darklordoftech said:

Darth Id said:

George's original conception was that the evil Empire was more or less timeless, and the whole Star Wars universe was based on the for-all-intents eternal struggle of the forces of good against the Empire.

I don't think there is anything in Star Wars, ESB or even ROTJ that necessarily contradicts this. Ben's yearning reference to a time "before the dark time, before the Empire" could be a reference to something extremely ancient and remote. There's no reason it wasn't 200 or even a thousand years before the events of SW, and Ben was the last of a long dwindlage of torch-bearers.

In that case, how old was Ben supposed to be?

Also, according to http://boards.theforce.net/threads/dark-empire-article-series-in-insider.50032523, Veitch initially wanted to write a comic about the Great Jedi Purge, and when Lucas rejected that, Veitch wrote Dark Empire instead.

Ben looked to be about 65 to 70 to me.

The Emperor, on the other hand, indeed appeared to be roughly 200-1,000, so he could still be the First Emperor even if the Empire was ancient--what with the force of Magicks and whatnot...