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Implied starting date of the Empire from OT dialogue — Page 6

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Servii said:

I do wonder what George was picturing when he thought of the Clone Wars.

Hmm… so Obi-Wan was a vet of WWII. But we can’t exactly say WWII. Let’s come up with something less on the nose.

Well, World Wars I and II were both wars with the same name.

Same name is sort of like being the same war.

Same war… Cloned wars… Clone Wars.

Alright, on to the next scene.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Well, completely ignoring the PT, I get the following.

Luke. In ANH we find that Vader hunted down the Jedi. Luke’s father died (in ANH there is nothing linking Anakin and Vader). So we can come to the conclusion that the events where the Empire rose were not earlier than Luke’s conception. Anakin knew of Luke’s at least impending birth before he died.

Leia. Kenobi severed her father in the Clone Wars. This doesn’t tie specifically to Leia’s age, but does pin down her father being of the generation of the Clone Wars.

Kenobi. He speaks of the Jedi, before the Empire, before the Dark times. There is no clear link between what he says and the Clone Wars, only that he and Anakin both fought in the Clone Wars. So Kenobi, Anakin, and Leia’s father were all in the clone wars in some capacity.

All of that agrees with the PT.

In TESB we get a more firm timetable of the Empire with Vader being Luke’s father. We do hear Luke thinking Dagobah is very familiar, but we don’t get any reason why. From the context of the film it was most likely a force vision.

In ROTJ we find out that Luke and Leia are twins. This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.

We still have no indication of when the Clone Wars took place. It could be a month before or a decade before.

From the actors it is also hard to guess. Alec Guiness was was 63 when ANH was released. Sebastian Shaw (true he wasn’t cast yet) was almost 72. Phil Brown was 61 and Shelagh Fraser was 56. So Alec, Phil, and Shelagh were contemporaries and from the dialog in ANH, Sebastian was cast to show how the Dark Side had aged and warped him. Anakin was Kenobi’s student. When you look at the ages in Attack of the Clones, the relative ages of Kenobi, Owen and Beru are not that different, 31, 27, and 18) from the ANH cast (63, 61, 56 about 30 years older). So Anakin was young enough for Kenobi to train (also remember that Yoda said Luke was too old in TESB, so Anakin would be younger than Luke… by a lot). So Sebastian’s advanced age much have had a reason beyond Anakin actually being older than Kenobi.

So from the casting and the dialog just in the OT, the Clone Wars had to have taken place somewhere between 30 and 20 years before ANH. Officially it was 22-19 years before. So all the timings of the PT fit with what we see in the OT, except the age of the actors. But there is also nothing in the movies indicating how long the Clone Wars lasted so adding in another 5 to 10 years of war doesn’t break anything. Also, Ahsoka appears to have grown up considerably more than 3 years, and she is introduced when the Clone Wars are well underway (Anakin was still a Padawn when they started). So the official timeline seems too short and doesn’t really fit with the ages of the actors cast in both the OT and PT.

As a side note, Jimmy Smits was much older than the others in AOTC, but he was contemporary by the time he appeared in Rogue One (he was 61 when it was released).

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Completely spitballing, it’s possible the Republic could have transitioned into the Empire gradually enough that you really can’t strictly say Year X was the Republic, Year Y was the Empire. There’s nothing textual that supports this, but it fits in with the metaphor for American Imperialism.

yotsuya said:
This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.

I don’t think we can necessarily assume that Vader turning to the dark side and the rise of the Empire happened at the same time.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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SparkySywer said:

Completely spitballing, it’s possible the Republic could have transitioned into the Empire gradually enough that you really can’t strictly say Year X was the Republic, Year Y was the Empire. There’s nothing textual that supports this, but it fits in with the metaphor for American Imperialism.

yotsuya said:
This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.

I don’t think we can necessarily assume that Vader turning to the dark side and the rise of the Empire happened at the same time.

There may not have been a moment as you lived through it, but historians would be able to pinpoint a moment when a key thing changed. Hunting down the Jedi could be that key thing.

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When it comes to the fall of Rome, historians will typically say something about how Rome never really fell, it slowly faded away over centuries, but if you really need a specific date, here are some good candidates (235 AD, 476 AD, 1453, etc). One of these is usually used as THE date Rome fell (476), but almost always with the clarification that that’s not actually how it worked out.

Maybe it could be something like that with the Galactic Republic/Empire. Here’s the date where the Jedi were officially declared enemies of the state. Here’s the date where the position of Emperor was created. Here’s when the Republic began imperializing the Outer Rim. Here’s the first major policy shift away from democracy toward autocracy. Et cetera.

Maybe the date where the Jedi were declared enemies of the state is the 476 AD of the Republic/Empire. Generally accepted to be the turning point, where yesterday you had the Republic, today you have the Empire, but it’s just a convention created millennia later. Not all that much actually changed, and other historians in other contexts would use different dates for different reasons.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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SparkySywer said:

When it comes to the fall of Rome, historians will typically say something about how Rome never really fell, it slowly faded away over centuries, but if you really need a specific date, here are some good candidates (235 AD, 476 AD, 1453, etc). One of these is usually used as THE date Rome fell (476), but almost always with the clarification that that’s not actually how it worked out.

Another Roman history buff? Excellent! My personal view is that Roman civilization disappeared starting with the The Last Persian War of 610-628 and then the Great Islamic Invasions 6 years later. The state that emerged at the end of this period a century later was not recognizable as Roman civilization any longer.

Maybe it could be something like that with the Galactic Republic/Empire. Here’s the date where the Jedi were officially declared enemies of the state. Here’s the date where the position of Emperor was created. Here’s when the Republic began imperializing the Outer Rim. Here’s the first major policy shift away from democracy toward autocracy. Et cetera.

My own attempt to create a backstory for the OT that I am working on in the script writing/re-writing section takes this approach. It starts with government corruption and economic difficulties (a widening gap between rich and poor), then comes The Clone Wars, then comes The Emperor. Even in the official canon we get a glimpse of this idea; in TPM Shmi effectively tells Padme that Republic authority has ceased to exist on Tatooine.

Maybe the date where the Jedi were declared enemies of the state is the 476 AD of the Republic/Empire. Generally accepted to be the turning point, where yesterday you had the Republic, today you have the Empire, but it’s just a convention created millennia later. Not all that much actually changed, and other historians in other contexts would use different dates for different reasons.

It would seem likely that the Jedi would not accept the end of democratic rule sitting down. So the destruction of the order would have to take place before, or almost concurrent with, Palpatine’s assumption of the title of Emperor. However; in the novelization to Star Wars Obi-wan talks about “the later corrupt Emperors”. This opens the possibility to the idea that there was an initial Emperor who was perhaps a benevolent despot - seizing power in order to save the Republic. Perhaps the Jedi served, albeit grudgingly, under the initial Emperor.

Problem is, all of the above would seem to contradict the novels opening crawl where it states that the Jedi had been exterminated at the behest of the corrupt government (the Moffs and Grand Moffs I would guess), that Palpatine declared himself Emperor (implying there were no prior Emperors). Here is the relevant text:

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the Imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.

This also implies that Palpatine might not be completely evil. The line that “the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears” seems to imply that he was being kept in the dark (no pun intended) on what was going on in the Republic. The Moffs and Grand Moffs were the true rulers of The Galaxy Far Far Away.

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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theprequelsrule said:

SparkySywer said:

When it comes to the fall of Rome, historians will typically say something about how Rome never really fell, it slowly faded away over centuries, but if you really need a specific date, here are some good candidates (235 AD, 476 AD, 1453, etc). One of these is usually used as THE date Rome fell (476), but almost always with the clarification that that’s not actually how it worked out.

Another Roman history buff? Excellent! My personal view is that Roman civilization disappeared starting with the The Last Persian War of 610-628 and then the Great Islamic Invasions 6 years later. The state that emerged at the end of this period a century later was not recognizable as Roman civilization any longer.

Maybe it could be something like that with the Galactic Republic/Empire. Here’s the date where the Jedi were officially declared enemies of the state. Here’s the date where the position of Emperor was created. Here’s when the Republic began imperializing the Outer Rim. Here’s the first major policy shift away from democracy toward autocracy. Et cetera.

My own attempt to create a backstory for the OT that I am working on in the script writing/re-writing section takes this approach. It starts with government corruption and economic difficulties (a widening gap between rich and poor), then comes The Clone Wars, then comes The Emperor. Even in the official canon we get a glimpse of this idea; in TPM Shmi effectively tells Padme that Republic authority has ceased to exist on Tatooine.

Maybe the date where the Jedi were declared enemies of the state is the 476 AD of the Republic/Empire. Generally accepted to be the turning point, where yesterday you had the Republic, today you have the Empire, but it’s just a convention created millennia later. Not all that much actually changed, and other historians in other contexts would use different dates for different reasons.

It would seem likely that the Jedi would not accept the end of democratic rule sitting down. So the destruction of the order would have to take place before, or almost concurrent with, Palpatine’s assumption of the title of Emperor. However; in the novelization to Star Wars Obi-wan talks about “the later corrupt Emperors”. This opens the possibility to the idea that there was an initial Emperor who was perhaps a benevolent despot - seizing power in order to save the Republic. Perhaps the Jedi served, albeit grudgingly, under the initial Emperor.

Problem is, all of the above would seem to contradict the novels opening crawl where it states that the Jedi had been exterminated at the behest of the corrupt government (the Moffs and Grand Moffs I would guess), that Palpatine declared himself Emperor (implying there were no prior Emperors). Here is the relevant text:

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the Imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.

This also implies that Palpatine might not be completely evil. The line that “the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears” seems to imply that he was being kept in the dark (no pun intended) on what was going on in the Republic. The Moffs and Grand Moffs were the true rulers of The Galaxy Far Far Away.

You have to remember when reading that last part that Palpatine was constantly being duplicitous. His character of Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine was seen to be easily manipulatable. But as Darth Sidious, he was always controlling things Even the Emperor we get in the OT is an evil and powerful being who could not be controlled by others. He used tricks and the force to get the politicians and bureaucrats to convince him as Emperor to act. So on the surface the Emperor is a puppet, but in reality he is controlling the politicians and bureaucrats who think they are controlling him. An excellent way to maintain power.

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It’s really simple: still 19 years just like in the prequels.

Vader is said to be instrumental in founding the Empire and killing the Jedi. Luke is 19. Whether Anakin and Vader are the same person or not, Anakin would need to be alive and on the light side 19 years ago so he can provide his part in Luke’s birth; BEFORE he’s “killed”/turns to the dark side. It’s kinda just simple math.

Unless Vader conceived of Luke while he was a Sith lord, but there’s OT dialogue that contradicts that (“…if Anakin had any offspring…”). Plus the sequence of events wouldn’t make any sense; I don’t see Luke ending up under the supervision of Obi-Wan if he was conceived while Vader is evil, he’d absolutely end up with the Empire.

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G&G-Fan said:

It’s really simple: still 19 years just like in the prequels.

Vader is said to be instrumental in founding the Empire and killing the Jedi. Luke is 19. Whether Anakin and Vader are the same person or not, Anakin would need to be alive and on the light side 19 years ago so he can provide his part in Luke’s birth; BEFORE he’s “killed”/turns to the dark side. It’s kinda just simple math.

Unless Vader conceived of Luke while he was a Sith lord, but there’s OT dialogue that contradicts that (“…if Anakin had any offspring…”). Plus the sequence of events wouldn’t make any sense; I don’t see Luke ending up under the supervision of Obi-Wan if he was conceived while Vader is evil, he’d absolutely end up with the Empire.

It’s been a few years since I last commented on this thread, but if I remember correctly, there was some debate about how the formation of the Empire worked out pre-PT. There was some information to suggest that the Empire could have been formed long before Luke and Leia were born and that the Jedi fought against the Empire/Sith as an opposing faction until they were eventually wiped out. This would then make Anakin’s fall to the dark-side happen after the formation of the Empire, and not concurrently as it does in canon.

This is also how things more-or-less were in the 1st draft of SW, were there were several, though not many, Jedi still around fighting against the Empire and multiple Sith Lords. So it’s possible that this was still in Lucas’ mind during the making of the OT, though by the time of ROTJ this had probably changed to something a bit more like the final canon established in the PT.

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Have not gone back through the whole thread, so I apologize if the following was already mentioned.

Red Leader (played by Drewe Henley; who was 36 at the time of filming) said he met Anakin Skywalker, the renowned fighter pilot, when he was “just a boy”. If we assume Red Leader was supposed to be the same age or a little older as the actor who played him, what tentative conclusions can we draw?

So I would say that The Empire was formed between 25 to 35 years before The Battle of Yavin. But the PT version is still possible if we accept Red Leader as younger then he looks. It depends on what age range we see someone being a boy rather then a man

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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Funny that you brought Red Leader up! Was just thinking of that scene while I was catching up on the thread.

This pre-PT timeline is something Kaminski frequently revisits in The Secret History of Star Wars as he’s working his way through the movies. Might be worth looking through again if someone already hasn’t mentioned his conclusions.

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theprequelsrule said:

So pre-1978:

  1. Who are The Sith?

I suspect that when The Emperor was intended to be the puppet head of state described in the novelization, “the Sith” were intended to be Jedi who joined forces with the empire, but when The Emperor became a master of the Dark Side, it raised the question of who trained him, leading “the Sith” to become ancient rivals of the Jedi.

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I don’t think any start date for the Empire was ever really implied by OT dialogue. But we can piece a few things together to work it out:

We know Vader must have turned evil no later than 19 years before ANH (due to Luke’s age), and we know Vader hunted down the Jedi Knights - meaning the Jedi Knights existed 19 years before ANH. We know the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace in the “Old Republic”. We can take this to mean the Old Republic existed 19 years before ANH. All of these add up to sort of give the picture that the Old Republic fell around the same time Vader turned evil and hunted the Jedi Knights.

So:

  • Vader turned evil no later than 19 years before ANH
  • Vader killed the Jedi Knights
  • The Jedi Knights were guardians of peace in the Old Republic

Therefore… the Old Republic must have become the Empire 19 years before ANH. This is also what the Prequels show. So case closed.

Or IS IT??!??!???

Yes. It is. Mostly. But there’s just one nagging thing. Did anyone who grew up watching the OT actually feel like the Empire was only 19 years old?

I certainly didn’t. I had assumed the Empire might have been like centuries old. Most of the characters didn’t seem to even remember a time before the Empire, except for Obi-Wan, who, as a Jedi, may be supernaturally old. And the way Alec Guinness waxed poetic about the Old Republic - before the dark times, sounds like he was reminiscing for an ancient Golden Age of Legend. Something that existed in the remote past. And the way Han scoffed at Kenobi’s superstitious beliefs, or the way Tarkin spoke of Obi Wan as if he should be long dead, or Vader’s ancient religion.

The Empire never seemed only 19 years old. It seemed ancient - a Galactic Order that had existed as long as anyone can remember. That’s what made toppling it seem all the more spectacular.

I originally blamed the Prequels for showing the Empire lasted less than 20 years. But actually, the OT more or less implies this as well if you put the pieces together.

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One of the lines of evidence pointing to Obi-wan being older than Guinness’s age would be the apparent age of Anakin at his death. He was played by Sebastian Shaw, who was about 78 at the time of filming. Assuming that Anakin is intended to be this old, If ROTJ took place around five years after ANH, that would mean that the birth of the twins occurred when Anakin was 54. This quite old, but not impossible by any means.

Also, if the Force allows people to live beyond their years, Anakin’s apparent old age in ROTJ could undercount his age as much as it could overcount it due to theories that the Dark Side may accelerate the aging process. As such, I tend to think that the actor’s age in ROTJ is a fair estimate.

If we conclude from this evidence that Anakin was middle-aged when the twins were born, this implies that either he killed the Jedi at this time, or that he killed the Jedi when he was younger and the twins were born years after he turned evil: “A young Jedi named Darth Vader…” Of course, ‘young Jedi’ to Obi-wan may mean anyone not pushing eighty. Recall that Yoda lived for 900 years.

With characters such as Han Solo not believing in the Jedi, it makes sense that the Jedi were mostly destroyed before Han was born, which means that Anakin could have begun killing the Jedi a decade before the birth of the twins, which would place the Empire’s start at thirty years before the battle of Yavin.

If this is accurate, then Obi-wan’s statement that Anakin was a young Jedi at the birth of the Empire makes a bit more sense, since he would have been about 44. This is still not ‘young’ as most people would define it, but even the current canon implies that most Jedi are old before they gain mastery of the Force.

The concept that the Empire arose over a ten year period of increasing strife and instability as the Jedi were hunted down and destroyed tracks better with Obi-wan’s statement about the ‘dark times’, and Luke’s astonishment that Obi-wan could have fought in the Clone Wars, since they presumably ended over ten years before Luke was born.

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Also, even if we assume that the conception of the twins must have occurred before Anakin turned evil, this doesn’t necessarily invalidate the above timeline. Anakin and his wife could have had the children while she was still unaware of the depth of his dark side, or she could have been injured after the conception and placed in stasis while Anakin desperately sought a method to save her from death (this would be wonderfully poetic considering the events of ESB). Heck, Anakin’s wife could even take a ride on a star cruiser for ten years traveling near the speed of light. The possibilities are endless.

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^ I tend to ignore the age of the actors as strong evidence of any particular scenario, because it’s really just a very broad indicator at best, and doesn’t take into account any sci-fi/fantasy possibilities. But the reality is it’s tricky to extend the duration of the Empire too much over 19 years. You can say that Anakin/Vader turned evil before giving birth to the twins (and thus before turning into a cyborg). But presumably Mrs. Skywalker wouldn’t stick around once Anakin became a supervillain, so the only way to pull this off story-wise is to claim Anakin was “secretly” evil for some unspecified time period before the twins were born.

The “secretly evil Vader” scenario isn’t entirely implausible. Lucas himself has even implied this was the case in some old story discussions with Kasdan et. al., saying that the Jedi purge was sort of a stealthy affair, with Vader secretly catching Jedi off guard. (What did he like stab hundreds of thousands of people when they weren’t paying attention? I don’t know, maybe there weren’t that many Jedi.) I guess we can extend the duration of this “secret evil Vader” period to any number of decades, to extend the length of the Empire. But really, it stretches plausibility the longer we stretch it. Also, Lucas’ comments about “stealthy Vader” imply the Jedi purge happened during the waning days of the Old Republic, before the Empire.

I mean, believe me, I don’t like the idea that the Empire only lasted like 20 years. Before the Prequels, I kind of assumed the Empire was a very old institution, which is why taking it down seemed so impossible. I even came up with scenarios to explain how Vader could have turned evil much earlier than 19 years before A New Hope: maybe Ben Kenobi took Vader’s children and hid them by cryogenically freezing them for some unspecified time period. Then later (perhaps decades - or centuries? - later), when he thought it would be safe, he unthawed the twins and gave them to Owen/Beru and the Organas. But no… that doesn’t work, because Owen and Beru act like they were friendly with Anakin relatively recently.

I don’t know. It’s science fiction/fantasy. Maybe humans in Star Wars live for 500 years. Maybe Han Solo was actually 175 years old at the time of ANH. Who knows? Except, we all know that isn’t the intent here. It’s pretty clear the Empire is relatively young (despite certain impressions we may get to the contrary.) That’s the most straightforward interpretation of all the evidence.

Also, the deleted scene in ANH, where Luke talks with Biggs at Tosche station, actually gives the impression of a relatively young Empire. Luke and Biggs talk about how the Empire isn’t “out here” yet (i.e. not out on Tatooine), and is just now starting to “nationalize commerce”, indicating it’s still in a growth/expansion phase. Sure, it’s possible it takes centuries for Imperial control to expand to the Outer Rim, but that’s just not the impression I get from how Biggs talks about it - warning Luke that the Empire isn’t as far away as it seems.

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Channel72 said:

But presumably Mrs. Skywalker wouldn’t stick around once Anakin became a supervillain, so the only way to pull this off story-wise is to claim Anakin was “secretly” evil for some unspecified time period before the twins were born.

Alternatively, she was a baddie herself. Or worse, she was Anakin’s sex slave.

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There’s kind of a “thematic dissonance” in the OT about this. In ANH, you really get the sense the Empire is a very old institution - the way Kenobi talks about the Old Republic, before the dark times, or how he tells Luke he hasn’t gone by the name Obi Wan for “a long time… a long time.” Plus, the whole epic fantasy vibe and the implied backstory of a Golden Age Old Republic that lasted for “a thousand generations” sort of suggested longer time scales for all of this.

But then in the Prequels we find out the Empire is less than 20 years old. But a closer examination reveals the Prequels aren’t to blame here: it’s actually the fault of Empire Strikes Back. Turning Anakin into Vader had the unintentional side effect of heavily implying the Empire is about the same age as Luke, since Luke’s father is now Darth Vader, who killed the Jedi Knights of old. (Separate Anakin/Vader characters allows the possibility that Luke’s father was among the last of the Jedi Knights, who were victims of an ongoing multi-decade purge carried out by Vader under the Imperial banner.)

The pre-Prequel Gen-X fans also picked up on this. Early fan-fiction stories about the Prequel era, written in the 1980s, generally set the Prequels around 20 years before ANH, and considered the birth of Luke/Leia to be cotemporaneous with the rise of the Empire and the fall of Vader.

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Before ESB I think the following makes sense:

Clearly the Clone Wars happened in the distant past. Luke is astonished (in the Star Wars novelization) that Kenobi fought in them because “that was so long ago!”. Likely Lucas envisioned The Empire rising afterwards due the devastation of The Clone Wars and general corruption of The Senate that had set in. Like Hitler took advantage of The Great Depression.

It seems likely that Lucas envisioned the Jedi to have extended lifespans (similar to Numenoreans from LOTR).

Kenobi, Anakin and his wife are likely fleeing The Empire when Vader catches up to them - killing Anakin. Kenobi and the pregnant Mrs. Skywalker escape. Maybe they had been part of an earlier insurrection against The Empire before The Rebellion starts.

Obi-wan and Anakin are born OUTSIDE of Republic space on Tatooine - which is why he feels safe to take Luke there to live with his family (Owen Lars and Beru Skywalker - Beru is Anakin’s sister or cousin or…something).

After ESB:

Slight adjustment to canon. Obi-wan takes Luke to live with his brother Owen (ROTJ novelization) on the backwater planet Tatooine (still outside of Imperial territory).

It is possible that Anakin DID NOT START OUT AS THE MAIN JEDI HUNTER. He might have been recruited DURING the Jedi Purge. Maybe he gave into despair (fear) that The Jedi could never be saved and it was better to join The Empire “to restore order to the galaxy” rather than fight against it. So The Empire as an evil Empire could still exist for some time prior to Anakin becoming Vader.

Obi-wan REALLY should have changed his last name though! Unless Kenobi is equivalent to “Smith”.

More Pre-Prequel Info: from Dark Force Rising (June 1992): Jorus C’Baoth becomes “Personal Jedi Advisor” to Senator Palpatine in June of '79 “Pre-Empire Date”. Outbound Flight leaves Yaga Minor on April 1 '64 PED.

More from Dark Force Rising:

“Winter shrugged. ‘There are always exceptions to a race’s normal life span,’ she pointed out. ‘And a Jedi, in particular, might have techniques that would help extend that span.’”

PALPATINE WAS A SENATOR 79 YEARS BEOFRE THE EMPIRE WAS ESTABLISHED!

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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Well, I think it depends on what question we’re actually asking here. Is it theoretically possible - given only the info in the OT - that the Empire was much older than 20 years in ANH? Sure, it’s possible. There are many ways to write the backstory this way, as suggested in this thread, including but not limited to: (1) Vader was secretly evil for decades before giving birth to Luke, or (2) it wasn’t a secret and Mrs. Skywalker openly supported Vader’s murderous purge, or (3) there were other Jedi-killers before Vader, or (4) Luke and Leia were cryogenically frozen for some unspecified time period, etc. etc.

But none of those possibilities are the most straightforward, natural interpretation of the OT. The most natural interpretation is probably just the Empire was only 19 years old.

Or rather, with only ANH in mind, perhaps the Empire was substantially older. But with all three Original Trilogy films, the most natural conclusion is the Empire is the same age as Luke. Yes, it’s possible to come up with ways to extend the length, but they all involve “multiplying extra entities beyond necessity”, which makes William of Occam very sad.

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I don’t think Anakin was supposed to be Sebastian Shaw’s age. Between the makeup on dying Anakin and the blurry ghost, you can’t tell Shaw’s age from watching the movie.

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yotsuya said:

Well, completely ignoring the PT, I get the following.

Luke. In ANH we find that Vader hunted down the Jedi. Luke’s father died (in ANH there is nothing linking Anakin and Vader). So we can come to the conclusion that the events where the Empire rose were not earlier than Luke’s conception. Anakin knew of Luke’s at least impending birth before he died.

Leia. Kenobi severed her father in the Clone Wars. This doesn’t tie specifically to Leia’s age, but does pin down her father being of the generation of the Clone Wars.

Kenobi. He speaks of the Jedi, before the Empire, before the Dark times. There is no clear link between what he says and the Clone Wars, only that he and Anakin both fought in the Clone Wars. So Kenobi, Anakin, and Leia’s father were all in the clone wars in some capacity.

All of that agrees with the PT.

In TESB we get a more firm timetable of the Empire with Vader being Luke’s father. We do hear Luke thinking Dagobah is very familiar, but we don’t get any reason why. From the context of the film it was most likely a force vision.

In ROTJ we find out that Luke and Leia are twins. This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.

We still have no indication of when the Clone Wars took place. It could be a month before or a decade before.

From the actors it is also hard to guess. Alec Guiness was was 63 when ANH was released. Sebastian Shaw (true he wasn’t cast yet) was almost 72. Phil Brown was 61 and Shelagh Fraser was 56. So Alec, Phil, and Shelagh were contemporaries and from the dialog in ANH, Sebastian was cast to show how the Dark Side had aged and warped him. Anakin was Kenobi’s student. When you look at the ages in Attack of the Clones, the relative ages of Kenobi, Owen and Beru are not that different, 31, 27, and 18) from the ANH cast (63, 61, 56 about 30 years older). So Anakin was young enough for Kenobi to train (also remember that Yoda said Luke was too old in TESB, so Anakin would be younger than Luke… by a lot). So Sebastian’s advanced age much have had a reason beyond Anakin actually being older than Kenobi.

So from the casting and the dialog just in the OT, the Clone Wars had to have taken place somewhere between 30 and 20 years before ANH. Officially it was 22-19 years before. So all the timings of the PT fit with what we see in the OT, except the age of the actors. But there is also nothing in the movies indicating how long the Clone Wars lasted so adding in another 5 to 10 years of war doesn’t break anything. Also, Ahsoka appears to have grown up considerably more than 3 years, and she is introduced when the Clone Wars are well underway (Anakin was still a Padawn when they started). So the official timeline seems too short and doesn’t really fit with the ages of the actors cast in both the OT and PT.

As a side note, Jimmy Smits was much older than the others in AOTC, but he was contemporary by the time he appeared in Rogue One (he was 61 when it was released).

^ based on the above ,an idea popped in my head …it seems logical to me that Anakin should have been 15 years old at the start of the prequel trilogy . That would have made him fairly substantially younger than Luke at the start of his journey in the OT , without straying into the kiddie territory with Anakin being 9 years old in episode 1 as released . I wonder if Lucas had the thought that making Anakin 15 at the start of the PT would be straying too close to Dune ,what with Paul Atreides being 15 in the first book and being part of a chosen one prophecy in the sense of Paul being a prophecized messiah . Maybe he realized how much he borrowed from Dune in the OT already ( among many other sources ) , looked over at his son who was a toddler at the time , and decided on placing Anakin at 9 years old as a happy medium between 9 and 15 so that it wouldn’t be too on the nose derivative of Dune . Probably a stretch ,but I find it fun to think about . I would still like to have had Anakin start out at 15 in episode one anyway . I vote 30 to 25 years before ANH as the start date of the Empire .

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The OT gave me the impression that Anakin hadn’t completed his Jedi training yet when he became Darth Vader. Obi-Wan says Vader was “a pupil of mine before he turned to evil” and Yoda warns Luke that if he doesn’t complete his training he’ll end up like Vader.

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screams in the void said:

yotsuya said:

Well, completely ignoring the PT, I get the following.

Luke. In ANH we find that Vader hunted down the Jedi. Luke’s father died (in ANH there is nothing linking Anakin and Vader). So we can come to the conclusion that the events where the Empire rose were not earlier than Luke’s conception. Anakin knew of Luke’s at least impending birth before he died.

Leia. Kenobi severed her father in the Clone Wars. This doesn’t tie specifically to Leia’s age, but does pin down her father being of the generation of the Clone Wars.

Kenobi. He speaks of the Jedi, before the Empire, before the Dark times. There is no clear link between what he says and the Clone Wars, only that he and Anakin both fought in the Clone Wars. So Kenobi, Anakin, and Leia’s father were all in the clone wars in some capacity.

All of that agrees with the PT.

In TESB we get a more firm timetable of the Empire with Vader being Luke’s father. We do hear Luke thinking Dagobah is very familiar, but we don’t get any reason why. From the context of the film it was most likely a force vision.

In ROTJ we find out that Luke and Leia are twins. This firmly plants the start of the Empire at their birth. Why? Vader did not know Luke had a sister which means he was not present at the birth. So the event that turned Vader and started the Empire happened between conception and birth of the twins.

We still have no indication of when the Clone Wars took place. It could be a month before or a decade before.

From the actors it is also hard to guess. Alec Guiness was was 63 when ANH was released. Sebastian Shaw (true he wasn’t cast yet) was almost 72. Phil Brown was 61 and Shelagh Fraser was 56. So Alec, Phil, and Shelagh were contemporaries and from the dialog in ANH, Sebastian was cast to show how the Dark Side had aged and warped him. Anakin was Kenobi’s student. When you look at the ages in Attack of the Clones, the relative ages of Kenobi, Owen and Beru are not that different, 31, 27, and 18) from the ANH cast (63, 61, 56 about 30 years older). So Anakin was young enough for Kenobi to train (also remember that Yoda said Luke was too old in TESB, so Anakin would be younger than Luke… by a lot). So Sebastian’s advanced age much have had a reason beyond Anakin actually being older than Kenobi.

So from the casting and the dialog just in the OT, the Clone Wars had to have taken place somewhere between 30 and 20 years before ANH. Officially it was 22-19 years before. So all the timings of the PT fit with what we see in the OT, except the age of the actors. But there is also nothing in the movies indicating how long the Clone Wars lasted so adding in another 5 to 10 years of war doesn’t break anything. Also, Ahsoka appears to have grown up considerably more than 3 years, and she is introduced when the Clone Wars are well underway (Anakin was still a Padawn when they started). So the official timeline seems too short and doesn’t really fit with the ages of the actors cast in both the OT and PT.

As a side note, Jimmy Smits was much older than the others in AOTC, but he was contemporary by the time he appeared in Rogue One (he was 61 when it was released).

^ based on the above ,an idea popped in my head …it seems logical to me that Anakin should have been 15 years old at the start of the prequel trilogy . That would have made him fairly substantially younger than Luke at the start of his journey in the OT , without straying into the kiddie territory with Anakin being 9 years old in episode 1 as released . I wonder if Lucas had the thought that making Anakin 15 at the start of the PT would be straying too close to Dune ,what with Paul Atreides being 15 in the first book and being part of a chosen one prophecy in the sense of Paul being a prophecized messiah . Maybe he realized how much he borrowed from Dune in the OT already ( among many other sources ) , looked over at his son who was a toddler at the time , and decided on placing Anakin at 9 years old as a happy medium between 9 and 15 so that it wouldn’t be too on the nose derivative of Dune . Probably a stretch ,but I find it fun to think about . I would still like to have had Anakin start out at 15 in episode one anyway . I vote 30 to 25 years before ANH as the start date of the Empire .

I recall reading an interview where Lucas said he initially planned to make Anakin 12, but bumped it down to 9 to make his separation anxiety over Shmi greater.

“The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order and in the assertion that, without Authority there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that anarchy can be instituted by a violent revolution… There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”

― Leo Tolstoy