To clarify, movie novelizations are canon where they align with what is seen on screen in the 6 films and the Clone Wars animated movie.
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) April 30, 2014
Somehow I doubt the size of the GFFA was ever clarified in either the films or TCW.
But let’s be honest. Lucasfilm gives the novelizations lip service and lip service only, ignoring them in favour of EU schlock whenever they can. That’s what they did before they gave the EU its new paint job; that’s what they’re still doing.
The movies clarify that the size of the galaxy was measured in the thousands of civilizations
Let’s use math
According to canon
“Palpatine needs the senate to govern the THOUSANDS of systems”
I have a theory that is a perfect compromise between legends and canon(canon states that it’s thousands while legends states that it’s millions)
First let’s stop using the word “systems” when what we really need is “civilizations”
And what results is a whole lot of sense
Each civilization is in a solar system sorrounded by other solar systems…free or conquered real estate
civilizations want to colonize and there are no shortage of worlds to do so
Let’s go a step further and make our estimates as 25-50,000 civilizations
25,000 × 50 colonized or conquered worlds = 1,250,000 inhabited worlds for the republic
The original draft of star wars mentioned that the republic consisted of “million worlds”
Making the republic about the same size as the imperium from Warhammer
The empire in another draft consisted of “millions of worlds”
The empire grew to immense size so
50,000 civilizations times 100 conquered worlds each (colonized or force)
5 million worlds for the empire…5 million forms of communication
5 times larger than the republic and the Warhammer empire
since the empire loves conquering let’s double that number
50,000 core civilizations times 250 conquered or colonized worlds
12,500,000 worlds
Dark empire did say that the empire ruled 12 million worlds at its height
Compromise
Thoughts?