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HeirToTheEmpire

The first book

The Thrawn trilogy, also known as the Heir to the Empire trilogy, is a series of best-selling novels written by Timothy Zahn. The novels are set in the Expanded Universe (EU) of the Star Wars galaxy approximately five years after the events depicted in the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

The series introduced many notable characters of the EU, such as Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of the more notable villains in the EU.

It was followed by the The Hand of Thrawn two-book series (1997 and 1998), also authored by Zahn.

Summary[]

Heir to the Empire[]

As the first book opens, the Rebellion, now known as the New Republic, is still fighting to mop up final Imperial resistance and set up a functional government. However, Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned from his time in the Unknown Regions and taken command of the Empire without the New Republic's knowledge.

Thrawn begins his campaign by locating the planet Myrkr, where he harvests a number of Force-blocking ysalamiri, and then the planet Wayland, where an insane clone of the Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth guards the Emperor's private storehouse. With the ysalamiri's protection, Thrawn is able to negotiate with C'baoth and gain his cooperation and access to the storehouse, where he obtains a workable cloaking shield and tens of thousands of cloning cylinders.

In exchange for C'baoth's help in coordinating the fleet, Thrawn promises to capture Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia (who is, as "a very special bonus", pregnant with twins) for C'baoth to mold into followers. Leia escapes several kidnapping attempts by Noghri hunter squads, and Thrawn's Star Destroyer ambushes Luke in space. Luke escapes, but his X-wing is critically damaged; he is rescued by the smuggler Talon Karrde, learning about the ysalamiri in the process. Karrde's second in command, Mara Jade, who used to be the Emperor's personal servant, attempts to kill Luke to avenge the Emperor, but ends up needing his help to survive and lets him live for now. Luke escapes back to the New Republic.

After testing C'baoth's level of power, control, and loyalty with several probing strikes, Thrawn moves to his real target, stealing dozens of near-empty starships from the Sluis Van shipyards to be crewed with clones. However, his plan is narrowly foiled by Lando Calrissian successfully sabotaging the ships instead of letting them be taken. Admiral Ackbar is blamed for the loss and near-disaster, and accused of treason.

Dark Force Rising[]

Having missed out on obtaining a fleet for his clones, Thrawn turns instead to attempting to buy one. Mara Jade offers him information about the lost Katana fleet of 200 dreadnought-class cruisers, in exchange for lifting the bounty that Thrawn has placed on Karrde for his role in Luke's escape. However, Thrawn simply kidnaps Karrde, and Mara works with Luke to rescue him, closing that avenue. Thrawn instead bribes one of Karrde's former co-workers, who also learned the location of the Katana fleet, and is able to retrieve almost all of the dreadnaughts before the New Republic can stop him.

Leia, meanwhile, has learned that the Noghri have a near-worship of Darth Vader, and as his daughter, she has high status among them. She goes to investigate their planet, and is able to prove to them that Vader and the Emperor did not actually save their world from destruction, but rather, they caused its devastation in the first place in order to put the Noghri in subservience. The Noghri are outraged at the Empire, but keep their anger concealed and accept her help in beginning a more genuine rebuilding.

The Last Command[]

With the Katana fleet and his clones, Thrawn begins a campaign of recapturing planets for the Empire. His use of extraordinarily fast-growing clones unites Karrde and a coalition of other smugglers against him, and Mara Jade reveals to Luke that she knows about the Emperor's storehouse. They, Han, and Lando go to investigate it and destroy the cloning tanks, with Leia, Karrde, and a group of Noghri later following when Leia realises that the tanks will all have ysalamiri attached to allow faster growth cycles - rendering Luke powerless. While travelling on foot to the storehouse, Luke and Mara are able to talk about her service to the Emperor; Mara learns that Luke is Vader's son, and reveals that she has the Emperor's voice constantly in the back of her mind, telling her to kill him in revenge.

Upon arriving, they find that the situation is worse than they feared; the ysalamiri effect has additionally been used to imprison C'baoth, whose instability has worsened and who intends to mind-twist all of the clones into becoming his own personal army. C'baoth arranges for the natives to destroy all of the ysalamiri, and fights in the Emperor's throne room against Luke, Mara, Leia, Han and Karrde. Leia and Han are incapacitated, but Mara uses Leia's lightsaber to kill a clone of Luke that C'baoth was using to test Luke's worthiness, and in doing so, Mara fulfils the Emperor's last command ("YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER") and is freed. She then kills C'baoth himself with Leia's guidance.

Thrawn, meanwhile, out-gambits the New Republic and successfully traps a large fleet, intending to shift the balance of power by destroying a large portion of their forces. However, his Noghri bodyguard, having learned of the Empire's treachery, assassinates him during the battle, and without his tactical brillance, the Empire retreats.

Books in the series[]

  1. Heir to the Empire, 1991 (ISBN 0-553-40471-7)
  2. Dark Force Rising, 1992 (ISBN 0-553-08574-3)
  3. The Last Command, 1993 (ISBN 0-553-56492-7)

Reception, sales and influence[]

The trilogy sold a combined total of 15 million copies. The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminski credits the Thrawn trilogy with rekindling public interest in the Star Wars franchise after it had faded following the release of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi in 1983. According to Kaminski, it is possible that this renewed interest was a factor in George Lucas' decision to create the prequel trilogy.[1]

In August 2011, the series was voted into NPR's top 100 science fiction and fantasy books (coming in at place 88), as voted on by over 60,000 participants.[2]

Adaptations[]

All three books were later adapted as comic books by Dark Horse Comics. The series was divided into six separate issues per book, and re-released in 2009 as a single hardcover graphic novel for the trilogy. A soundtrack of the trilogy had been in discussions by Robert Townson, the vice president of Varèse Sarabande Records, but did not go any further than that.[3]

Role-playing game adaptations[]

Each novel in the trilogy had its own Star Wars role-playing game sourcebook created for it by West End Games. When the rules for the Star Wars RPG changed the three volumes were collected into one book for the entire Thrawn trilogy which also served as a second edition to the original three source books. According to Zahn, the writing of the trilogy was coordinated with preexisting West End Games materials (at the behest of Lucasfilm), and that "They filled in a bunch of gaps I hadn't got around to filling in."[1]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Kaminski, Michael The Secret History of Star Wars (3rd edition), pp. 289-291
  2. Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books. Retrieved on August 12, 2011.
  3. Vaz, Mark Cotta (2009-04-25). The Secrets of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, Star Wars. Del Rey, 256. ISBN 0-345-40236-7. “...had earlier discussed with Wilson the possibility of a sound track based on author Timothy Zahn's trilogy of Star Wars novels.” 
Wikipedia
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Thrawn trilogy. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Lucasfilm Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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