I think he made why he sold Lucasfilm pretty plain actually, he wanted to raise his daughter, retire. Enjoy his retirement, time with his wife. Wanted to open a museum. His age was the thing he kept talking about. He wasn’t going to spend his last ten years on Star Wars. He didn’t need the money. It did appeal to his vanity for all of five minutes that he might come back and do it all again and direct episode 7, but ultimately he decided against it.

Fans wanted sequels to episodes IV, VI and VI, and for him to relent on the originals. Lucas gave neither. He gave them prequel movies they didn’t want. Maybe Lucas figured they won’t like my sequels either, because he wanted to make sequels to the prequels instead of sequels.