Regarding the OP, that’s exactly how I viewed canon back when I cared, before the EU was demoted to Legends. You don’t need a big corporation to tell you how to view canon. It’s all up to you.
The way I thought of it was that all the Star Wars books and movies are “based on real events”–that is, they’re all retellings of what “actually” happened, so some of them might stray more from the “truth” than others, or might introduce new elements, or be merely “inspired” by a true story. Thus, Jar Jar in the prequels is simply an interpretation of the real Jar Jar, and the sequence of events was perhaps modified. That left me free to imagine things as “really” being however I wanted them to be.
That is a great way of looking at it.
I understand why fans are annoyed and resent having their emotional and physical investments (especially the time and money aspects) “lessened” be the EU being re-branded Legends, and I can certainly understand fans being annoyed that the original authors often aren’t credited when it is re-used on-screen lately (something I saw mentioned in a recent post on here). But it is always up to us for our view on canon, our own “headcanon”, which can be equally as important, if not more, than what Lucasfilm, Disney or the Story Group tell us it is.