Heir To The Empire - Blog Posts

It’s more that like the six new Thrawn novels recontextualised him so that a lot of people who read them don’t see him as a real villain anymore, understand that what he is doing is necessary for the greater good, and although the narrative of Rebels had him as a villain, objectively viewing what he actually did against what he threatened to do, he really seems to be not bad on his own merits. Just when following other’s orders is it when he seems evil, like Boba Fett did originally. Personally, I think that the live-action will start off with Thrawn still being the villain, then reveal Ezra to be now allied with him against the Grysk of those novels, have him be training those Chiss children Thrawn kept bringing up. Like if those Grogu experiments from The Mandalorian turned out to be not to give regular people Force powers like people thought, but allow Chiss children to not lose their abilities growing up?

oh boy. honestly (and leaving aside the fact that the post that prompted you to send this ask had a different point) i usually don't answer asks about this topic anymore because it's one of those things where everyone thinks they're right and the discussion just goes in circles because nobody ever wants to admit that the other side might have a point (including myself. i know i'm right. period. jdfhdfh) but i'm in a Mood today lmao.

just so you don’t misunderstand me (because that’s happened so many times i have to say it), no matter how hard i argue for him being a villain, i literally love him so much. he’s one of my favorite characters, if not the favorite character. my #1 blorbo. my glup shitto. and i love when he’s being an asshole. it sounds crass but i love when he has rukh, idk, murder a tractor technician (rest in peace king) or blows up people or bombards innocent civilians. like, people love vader because he’s so iconic right? it’d be boring as hell if he just didn’t mow down rebels on the regular during his Empire Prime Era(TM) yeah? that’s how i feel about thrawn. oof

objectively viewing what he actually did against what he threatened to do, he really seems to be not bad on his own merits. Just when following other’s orders is it when he seems evil

i'm assuming you're talking about book!thrawn? i'm not quite sure what you mean by 'what he threatened to do' but i am saying that maybe he isn't ~evil~ on, like, palpatine levels, but he definitely isn't a good person. i’ll even give you textual evidence to support that claim! since people are so adamant that new canon thrawn is the only valid characterization!

he murders at least two troopers and causes v-wing crashes with casualties to get onto the strikefast

he condones slavery (”imperial assets”) and i literally don’t care if he’s just saying that because he needs to keep his rank or whatever because he could’ve said so much more in that scene (like. “look vanto that fucking sucks but we can’t do anything about it because we’ll get shot” or whatever hsdhf)

he thinks dictatorships are cool and fun, effectively expressing the same views anakin did in aotc (literal quotes: “quick and utter ruthlessness is necessary when the galaxy is continually threatened by chaos” or “the Republic was weak and fragmented [...] The Empire, in contrast, is unified under a single man and a single vision”)

according to thalias, he’d resort to “straight-up, coldhearted murder“ to get out of getting captured

in the ascendancy he does seem to value non-chiss lives in contrast to most of his fellow chiss (and if that isn’t worth thinking about, nudge nudge, the ascendancy doesn’t seem too different to the empire in many respects does it?) but only as long as they’re useful/non-threatening to him (“He cares about non-Chiss lives.” - “Yes, he does. You threaten his people, and see how fast that changes.”)

^ that last point is literally, literally in relation to samakro ordering an orbital bombardment, which. that’s poetic as fuck, my dude.

the whole “i see people as assets” conversation with ar’alani

i could find more but i think i’ve made my point 😶 lesser evil characterizes him as very sympathetic, obviously, but there’s literally quotes like “If you lie to me, I will eventually know that. Do you wish me to explain what would happen then?“ (god i needed to include this quote because hnnn WHAT A GOOD QUOTE)

who does that sound like? that sounds like it’s the same thrawn as in legends and rebels, imo. [happy sigh]

zahn even said that if disney were to make alllll the old shit canon again, he wants the character and story in the canon novels to line up and make sense with the legends novels. i can’t find a source for that now, though, which is regrettable. maybe i dreamed it.

but! from an interview with the verge:

as for your theory about live-action thrawn: noooo way. there’s no way filoni or favreau or whoever writes it actually reads the novels and includes that material in one or more of the upcoming shows. especially stuff about the sky-walkers. or the grysks. i’d be SO HAPPY, even overjoyed to be wrong in this instance but everything we’ve seen so far points to them going in direction of referencing the heir to the empire trilogy. there’s statues of ysalamiri in thrawn’s office in rebels. they canonized mount tantiss on wayland in the bad batch. the mandalorian is set in 9ABY which is exactly when htte is set kshdfdh

look i’d literally love for him and ezra to be allies and fight the grysks and for sky-walker rights and shit but anon. it’s very, very unrealistic that that’s gonna happen :/

writing a Legends Thrawn fic and need to redo everything to include day drinking and snarky comments

Thrawn: tactical military commander, genius strategist, first alien grand admiral …

Also Thrawn: collects space geckos

Real question: how tall are the Chiss to you? 

There are no official heights for like any of the Chiss and that is a shame. Thrawn is roughly 6′4″ we know this because of the great Lars Mikkelsen. I’ve always imagined Thrawn to tower over everyone else. Lanky beanpole when he was a teenager type. Ba’kif is probably right at 6′ and Ar’alani is the same height. Thrass is either in the upper 5′ range or lower 6′. He is definitely not taller than Thrawn, but when they stood side-by-side I always imagined him to only be a few inches shorter. So maybe 6′1″? 6′2″? Thurfian isn’t 6′, about 5′10″ or 5′11″. He’s considered on the shorter side of the average. Zistalmu is taller than him, possibly Thrawn’s height. Thalias is shorter than him. Anywhere from the 5′7″-9″ range. Samakro is right at 5′11″. Kharill is about 6′5″-6″. He’s slightly taller than Thrawn.

But that’s not saying that Thrawn is overly tall, in fact he’s surrounded daily by chiss who are taller than him (personal headcannon that chiss grow to nearly 7′ on average). It just so happens that the people he finds himself with are usually shorter than him. Going to the Empire where everyone is human is a little bit of an adjustment, he feels like he’s a towering over them all. And on average he is half a foot taller than them.

Ahsoka trailer: name drops Heir to the Empire

Me: HERE’S HOW WE COULD STILL GET MARA JADE

HEIR TO THE EMPIRE GUYS THEY SAID IT THEY FUCKING SAID IT

When I tell you I started SCREAMING!!!

I started hearing whispers, about Thrawn's return. As HEIR TO THE EMPIRE.

Excerpt from The Last Command by Timothy Zahn (1993):

 “But…It was so artistically done.”

Thrawn’s last line starts with the word “but,” almost as if under normal circumstances he would be furious that his plans had unraveled so spectacularly and without him knowing it. Instead, he says “but,” and he says it calmly, with a smile on his face. He can’t be mad, because to him, his opponent beat him with the same level of attention he put into his plans. Because it was masterful and because even he could not have predicted the genius of turning the Noghri against him and then silently infiltrating Wayland.

The irony here is that our heroes actually didn’t put that much thought into his defeat specifically. I would argue that Thrawn’s true opponent was Leia, as it was her skill in politics, negotiation and empathy that both turned the Noghri against Thrawn and got Mara Jade to reveal the location of Wayland. In a way, it was Leia’s art that Thrawn didn’t account for.

This line alone also makes me ask – what does Thrawn really care about? Looking only at Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy and no other material, it is clear that Thrawn likes to win. He also likes to prove his worth, becoming one of the few high ranking, non-human imperial officials. But more than that, Thrawn loves art and psychology. He craves knowledge, surrounding himself by other cultures’ art in order to learn, to improve and to win.

So, did Thrawn really care about the Empire at all? What was his true motivation? There is little evidence in the trilogy to suggest that Thrawn cares a lot about ruling the galaxy or in reviving the Empire. In fact, Pellaeon even states at one point that Thrawn has created a new empire, different than the one before, with his ingenuity and proportional punishments for failure. So why is he doing it? Truthfully, I don’t think this question really answered in the trilogy, leaving it up to the readers to decide. But from his last line as he dies, I’d hazard to say Thrawn doesn’t care about the empire or superiority or anything of the sort. He cares only about the art of war. To him, war is a chessboard, a game for him to play. Sure, he loves to win but he can appreciate when he loses. And that is why he can’t be mad at his defeat. Because it was so artistically done.

Heir to the Empire