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The Thrawn Trilogy: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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[[File:Heirtotheempire.jpg|frame| The covers for this trilogy were designed by the same man who did the covers for the Original Trilogy. [[Doing It for
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* [[Big Bad Duumvirate]]: Thrawn and C'baoth have largely exclusive plans for the galaxy, but work together for mutual convenience. Each has plans for disposing of the other when the time comes (though Thrawn is usually able to talk C'baoth down when he's in one of his mad rages), and each seems to consider himself the [[Big Bad]] and the other [[The Dragon]].
* [[Bilingual Bonus]] / [[Genius Bonus]]: Talon Karrde's pet vornskr are named Sturm and Drang. Those are not words of some made up alien language but [[Gratuitous German|German]] words that, when showing up together, refer to [[wikipedia:Sturm und Drang|a certain movement in German literature]].
* [[Blessed
* [[Blofeld Ploy]]: The incident with {{spoiler|the two tractor beam operators}} in book one.
* [[Bodyguard Betrayal]]: {{spoiler|Rukh to Thrawn}}.
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*** As for the hand, it's been implied (or possibly outright stated) that Vader has had that hand replaced more than once. It could have easily been damaged once more during his flight from the Death Star.
**** And it could also be that nobody actually ''knows'' how Vader lost his hand in-universe - leading to IC [[Epileptic Trees]] and [[Wild Mass Guessing]]!
** Considering ''how many'' Original Trilogy [[Hand Wave|HandWaves]], [[Left Hanging|Loose Ends]], and [[Plot Hole|Plot Holes]] that he had to [[Fix Fic|tie together]] into a [[Magic
** The biggest Clone Wars related issue is that Zahn sets them over a decade before the eventual timeline established by the prequels. This was actually Lucas's fault rather than Zahn's -- as Zahn revealed in his annotations in the 20th anniversary edition, Lucas hadn't yet settled on a concrete timeline for the series pre-''A New Hope'' and eventually compressed it from the more expansive one he'd given Zahn at the time.
** Zahn also writes from the not-unreasonable assumption that the Clone Wars involved an evil clone army attacking the galaxy. Everyone automatically assumes Thrawn's use of clones will lead to Clone Wars II even though the origins of the wars wound up being completely different - the Empire's a hostile enemy state while the original conflict was a civil war. Not to mention that the clones turned out to be the "good" guys in the Clone Wars. {{spoiler|At least until [[Face Heel Turn|Order 66]]...}}
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* [[Meaningful Name]]: The Noghri come from the planet Honoghr. The 'g' and 'h' in that name are silent, and that quality becomes well proven.
** Subverted with Garm Bel Iblis, perhaps because Han and Lando initially aren't sure if he's a good guy or not and there is tension in the narrative. (His name consists of the names of three evil monsters from (Earth) religion and mythology - the hellhound Garm from Norse mythology, Bel another form of Ba'al from [[The Bible]], and Iblis the Islamic name for [[Satan]] (And let's not forget [[Battlestar Galactica Classic|Count Iblis]]...))
** The Ubiqtorate, the Imperial spy service ([[Depending
* [[Mercurial Base]]: Nomad City, Nkllon; Lando's latest business venture.
* [[Military Maverick]]: Thrawn's tactics tend to be somewhat inventive.
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* [[Retcon]]: Leia briefly hides out on Kashyyyk in the first book, and acts as if it's her first time ever seeing the planet. Because, as we all know, ''[[The Star Wars Holiday Special]]'' [[Discontinuity|never happened]]...
* [[Sacred Hospitality]]: When you are a guest of Talon Karrde, you are a ''guest'' of Talon Karrde. The same goes for the [[Proud Warrior Race|Noghri]].
* [[Sarcasm Mode]]: "Thank you, Ferrier. [[Your Approval Fills Me
* [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: Averted as much as is possible for ''[[Star Wars]]'': realizing that the galaxy has over a ''million'' inhabited worlds, Zahn (unlike some other [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] writers) doesn't recycle locations from the films without good reason. And at those times when the heroes know they need to find something on an unfamiliar world, they don't act like knowing what planet it's on will make things easy. Planets are ''big''.
** He also realize that a light-year is an enormous distance; when Luke's X-Wing is determined to be somewhere within a light-year of Thrawn's Star Destroyer, Thrawn hires mercenaries to find it since it would take too long to search for themselves. Just because hyperdrive allows ''traveling'' along such a distance very rapidly doesn't mean that ''searching'' every inch of that light-year is an easy prospect.
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* [[Sherlock Scan]]: Thrawn does this with art.
* [[The Siege]]: Thrawn besieges Coruscant with cloaked asteroids.
* [[The Smart Guy]]: Han absolutely takes on this role in the trilogy. Luke is ''the'' Jedi Knight, Leia is following in his footsteps and showing that she's [[In the Blood|her father's daughter]]... but Han, instead of being [[Overshadowed
** Although it's mentioned that Leia is better at this than Han in regards to diplomacy. When it mentions that most men would be offended by a wife who could outsmart them, Han reportedly gave up such thoughts long before.
** In fact, Han thinks to himself that he likes having a woman who can sometimes think faster than him. And for good reason, as it saves their lives once or twice.
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* [[Stealth in Space]]: Averted, and pretty well. The "[[Invisibility Cloak|cloaking shield]]" Thrawn gets his hands on has accurate limitations (the people inside it are just as blind as the ones outside it), so he's forced to use it to 1) hide things ''inside'' a ship; 2) find [[Jedi Mind Trick|other]] [[Hypno Ray|ways]] of flying ships; or 3) attach it to things that don't require guidance to fly. Because he's a [[Magnificent Bastard|Grand Admiral]], he gets significant mileage from all three.
* [[Stealth Pun]]: The names of Karrde's ships. Also, Fey'lya (phonetically pronounced 'failure').
* [[Stun Guns]]: Zahn introduces the Stokhli Spray Stick, an unconventional weapon which can both stun people and also allow one to play at being [[
** The conventional stun-setting blasters appear in "The Last Command" when the Imperials can't use the kill setting for fear of hitting the nearby cloning equipment. Lando and Chewie have fewer such compunctions.
* [[Taking You
* [[Teeth-Clenched Teamwork]]: Garm Bel Iblis spends years fighting a private war against the Empire because of a personal grudge against Mon Mothma before reluctantly joining the New Republic. Also, Mara asking Luke for help when she tries to rescue Karrde off the ''Chimaera''.
* [[Tsundere]]: Mara Jade. Somewhat troubling when her tsun-tsun side mainly consists of wanting to literally kill Luke.
* [[Tyke Bomb]]: Mara was adopted and secretly raised by Palpatine himself. Not surprisingly, when Palpatine showed her an image of Luke and Vader killing him...
* [[The Unpronounceable]]: Played with, in ''Heir'' Han says the Imperials have attacked three star systems--"[[The Unpronounceable|Bpfassh]] and two unpronounceable ones".
* [[Unto Us a Son
* [[Vestigial Empire]]: The Galactic Empire has been reduced to a quarter of its former territory at the beginning of the trilogy. Of course this is before Thrawn comes along.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Thrawn has one (at least for him- it probably wouldn't count as one for a less-controlled villain) when he gets hit by a whole bunch of things he didn't see coming at once. He regains his composure within moments- but those few moments were all that {{spoiler|Rukh}} needed...
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*** Another: the second officer took responsibility for the failure. The first one did not, and ''tried to pin the blame on his superior officer.'' One speculates whether he would have kept his head if he had just admitted his mistake; Thrawn doesn't punish failure, just irredeemable stupidity.
** Discussed by Thrawn. To Thrawn, doing this the way Vader and Palpatine did is stupid because killing failures leads to less innovation, and also people fight more effectively when their leader inspires them.
* [[Your Approval Fills Me
{{quote| The whole thing was rapidly becoming unreal... but one fact already stood out. The alien [[Pose of Supplication|prostrating himself]] before her was prepared to treat her as royalty.<br />
[[Royals Who Actually Do Something|And she knew how to behave like royalty.]] }}
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