I came up with the idea that there are 2 parallel Star Wars galaxies, one with the Blue Ray versions of the original trilogy and the current canon and the other with the theatrical version of the original trilogy and different prequels and sequels. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan said that Vader was a young Jedi when he helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. However, in the theatrical version of Return of the Jedi, his ghost was portrayed by Sebastian Shaw who was 77. Even if Anakin’s ghost portrayed by Shaw could be realistically considered to be 70 since Shaw looked good for his age and Alec Guinness looked older than he was, Anakin still wouldn’t have been a young Jedi when he fathered Luke and Leia.

The Thrawn Trilogy explains this by having Anakin become Darth Vader years before he fathered Luke Skywalker. They have him go to Honoghr and get the Noghri to serve the Empire, 35 years before A New Hope.

The problem is that I recently discovered that the original Return of the Jedi novelization explicitly states that Anakin left to become Darth Vader right when his wife was pregnant.

The only explanation I can come up with is some sort of time dilation that brought Anakin’s wife years into the future before she gave birth. But how could that happen?