History Literature / TheThrawnTrilogy

** Nearly all of the iconic lines from the movie trilogy find their way into the books. Admiral Ackbar even announces a trap!

* AffablyEvil: Thrawn. Debatable with Pellaeon, since he became a pretty LawfulGood guy later on.

* AdultFear: "Thrawn would smile, and speak politely, and ''take her children away.''" Of course, Leia is [[MamaBear not having any of that]].

This trilogy was one of the cornerstones of the now non-canon ''Legends'', being the first major work set after ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' (five years after to be exact), the first truly ''popular'' entry of the franchise since ''Return of the Jedi'', and serving as the introduction of some of the most beloved figures in ''Legends'' canon, like [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grand_Admiral Grand Admiral]] [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mitth%27raw%27nuruodo Thrawn]], [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mara_Jade_Skywalker Mara Jade]], [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gilad_Pellaeon Gilad Pellaeon]] and [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Talon_Karrde Talon Karrde]]. For a long, long time, many fans considered them to be the honorary Episodes VII, VIII and IX, and when the actual movies were announced, initial speculation was intense about whether or not they would adapt parts or all of this story.[[note]]As it would turn out, they seemed to be trying to do the exact ''opposite'' of everything this trilogy did.[[/note]]

Ironically given the BigBad is an alien, this trilogy introduced a slightly more human Galactic Empire--still certainly villainous but no longer a ZeroPercentApprovalRating organization. In movie terms it is somewhat closer to Admiral Piett and Captain Needa than Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. Thrawn himself (the aforementioned alien BigBad) was certainly a MagnificentBastard of the highest caliber, one whom the reader did not hesitate in respecting. The trilogy also reflected the RealLife movement into the Information Age, with Thrawn (and Karrde opposite him) being able to [[HyperAwareness connect esoteric and obscure bits of data together into a much larger picture]]. Thrawn in particular was able to practice an [[SherlockScan almost obscene version of psychoanalysis]] on people and cultures by studying their artwork, using it to identify weaknesses in their thinking or perception patterns, and then exploiting said weaknesses in devastating ways. The trilogy, as implied by its name, concerns the adventures of the New Republic, particularly Luke, Han and Leia, to deal with Thrawn's plans, leadership and genius.

->''From the very first chapter of ''Heir to the Empire'':''

** Also, letting C'baoth [[spoiler: live after the battle over Coruscant. He never does anything else for them, and Thrawn has no plans for him in the near future, not to mention the fact that he has Force-nullifying animals on-board his ship.]]

** All of the Heroes and New Republic command are fully aware of the fact that Thrawn's Delta Source has compromised The former Imperial Capital. Instead of moving their military operations to another location to kill the intellgence leak, they continue to utilize the imperial capital and hope they'll stumble across Delta Source sooner or later.

* StunGuns:
** Zahn introduces the Stokhli Spray Stick, an unconventional weapon which can both stun people and also allow one to play at being Franchise/SpiderMan. The Noghri use it when trying to capture a pregnant Leia because the stun setting on normal Star Wars blasters have a better than fifty-fifty shot of inducing a miscarriage and Thrawn wants the kids alive.
** 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 compunctions.

* EntertaininglyWrong: For all of Thrawn's reputation of AwesomenessByAnalysis, he does make a major miscalculation with a logical-yet-incorrect conclusion in the second book regarding Khabarakh's whereabouts during the month since the first book. Most of what goes wrong for Thrawn later on is a result of this error snowballing into disaster. The most plausible explanation for this error was that Thrawn didn't know that Leia and Luke were in fact Vader's children (see above). Without that key piece of information, drawing the proper conclusion would've been all but ''impossible''. However, later EU authors have had trouble deciding whether that fact was common knowledge or not.

*** Firstly in the opening pages of ''Heir to the Empire'' when the ''Chimaera'' is attacked by four Rebel assault frigates and three squadrons of X-wings. Pellaeon thinks those odds are badly in the Republic's favor and prepares to retreat, but Thrawn displays his art-derived tactical genius and defeats them (see DoABarrelRoll above). Besides this, it also establishes that Thrawn represents the turn of the tide for the Empire and they are no longer in decline and running from fights.

** Not directly stated, but this is a major undertone between Thrawn and Niles Ferrier. The latter often screws up his assigned tasks due to his SmallNameBigEgo tendencies, and the former displays barely-concealed contempt for him. [[spoiler:When discussing the idea to frame Karrde (see below), Thrawn outlines a plan that minimizes Ferrier's direct involvement, while shooting down all of Ferrier's suggestions as stupid. And of course, the plan fails due to Ferrier being unable to keep his mouth shut.]]

* MindRape: C'baoth is a ''very bad man''. See the spoilered part of CharmPerson, above. [[spoiler:He starts off using his powers to enforce obedience through fear, but very quickly grows a taste for just hollowing out people's minds and replacing them with his own thoughts and whims.]]

* OutGambitted: The Battle of Bilbringi. See KansasCityShuffle.

* {{Pun}}: The names of Karrde's ships: ''Wild Karrde'', ''Lastri's Ort'', ''Starry Ice'', ''Etherway'', ''Amanda Follow'', ''Dawn Beat''.

* PungeonMaster: Through Talon Karrde, Timothy Zahn is one. The names of Karrde's ships (see above) are all clever puns and/or wordplay, and Zahn himself couldn't resist adding in a few puns (like the slave circuit "beckon call" a pun on the term "beck and call," which is exactly what it puts your ship on).

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Thrawn, at least by this point, is not a good person: he has absolutely no qualms about betraying Mara to get to Karrde in ''Dark Force Rising'', kidnapping someone's children and delivering them to be corrupted by an AxCrazy clone, and his military strategy involves growing his own [[CloningBlues slave soldiers by the thousands]] and throwing them at the Republic. But unlike most imperials, he's not a CardCarryingVillain.
--> Thrawn was respected and trusted. Thrawn used a small measure of fear, certainly: the Grand Admiral realized that [[YouHaveFailedMe fear of failure]] was a powerful motivating force in a military the size of the Empire. But Thrawn's ability to invoke a sense of ''pride'' in his troops was his most powerful asset. Palpatine inspired arrogance and callousness in his officers; Thrawn made his men proud to be Imperial soldiers. Thrawn's officers would have willingly died for the Grand Admiral. There is also a practical reason for this in that by the time the Thrawn trilogy took place the Empire no longer [[WeHaveReserves had endless reserves]] of beings and equipment, meaning the Empire could not recklessly throw away the lives of its soldiers.

* INeverSaidItWasPoison: [[TooDumbToLive Niles Ferrier]]. [[spoiler: Ferrier had paid off an Imperial lieutenant and his squad to attack a meeting of smugglers where Talon Karrde was trying to convince them to band together and help the New Republic against the Empire, so Ferrier could infiltrate them more deeply. Thrawn had specifically ordered the local Imperial garrison to leave the meeting alone, knowing the smugglers would refuse Karrde and go their own ways, but after some of them are killed in the Imperial attack, the smugglers ''do'' band together. Thrawn has Ferrier plant data in Karrde's ship at the start of the next meeting, implicating Karrde as the one who hired the Imperials. The ruse falls apart when Ferrier drops the name of the Lieutenant in question without having heard anyone mention it, though beforehand the others were already starting to question the story due to Ferrier's shifty behavior.]]

%%* TheDogBitesBack: The Noghri.

%%* FireForgedFriends: Luke and Mara at the end of ''The Last Command''.

%%* HappilyMarried: Han and Leia.

%%* MindRape:
%%** C'baoth is a ''very bad man''. See the spoilered part of CharmPerson, above.
%%** Also, ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' and ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' turn Yoda's duel with the Dark Jedi from Bpfassh into this.

%%* PanickyExpectantFather: Han, of all people, in ''The Last Command''.

%%* TheChessmaster: Grand Admiral Thrawn.

%%* CommanderContrarian: Pellaeon is a positive example.

--> Luke might have TheForce, and [[MauveShirt Irenez]] might be able to climb stairs without getting winded; but [Han] would bet heavily that he could outdo both of them in sheer chicanery.

--> Thrawn was respected and trusted. Thrawn used a small measure of fear, certainly: the Grand Admiral realized that [[YouHaveFailedMe fear of failure]] was a powerful motivating force in a military the size of the Empire. But Thrawn's ability to invoke a sense of ''pride'' in his troops was his most powerful asset. Palpatine inspired arrogance and callousness in his officers; Thrawn made his men proud to be Imperial soldiers. Thrawn's officers would have willingly died for the Grand Admiral.

** Despite Honoghr, the trope is played straight with the titular planet of Endor. Leia stops by to meet a contact at one point, yet no mention of any damage to the moon. (The books note, with the above scenario, that it's mostly Clone Wars era ships that had a lot of toxic chemicals that could ruin an environment if a ship crashed. That said the primary argument regarding the classic Endor holocaust argument is the sheer ''size'' of the Death Star and the debris resultant from its destruction.) In orbit ''around'' the moon, of course, is a bit of a different story, and for a different reason...

* {{Tuckerization}}: Garm Bel Iblis's lieutenants as well were named by Zahn after people he admired. The 20th Anniversary edition's annotations reveals that there are ''dozens'' of these friend names tucked into place names and company names as well as character names.

** Pellaeon is depicted as clean shaven in the comic adaptation and there is no mention of facial hair in the novels. Practically [[http://chinese-starwars.com/jediarchive/expanduniverse/donald/donald/24_captain_pellaeon.jpg every]] [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/f/f3/GiladPellaeon.JPG picture]] [[http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/images/features/general/PellaeonTournamentPack.jpg and]] [[http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/69/PellaeonYVW.jpg description]] [[http://www.imperialchicks.com/profiles/images/Grand_Admiral_Pellaeon2.jpg since]] (including [[Literature/HandOfThrawn Zahn's later books]]) have described Pellaeon as having a [[BadassMustache distinctive bushy mustache]] to the extent that at least one unnamed Imperial officer in a later comic was thought to be him just because he had a bushy mustache.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** Averted as much as is possible for ''Franchise/StarWars'': realizing that the galaxy has over a ''million'' inhabited worlds, Zahn (unlike some other ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' 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 finding a 40-foot ship in a cubic light year is an easy prospect.
** However played straight in the numbers of ships aspect, which was apparent in the original trilogy. For the size of the galaxy, the 200 ship strong ''Katana'' ''Dreadnaught''-class Heavy Cruiser fleet should barely be considered a ''picket'' force, much less one that could turn the tables in a galaxy spanning war. Later sources clarify that at this point, the Republic and the Empire are almost perfectly matched in terms of materiel. The ''Katana'' fleet might not be much, but it's just enough to free up some other ships that are needed elsewhere, [[UnstableEquilibrium which will gradually lead to a snowballing effect and an insurmountable advantage]].
*** Also, while bringing roughly 180 of the ''Katana'' fleet ships into his service did allow Thrawn to go more heavily on the offensive, it didn't ''decisively'' change the balance of power. Just tipped the scales slightly in the Empire's favor.
** Zahn also employs a notable {{Retcon}} to correct one particularly egregious instance of this trope from the original series. When Luke returns to Dagobah to search the old site of Yoda's hut, he finds (to his surprise) that he has absolutely no problem landing on the planet this time, and wonders if he originally crashed on Dagobah in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' because Yoda intentionally pulled his X-Wing to the surface with the Force. For confused fans, this finally explains how Luke managed to "accidentally" stumble upon Yoda's dwelling when he had never even been to Dagobah before: Yoda sensed his presence and guided him there.

* WritersCannotDoMath: The ''Katana'' fleet that is supposed to be a very big deal in the war between the Republic and the Empire is probably too small to play this role credibly. It's described as roughly 200 fairly small spaceships, which even together are unlikely to be a match for even one of the big Imperial battleships from the movies (such as Vader's flagship).

* SherlockScan: Thrawn does this with art, deducing facts not about the artist, but their entire culture.
** Even to specific individuals... by studying art a specific person collects (Karrde/Bel Iblis) or has made (Ackbar), Thrawn can deduce how that person will respond to various tactics.

* PerspectiveMagic: Thrawn uses several of his [[StealthInSpace cloaked ships]] in conjunction with the ''Chimaera'' to pull this off as one of his "superweapons." The cloaked vessels were in a direct line between the ''Chimaera'' and its target, just below the planet's shields, firing when the former's lasers hit said shields. To the defenders, it looks as though the ''Chimaera'''s lasers went [[ArmorPiercingAttack straight through]]. Thrawn carefully chooses the places where he uses this trick, only targeting planets where he expects the locals to be so astonished by the "impossible" attack that they'll surrender without taking the time to analyze what's happening.

* MindRape:
** C'baoth is a ''very bad man''. See the spoilered part of CharmPerson, above.
** Also, ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' and ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' turn Yoda's duel with the Dark Jedi from Bpfassh into this.

* PanickyExpectantFather: Han, of all people, in ''The Last Command''.

* IWantThemAlive: "...if possible. If not... If not, [[PragmaticVillainy I'll understand]]."

* IDontPayYouToThink: In ''The Last Command'', Fingal and Governor Staffa of Berchest have a chat after they spot Luke Skywalker poking around on the planet. Fingal asks Staffa if he thinks that Skywalker saw the special transport they were using to carry clones for the Empire and Staffa replies that of course he saw it, wondering if Fingal thought Skywalker was hanging around for his health. At this, Fingal comments "I only thought..." only to be cut off by Staffa telling him to not think, as he isn't properly equipped for it.

** Thrawn sends C'Baoth leave with General Covell and his handpicked best troops aboard a ship with no supervision and no ysalamiri. It does not end well for Covell. Particularly glaring because C'Baoth abused this power before... right in front of Thrawn... repeatedly!

* HappilyMarried: Han and Leia.

* FireForgedFriends: Luke and Mara at the end of ''The Last Command''.