Lei Kung

Darth Vader means "Dark Father" in some Scandinavian language. Lucas was, in the first trilogy retelling a classical "coming of age" myth. Luke's final defeat of his father and becoming a man greater then his father is an archetypal theme in ancient storytelling. Any other meaning to it, was simply tacked on later as a kludge to try and make the name fit in with the larger universe Lucas found himself in the middle of. It's fairly easy in world creation whether you're creating a PnP world, a literary world through short stories or novels, or a world viewed in movies and television to give the appearance that there is a great, master plan behind everything. Unfortunately, it is appearance only, X-Files, anyone? The reality is though, that very few can pull it off and even though they may plan to slowly fill in the details, if their creation becomes too popular too fast, then they are put in the position of meeting demand for which they don't have a supply. At that point they must tell the fans to hang on , they're working on it (and not sell anything in the meantime) or give the fans what they want immediately, even if they have to shoehorn the details (and basically receive a license to print money). Anyone need a hint as to which way ol' George went?

To a farmer on Dantooine... Revan and Malak, two powerful Jedi, put away the brown robes, get some black armor and start taking over the galaxy. Jedi stop them, barely. The reasons for the war were totally based on the will of Revan and Malak. It doesn't matter what a historian on Coruscant might classify the war as, most people who got their planets devastated saw it as a Jedi Civil War, so that's what it's called. It's not like there's any Jedi visible enough to debate the issue.

The canon issue... it rears its head in every good license, from Middle-Earth to Star Trek. My argument always has been that at least in the Star Wars and Star Trek licenses, there really can't be a canon. Here's an example. Using whatever game system you like, try to come up with a detailed PnP campaign set in the Star Trek universe using the various TV series and movies as "canon" on which to build the universe. Start with two things 1. The map of the galaxy, and 2. Warpdrive technology. Let me know how you do. All the Star Trek series were made by giving out a reference guide to writers detailing the technologies and the themes. There was little to no fact checking in between episodes aside from MAJOR plotlines. The producers and writers were creating good (and sometimes stellar and sometimes lousy) television entertainment using a particular shared setting. Their goal was not to create a unified universe, they've said so themselves on many occasions. Trying to find a body of "canon" in this case amounts to mental masterbation in my opinion. Contrast this with Middle-Earth, a single writer, a single focus, with the FULL INTENT on creating a unified universe from start to finish (google mythopoesis tolkien to see what I mean). Now we come to Star Wars. It's a mix between the two previous examples. The expanded universe has a lot of different writers, yet there is still one "vision" in control. or is there? A look at Lucas' "Vision" Take one look at the first trilogy of movies and then see what is being done with the prequel trilogy and you'll come to the painful fact that if Lucas himself isn't even being consistent between his own movies, then there really can't be a canon. That having been said, the Star Trek and Star Wars universes do such an incredible job at times of storytelling and engaging our imaginations that it's inevitable that fans will, in effect, create their own list of canon. That's fine, it just saddens me to see the furious debates and schisms that arise in the community all in the name of "official canon" when in fact the fans themselves care more about the consistency of the universe then the writers EVER did. Sorry if it took me forever to get to the question, but my first reaction is, people shouldn't really care what's in the database cause I doubt Lucas does. The second reaction is that no, KotOR II should not be included in any canonical listings. Until the storyline is actually finished, the characters can't be considered canonical in any way.