Even new Star Wars stories set in the OT time period, like Andor, (my new favorite show), fall victim to the dramatic consequences of the Sequel Trilogy “reboot” plot. You sort of need to mentally ignore the Sequels when watching Andor, otherwise you’re watching a small band of desperate revolutionaries endure nightmarish prisons, make impossible moral sacrifices for a better future, etc., only to have the Empire rise again around two decades later, and then be destroyed again in a similar but discontinuous way by different people.
The old EU in all honesty wasn’t that great (it went off the rails pretty quickly), but at least it told an overall story that was a progression of the OT events, as the former Rebels of the OT became the political and military leaders of the New Republic. The New Republic was depicted as a flawed institution, but it placed the OT heroes in different roles and exposed them to different challenges, progressing the OT story instead of just resetting back to Rebels vs. Empire.
I feel like a lot of these issues could’ve been alleviated with relatively minor changes. The ST films could have made it clearer that the New Republic wasn’t destroyed, but maybe in disarray after Starkiller Base destroyed the Senate. The TLJ and TROS crawls could have explained that battles were being fought across the galaxy between scattered New Republic forces and the First Order, and they didn’t reunify until TROS.
I’m sure this will be repetitive for those who have seen me say this before, but if you just went a little further, they could have removed Starkiller Base, and just had the events of the Sequel Trilogy take place within First Order space. The New Republic would be mostly offscreen, unable to make the first move until the First Order directly attacked them. Leia, who could even be described as a former Chancellor, would lead a resistance movement that is just within First Order territory. In TFA and TLJ, the New Republic would not be able to help them for geopolitical reasons, but once they informed the Republic about the hidden fleet and their plans to invade the galaxy, the ships that show up at the end could be the New Republic fleet, which would more directly vindicate all of those people who sacrificed their lives to restore the Republic.
You could give similar treatments to Han and Luke. Han, for example, could still be working with the New Republic. His ship that captures the Falcon in TFA could be a New Republic ship. And part of the reason he is estranged from Leia is because he can’t associate with her due to her being the leader of the Resistance, which I could imagine being Leia’s decision.
With Luke, you could have him tell Rey that he sent the surviving Jedi into hiding on another planet, and TROS could end with the implication that Rey is going off to find them. You could even potentially suggest that Luke’s Jedi Order serves the Republic, and thus also can’t get involved with the First Order.
Anyway, I don’t think this would’ve been the best way to tell the story if I were writing it from scratch, because people actually wanted to see the New Republic and see Luke’s new Jedi Order, but I guess I’m trying to illustrate that they could have generally told the same story without totally erasing the character progression and accomplishments of the previous generation.
I feel like there is potential in doing a fan edit that makes these changes, but I feel like it is kind of up in the air until we see what this new movie decides to do.