, but in the original EU, the New Republic literally addressed all the issues that had beset the Old Republic in its terminal stage.

The original EU New Republic also repeated the error of the Old Republic in eliminating a strong central military capable of handling galactic-scale crises and then doubled down on it by adopting the utterly ludicrous doctrine that any warship substantially larger and more powerful than the common Imperial Star Destroyer (i.e. every single true capital warship) was fundamentally immoral and should not be allowed to exist.

The original EU New Republic also suffered greatly from the out-of-character desire to keep writing what were fundamentally Rebel Alliance stories about a small band of familiar heroes saving the day against all odds, something that required that the New Republic constantly grab all the idiot balls in order to explain away the entire existence of the large-scale New Republic military.
 
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Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
The original EU New Republic also repeated the error of the Old Republic in eliminating a strong central military capable of handling galactic-scale crises and then doubled down on it by adopting the utterly ludicrous doctrine that any warship substantially larger and more powerful than the common Imperial Star Destroyer (i.e. every single true capital warship) was fundamentally immoral and should not be allowed to exist.

Stupid thing is, there was a class of vessel that suited the New Republic's needs perfectly in this regard, as a ship of war and policing that wasn't too big. It was, militarily speaking, something the Old Republic got completely right, and Tarkin was a literal galaxy brain to get rid of them.

ffuqxuccaqw51.jpg
 

AspblastUSA

Well-known member
Stupid thing is, there was a class of vessel that suited the New Republic's needs perfectly in this regard, as a ship of war and policing that wasn't too big. It was, militarily speaking, something the Old Republic got completely right, and Tarkin was a literal galaxy brain to get rid of them.

ffuqxuccaqw51.jpg

In fairness, for much of the EU’s run those hadn’t been invented yet, so it’s not fair to judge the New Republic for not using them.
 

stephen the barbarian

Well-known member
The original EU New Republic also repeated the error of the Old Republic in eliminating a strong central military capable of handling galactic-scale crises and then doubled down on it by adopting the utterly ludicrous doctrine that any warship substantially larger and more powerful than the common Imperial Star Destroyer (i.e. every single true capital warship) was fundamentally immoral and should not be allowed to exist.

The original EU New Republic also suffered greatly from the out-of-character desire to keep writing what were fundamentally Rebel Alliance stories about a small band of familiar heroes saving the day against all odds, something that required that the New Republic constantly grab all the idiot balls in order to explain away the entire existence of the large-scale New Republic military.
going to need a source on that one.
 

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