I am reading a Star Wars novel set in the first days of the Galactic Empire (it starts literally days after Palpatine makes his speech to the Senate).
There is a character who had fought for the Separatists and they were remembering the early days of the War. They had a comrade who had said they were sure the war would end quickly because the Jedi would stay out of the fighting and negotiate a peace because they serve Peace above all. Of course this character is wrong and is in fact killed by a Jedi in the fighting (this is not a spoiler, it was just a brief flashback memory from one of the POV characters in the novel).
I have to say literally twenty years after the prequels, this thought had never occurred to me and it makes a lot of sense. Why didn’t the Jedi try to negotiate a peace? Why did they immediately discount the Separatists as enemies (other than exceptions like Dooku) and take the side of the Republic in the war? I understand that were being manipulated but still, I felt it was an interesting question and I could 100% understand why someone who had been living in the Republic would feel betrayed that the Jedi did not take this stance in the end to try to end the Violence before it turned to war.
I remember there was a Tales of the Jedi episode about Dooku that touched on these issues but other than that I don’t know if I ever saw this point of view expressed before and I think that is great that you can still be surprised by decades old stories.
It’s an interesting question. I think that ultimately, the answer is that the Jedi are not a neutral party; they serve the Republic, and are in effect a branch of the Republic’s government. The don’t set policy. If the Republic - specifically, Palpatine’s administration - wanted war, it was their job to fight it.
That was the opening scenes of The Phantom Menace. They were trying to negotiate a peace. And then the separatists sabotaged the peace talks by attacking them.
When one side in the “peace talks” attacks you, it makes it easy to pick a side.
Fundamentally because George Lucas is not a very good writer (yeah I know the OP is talking about a novel but it all originates from The Attack Of Clones)
Of all the things in the prequels that ruined the franchise that storyline was the worst, completely nonsensical in so many ways, none of the motivations of anyone involved make sense, and it’s just badly written. It completely ruined the mythos of the original trilogy, I spent decades wondering about the clone wars that are alluded to by Obi-Wan in the original movies, and how amazing and dark that story must be. Now when I watch that scene I’ll think that again for a second before I remember that they told that story and it was rubbish and made no sense
But I did appreciate how Palpatine played the Jedi. Since Palaptine was literally controlling both sides, there was no way for him to lose. Whichever side “won”, he was still in charge. Just finesse the details.
Clone army or separatists, two sides of the same power play. And eliminating the Jedi is necessary either way.
I like to think Yoda saw it, but was helpless to stop it.
In the opening of the Phantom Menace, they were dispatched to negotiate specifically between the Trade Federation and Naboo. The Confederacy of Independent Systems didn’t exist until Attack of the Clones.
Yeah, that’ something I only learned a couple of years ago - despite having the exact same robot soldiers, the bad guys in Episode 1 were not the same bad guys as in Episode 2. Stupid.
The bad guys in Episode 1 are a substantial part of the bad guys in Episode 2 - the Trade Federation droid army is still a major part of the forces of the Confederacy
This might have been a decent plotline if there was a single person watching who thought senator Palpatine was a benevolent kindly politician and not the future evil emperor. But, as that wasn’t the case, something like this clearly going to happen from the moment the Palpatine character was introduced. Nothing about the plot was particularly surprising or exciting to learn about. The story of how and why the Jedi and the other rest of the leadership of the Republic let him do it was always going to be more interesting and basically wasn’t touched at all
Yeah that’s a good idea, someone should make a movie about it. You know about how Yoda went from being a powerful Jedi master leading the Jedi council to a recluse in a swamp. In fact three movies should do it
True, but the relationship wasn’t made clear in the movies. My guess is that I wasn’t the only one watching who thought that the “Federation” and the “Secessionists” were exactly the same people, and that the Clone Wars were about tariffs or something.
