OK, now that I'm back, I have some interesting ideas to share. So here goes.
I think at this point I've learned enough overall, from my own research and the guesses of other people, to put together much of what was in GL's mind at the time he began seriously to work on SW in 1975.
Notably, a lot of this is much more mature in tone and themes (both explicitly and implicitly) than what was ultimately made. It's also a lot more fantasy-oriented in general, like the second draft as a whole.
In particular, it's pretty clear in my view that GL always intended some Wagnerian influence on SW. After all, in his 1975 interview with Alan Dean Foster, he describes the basic form of SW in the form of a trilogy with a lone prequel--a "trilogy with a prelude," in the manner of Wagner's four-opera series Der Ring des Nibelungen.
But I suppose it wasn’t long before he realized he really had to make three prequels, to fit everything in that he wanted to. And it’d "rhyme" with the OT, after all.
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In reconstructing this, I’ve realized that perhaps the best way to tell it, and to gather ideas at the same time, is to write it like a book. After all, that’s what GL himself apparently tried to do in 1973 with the Journal of the Whills outline.
Forgive me if I don’t explain all the reasons behind this narrative. But do feel free to question me if anything seems out of place, and I’d be happy to explain my reasons for thinking as I do. (Some insights, though, just come naturally to a storyteller. Great minds think alike, after all, and I’d like to think that GL already thought up the majority of this stuff himself.)
OK, are you ready? Here goes.
Episode I: The City of Gold
Know, O Prince, that...
*ahem*
Sorry. Too much Robert E. Howard, I think.
Once upon a time, there was a great Jedi, who was also the Prince of a great and powerful world....
*ahem*
Sorry.
I think, given the known fact of the Clone Wars, this story must begin properly with the Clones.
Prologue to the First Episode
“Another galaxy, another time.”
It’s probable that, given GL’s interest in history and historical names, there was likely an ancestral homeworld of the Clone Clans, rather like ancient Israel before the Babylonian conquest.
As with the Corrino Empire of Frank Herbert’s Dune, there was presumably a ruling Clone Clan, and other lesser clans. There were, after all, said to be 12 noble families of the Empire in the 1975 third draft—analogous to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
This ruling clan was, I’d guess, named House Valorum, and its leader, the Clone King, would perhaps have been Alexander Valorum. These names come from the notes associated with the 1973 Journal of the Whills text.
It’s almost certain that the Valorum clan was distinguished by a set of genetic traits. Let’s say, perhaps, red hair and green eyes—features common to the MacDougall bloodline of superhuman Lensman candidates in EE “Doc” Smith’s Lensman book series.
This clone homeworld probably had a numeral in its name, as a reference to Wallach IX, home of the evil cloners, the Bene Tleilax, in Dune Messiah. Very probably it was called Sullust X. This world, the farthest out of ten planets, likely had three suns in its solar system—like Abydos in Stargate. You’ll see why momentarily.
Anyways, the Prince of Organa Major, later to be renamed Alderaan—let’s call him Carl Organa—had come to this homeworld for diplomatic reasons. Jedi, like Doc Smith’s Lensmen, would naturally have to be great diplomats as well as great warriors.
Perhaps the negotiations were about slavery, and the Republic’s wish to end it with compensated emancipation. At any rate, the Clones themselves must have kept slaves; and, if that was his purpose in the mission, Carl’s negotiations failed.
Except in one thing: Carl bought a slave child whom he liked, a fair-haired ten-year-old boy. This boy was Annikin Skywalker, so named because he had no father. After all, even in the rough draft of TPM, Shmi Warka and Anakin Skywalker have different last names.
In truth, though, Annikin did have a father: an incubus of sorts. Perhaps we might call this creature a Sith, or in fantasy parlance, an Elf. (Think of Alberich the Dwarf, who sired Hagen Tronje on the Queen of Burgundy in Wagner’s Ring Cycle.)
--
In fact, in the 1975 second draft, the Sith were said to be a pre-existing group, a "clan of Sith pirates," who did not have knowledge of the Dark Side until they were taught it by a renegade Padawan named Darklighter. Elven space pirates, perhaps?
--
Carl bought Annikin because he could see the young boy had great innate Force power. (Although it’s plain that anyone at this early stage could be a Jedi with the right training, genetic talent always helps—as Luke admitted in ROTJ.) In fact, Annikin was probably already winning podraces for his master at the age of ten. Essentially, he was Young Ben-Hur in Space.
Like Bruce Wayne, Carl Organa likely had a young ward: presumably the child of one of his father’s greatest knights, who was slain in battle. This child would’ve been Ben Kenobi, who must’ve been only a few years older than Annikin himself. Carl knew Ben was lonely, and wanted to give him a playmate of his own age.
Carl wanted to free both Annikin and his mother, but despite all the Prince’s efforts to bargain, their wealthy owner would only sell one slave. In fact, he secretly hoped to sire another Annikin on her; for he thought that he himself was the father, and had reason to do so. And isn’t that what slaveowners do in their hypocrisy?
So Carl bought Annikin from his master at a great price, and took him home, not realizing what weighty consequences for the future this one act would have.
Ten Years Later
War now loomed on the horizon between the Republic and the Clone Clans—who wished to secede, like the Separatists of the final prequels, but here likely on account of their desire to retain slavery.
To make the breach complete, and consummate the war both sides so devoutly wished, something must have happened… some catalyzing incident.
Perhaps, in a replay of the opening of the Trojan War, Alexander Valorum stole the bride of Prince Carl Organa, out from under the noses of the guards on Organa Major. If so, probably her name was Alana, as in “Helen of Troy.” (Alana is the name of one of Leia Aquilae’s handmaidens in the 1974 rough draft.)
The First Clone War had begun!
(Ever wonder why they were always the Clone Wars, in the plural? This is likely why. "Begun, this Clone War has...")
Annikin was a young man, and just as in the prequels, the fear of death would doubtless have disturbed him. He would've wanted to save his own life, and the lives of his friends. But in his heart he wanted vengeance on the Clones, who had treated him as a piece of chattel, and then betrayed his good friend and foster father, Carl Organa.
In short, he wanted magical shields and wonder weapons.
So he went to the best smiths in the galaxy: the inhabitants of the sinkhole world of Bestine. Here lived the Sith and the Boma: what one might call, in another galaxy and another time, Elves and Dwarves.
(In the third act of the 1975 second draft, Luke gives Han his lightsaber and sword-belt as a parting gift, saying they were wrought by the “Bomer-wrights of Sullust,” i.e., the Dwarf-smiths of Utapau/Tatooine.)
--
I would guess that the Elves of Bestine were uniformly lovely to look on: tall and golden-haired. But the Dwarves were not.
Most probably, Dwarven womenfolk were beautiful redheads, but their red-haired men were short and stunted, like Wagner’s Dwarves in the illustrations of Arthur Rackham. (This dimorphism is shared by the people of the Lost City of Opar in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels.)
All of them, however, would likely have had golden eyes and pointed ears—and they could interbreed, with each other and with Men.
But through centuries of too much inbreeding, and proud refusal to marry outside their own lineages, the Elves and Dwarves had both greatly dwindled in numbers. At last there was only one family left on Bestine, of Elves and Dwarves who had mixed together out of pure necessity: the Oxus-Kadar family.
There were three Elves and three Dwarves, and one child, making seven in total. (How’s that for a Disney homage?)
Three Elf sisters: Amber Oxus and her two sisters, Aurelia and Aubra. Three Dwarf brothers: Renard, Roland, and Oliver Kadar. And the youngest, the sole child: an infant half-Elf, half-Dwarf girl-child—Oeeta Kadar (who does not come further into this tale).
Almost all of these names are found in GL’s early drafts and notes from the 1973-74 period. “Renard,” though not found there, is mythological (as in the medieval legends of Reynard the Fox).
These were the greatest smiths in the galaxy: makers of lightsabers, of Kiber Crystals (the magical artifacts in the 1975 third draft which appear to have opened the Force to new Jedi), and of the Clones themselves. But the Clones had overpowered their masters, and only those few who had not been enslaved remained on their home planet of Bestine.
At present, the Sith and Boma were feuding, and begged Annikin to divide the world between them, so they might share it and still each have their own spaces. Annikin was a Jedi, after all, and Jedi were known for their abilities as fair arbitrators.
But Annikin was no ordinary Jedi, nor was he an ordinary man. He judged the Sith and the Boma according to his own immature heart.
For the Sith, who resembled him, were pleasing to him, but the Boma, with their red hair and their stunted bodies, were not—they reminded him of the pain of the lash, and the red hair of his former masters. And he wasn’t yet truly wise, and he saw only skin deep.
So Annikin told the Boma that they had to depart Bestine forever. They resisted him, but Annikin killed Renard in a show of force. The rest went, grudgingly, into forced exile, taking Oeeta with them.
(This whole bit with the two warring clans comes from the story of Siegfried’s adventure with two feuding Dwarves, guardians of a great hoard of treasure, in the medieval Nibelungenlied. It's obvious that GL always did like the various versions of the Sigurd story.)
Now, Annikin had still to deal with the Elves. He loved them so much that—well, I think you can figure it out.
Suffice it to say that, when Annikin was done with Amber, she killed herself. Aurelia, for her part, wished to go on living, but, feeling the insult to her family too much to bear, Aubra slew her own sister in an honor killing. (Titus Andronicus, anyone?)
At last, only Aubra was left.
She’d sought to protect her own sisters, and herself, by giving Annikin gifts to buy him off. It didn’t work.
First, for Amber’s sake, Aubra gave Annikin a magic ring, forged of two serpents interwoven, which would save his life if worn in battle. It’d have been very much like King Arthur’s magical scabbard.
Then, to ransom Aurelia, she gave Annikin a pair of magic rings, each in a serpent’s shape. These would save the lives of both wearers—as long as each of them remained loyal to the other, to the point of giving up their own life, each for each.
(This idea comes from Poul Anderson’s 1974 alternate-history fantasy novel A Midsummer Tempest, whose hero and heroine are given just such a pair of rings by the Elves, Oberon and Titania.)
And, in a vain attempt to protect herself, Aubra gave him another thing: a Black Sun.
I'd wager this was a portable magical bomb, analogous to Saruman’s “blasting fire” of gunpowder in The Lord of the Rings, which had been specially crafted for Annikin’s own needs. Naturally, as magical beings, Elves and Dwarves were quite capable of foresight.
But none of these things swayed Annikin from his dark desires. And afterward, Aubra still wished to remain alive, to wreak her own vengeance upon him.
So, as Annikin left Bestine, Aubra gave him one thing more: her own curse. She told him that the Two Rings would never bring good to their wearers, unless first purified with fire and blood—and that ultimately, to end the curse, the Lone Ring would have to be destroyed.
(The Dwarf Andvari lays down a very similar curse on the Ring stolen by Loki "Sky-Walker," and ultimately inherited by Sigurd/Siegfried, in Norse myth. It is this curse which brings about Sigurd’s downfall, and the fall in turn of the Burgundians who slay him and steal his gold.)
Armed and prepared, Annikin traveled to Sullust X, held under siege by the war fleets of the Republic.
--
Annikin snuck into the Golden City of Sullust himself, and found and rescued Alana. But he also found another prisoner: his own mother, who had been given over to the torturers when the war broke out.
Most likely, in fact, Annikin would’ve found her in such pain that he’d have been forced to give her a merciful death. (Basically, an even worse version of Anakin’s last meeting with Shmi in AOTC.)
In the fullness of his anger, Annikin detonated the Black Sun. Now he saw what it was truly meant to do, since Aubra had not told him the details.
It extinguished the third sun of the Sullust system, making it into a harsh desert world, placed as it was right next to the two other suns. (Imagine the power of the Genesis Device in Star Trek II—but here used to put out a sun.)
And the resulting shockwave completely destroyed the first nine planets of the Sullust system.
Sullust X survived—but the blast ruined it, leaving a post-apocalyptic, radioactive wasteland where a world of golden cities and flowing rivers had once been. Annikin and Alana, and the Republic fleets, barely got away in time. The First Clone War was over almost before it had begun.
(Does this remind you of anything yet? “This is Ceti Alpha V!” perhaps? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?)
For this great and terrible deed, Annikin Skywalker very likely received a new surname: Annikin Starkiller. Think of the Roman general Scipio, the victor of the Second Punic War, who defeated Hannibal of Carthage, and afterward was named Scipio Africanus. (Actually, you might also recall the Starkiller lineage of the 1975 second draft, whose ultimate founder was a man called “the Skywalker.”)
Carl Organa, whose father, the King, had been killed in the inital raid on Organa Major, now became the planet's new King, and resigned as an official Jedi. Annikin and Ben, both blooded in the war, entered his service as Knights.
It’s likely that such valiant Jedi were permitted to have the posting of their choice; after all, it’d explain how Ben Kenobi had “served” Leia’s father.
Like Aragorn Elessar in The Lord of the Rings, Carl probably took a regnal name: Rieekan. This name, later used for a Rebel general, is based on the French word for “shark,” and is a reference to Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, as well as to King Kala of the Shark Men from Flash Gordon.
And Annikin and Queen Alana, who had escaped the jaws of Hell together, fell in love, like Lancelot and Guinevere.
--
But not all the Clones had been killed in the fall of Sullust X.
Some escaped, and some perished, as did Alexander Valorum. But those who survived lived on as mutants, in the ruins of the City of Gold.
The new world of Sullust, once a sun, received settlers, who nicknamed it Utapau. This name had two senses, one ironic and one straightforward. It was a harsh world to live upon, but its denizens gave thanks for its creation, which ended the First Clone War with minimal loss to the Republic.
(In the 1975 third draft, the world we know as Tatooine is normally called Utapau, but Luke refers to it as Sullust in the company of off-worlders. It seems to have been analogous to the respective uses of Dune and Arrakis in Frank Herbert's Dune. But hardly anyone's ever noticed that detail! GL may still have some secrets after all.)
Some of the resentful mutant clones traveled to the new world of Sullust, and settled in secret camps in the desert. They resolved to make life as difficult as possible for the settlers on the new world whose birth destroyed their own. They hid their damaged faces and patchy red hair in bandages. The people of Utapau, who never perceived the secret beneath their masks, gave them a new name: the Tusken Raiders.
After all, Dwarves and Elves and Clones, the makers and the made, all had long memories… and they did not forget slights, and rarely forgave. And Aubra’s undying hatred of Annikin Starkiller and the Jedi Order would bear bitter fruit in future years.
Already, she was pregnant. And she had great plans for the twin children soon to be born to her.
