History Literature / HandOfThrawn

* JerkassHasAPoint: The Diamala are one of the more notable races of Jerkasses in the galaxy. They don't like Jedi in general and Luke Skywalker in particular, and refuse to allow Luke to be present at the talks between the Diamala and the Ishori. This is on the grounds that Luke uses his Jedi abilities too much and Jedi who do that always fall to the dark side. When Han tells Luke this was the reason why the Diamala don't like Luke, it causes the Jedi Master to reevaluate his usage of his Force abilities and make a concious decision to cut back on how much he used the Force.

* JerkassHasAPoint: The Diamala refuse to allow Luke to be present at the talks between them and the Ishori on the grounds that Luke uses his Jedi abilities too much and those Jedi who do that always fall to the dark side. When Han tells Luke this was the reason why the Diamala don't like Luke, it causes the Jedi Master to reevaluate his usage of his Force abilities and make a concious decision to cut back on how much he used the Force.

* DoubleEntendre: Which will become Luke and Mara's [[GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex thing]] all the way into [=NJO=]. I guess we can [[IncrediblyLamePun put one myth about marriage to bed]].

* GoneNative: The Devist "family" are clones of Imperial AcePilot Soontir Fel who were planted as a [[DeepCoverOperative sleeper cell]] on a backwater farm world by Thrawn as a hedge against defeat. They unexpectedly inherited Fel's love of farming, and decide when ordered by Moff Disra to activate that their loyalty to their families and land far outweighs whatever loyalty they were expected to have to the Imperial Remnant.

* OpinionOverride: {{Justified}}. The political question of what to do with the revelation of the Bothans' part in the Imperial genocide of the Caamasi is never properly posed to the ActualPacifist Caamasi survivors themselves, mainly because it mostly stops actually being about Caamas pretty quickly: a lot of the participants, such as the Ishori and Diamalans, are just using it as an excuse to settle old grudges.

* GilliganCut: A literary example, discussing the events that will later be explored in ''Literature/OutboundFlight'':

** For the publishers, anyway; Bantam Books would soon lose the rights to the series to Del Rey, so as a last hurrah, they brought back the writer of the [[Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy most acclaimed books]] of the Expanded Universe to wrap up the main plot. Additionally, readers who are dissatisfied with [[Literature/NewJediOrder later]] [[Literature/LegacyOfTheForce books]] can [[FanonDisContinuity disavow]] their existence and come to a satisfying conclusion here.
** The very last Bantam novel was actually ''[[Literature/XWingSeries Starfighters of Adumar]]'', but it was set before this duology anyway, and it rather nicely explains how Wedge went from dating Qwi Xux in the [[Literature/JediAcademyTrilogy JAT]] to being married to Iella from the X-Wing Series here.
* HeelFaceTurn: The majority of the Empire by the end, and Supreme Commander Pellaeon right at the beginning. Sort of. Even in his first appearance, Pellaeon's Heel status was in doubt. Sure, he was an Imperial, but under Zahn, that doesn't by itself make a character evil or even a PunchClockVillain. Here, Pellaeon's one of the good guys. Even in Zahn's earlier work Pellaeon (and other Imperials) was always depicted as a good man, with some [[FairForItsDay fair for the Empire]] FantasticRacism, he just happens to work for very bad people.

* InvincibleHero: This is how Zahn saw the overpowered Jedi of the books. He couldn't retcon them into more Yoda-like power levels (pulling a starfighter out of a swamp wasn't easy), so he insinuated that demigod Jedi are relying so heavily on sheer power that they've blinded themselves to the subtler sides of the Force, like precognition (both in the immediate sense -- as an awareness of danger before it hits -- and in the longer-term, as visions) and that Luke was drawing on the Dark Side by using the Force as a solution for every problem. Zahn was telling other EU authors that they were making Luke out to be a MarySue and cheapening the Force by making it a source of cool powers and nothing more.

* DevilsAdvocate: In ''The Thrawn Trilogy'', Captain Pellaon acted as a Devil's Advocate to Grand Admiral Thrawn, and commends his subordinate for playing this trope in ''Hand of Thrawn''.

* PeaceConference: What Pellaeon's working towards.

* TheyDo: Luke and Mara.

* VestigialEmpire: The Empire under Pellaeon is but a small portion of its maximum size at it's height.

* BatmanGambit: At the end of ''Specter of the Past'', Pellaeon shows how much he learned from Thrawn. The conspirators have staged an attack on the ''Chimaera'' to make it look like General Bel Iblis has rejected Pellaeon's offer and is attacking him. [[spoiler: Pellaeon creates a new variation on one of Bel Iblis' own tactics, [[ContinuityNod the "A-wing slash" from the Thrawn Trilogy]], and uses it successfully against his attackers--thus proving they can't possibly be led by Bel Iblis because he wouldn't have fallen for his own trick.]]
** At the climax of ''Vision of the Future'', [[spoiler:as the Battle of Bothawui escalates due to the reveal of the three cloaked Star Destroyers, Han remembers "Thrawn" dropping a little tidbit about Borsk Fey'lya having his own private army, and contacts the Bothan to state that, should a Bothan play a major role in turning back this attack, he'd have a lot of political leverage. Unfortunately, [[BlatantLies there was a lot of signal leakage thanks to damage]] to the ''Falcon'', so half of Bothawui heard this. And of course, no self-respecting Bothan is going to sit back and let Fey'lya claim all the credit. . .]] The net result is every private militia, personal starfighter, and defense ship left on Bothawui launching in aid of the fleet.

* BodyguardCrush: Hinted at between Talon Karrde and Shada Du'kal.

* ReformedButRejected: Well, YMMV on how much he's "reformed", but Fey'lya is much less a SmugSnake here than he was in ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', as stated above in CharacterDevelopment. Further, when the Camas crisis first comes to light, he explains to Leia that the Bothan race were as horrified as everyone else to learn that some of their own had collaborated with Palpatine, and that the Bothans were never able to learn their identities. Nonetheless, Fey'lya correctly concludes early on that the galaxy at large will not be quick to believe this, due to the Bothan's (well-deserved) reputation as a {{Planet of|Hats}} {{Smug Snake}}s.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Ohhhh yes. Can't have an epic without them.

* DividedForPublication: The German translation of ''Vision of the Future'' was split into two volumes. It must use more words in German or something.
** Due to the nature of German compound words, translated books can end up 10-30% longer by page count than their English language texts.

** Also, the galaxy map indicates that only the central quarter of the galaxy is mapped and the rest is the Unknown Regions, in contrast to the now canon Star Wars galaxy map in which most of the galaxy is known and the Unknown regions are about a fifth of it.

* ShoutOut: [[Literature/XWingSeries Corran Horn]] makes a minor appearance in the first book and shares a somewhat larger subplot with Wedge in the second. Also a general ShoutOut to L/M fans and their [[FixFic requests that Zahn fix this mess]].

* ProphecyTwist: [[spoiler:During one of Luke's visions, he sees Mara lying in a pool of water, appearing to be dead. His vision comes true... but she's actually been put into a Jedi healing trance by Luke himself shortly before, and emerges alive and well.]]

* PardonMyKlingon: Colonel Bas, Pellaeon's fighter commander (from commoner stock and thus less refined in his speech than most officers) has a habit of using the swearword "kriff".

* ReformedButRejected: Well, YMMV on how much he's "reformed", but Fey'lya is much less a SmugSnake here than he was in ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', as stated above in CharacterDevelopment. Further, when the Camas crisis first comes to light, he explains to Leia that the Bothan race were as horrified as everyone else to learn that some of their own had collaborated with Palpatine, and that the Bothans were never able to learn their identities. Nonetheless, Fey'lya correctly concludes early on that the galaxy at large will not be quick to believe this, due to the Bothan's (well-deserved) reputation as a [[PlanetOfHats Planet Of]] {{Smug Snake}}s.

* UnusualEuphemism: Shavit. Also "kriff", introduced in these books, has since become Franchise/StarWarsLegends {{fanon}}'s answer to [[Franchise/BattlestarGalactica "frak"]] in its many contexts.

* PowerTrio: Disra, Flim, Tierce, generally acting as Id, Ego, and Superego, respectively.

* {{Callback}}:

** At the climax of ''Vision of the Future'', [[spoiler:as the Battle of Bothawui escalates due to the reveal of the three cloaked Star Destroyers, Han remembers "Thrawn" dropping a little tidbit about Borsk Fey'lya having his own private army, and contacts the Bothan to state that, should a Bothan play a major role in turning back this attack, he'd have a lot of political leverage. Unfortunately, [[BlatantLies there was a lot of signal leakage thanks to damage]] to the ''Falcon'', so half of Bothawui heard this. And of course, no self-respecting Bothan is going to sit back and let Fey'lya claim all the credit. . .]]

* BreakingSpeech: Pellaeon does this to Tierce in the climax of ''Vision of the Future''. His lecture consists of pointing out that Tierce is nothing more than a vision-less, [[RevengeBeforeReason vengeance-obssessed]], [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], [[TheChessmaster tactically brilliant]], [[spoiler: flawed clone of a]] Red Guard [[spoiler: with some of Thrawn's cunning]] who doesn't have what it takes to be a true MagnificentBastard like Thrawn. This causes Tierce's full-blown VillainousBreakdown and Pellaeon shoots down Tierce's MotiveRant during the lecture.

** Subtle (it's never explicitly stated) but remember that tractor beam guy in ''The Last Command'' who Thrawn promoted instead of punishing him because he tried an imaginative solution to prevent Luke escaping his tractor beam, even though he failed? The one who Thrawn then ordered to work on the solution properly? Guess how Lando tries to escape an Imperial tractor beam at the end of ''Specter''... same method, only ''now'' the Empire has a way to defeat it.

** Since his death, Thrawn's reputation has grown to the point where a rumor that he's returned is enough to send half the galaxy into a frenzied panic. However, the main characters are quick to point out that it's not entirely deserved.

Supreme Commander Pellaeon looks at the [[TheRemnant Imperial Remnant]], the [[VestigialEmpire scraps of a once-proud Empire]], and concludes that there is one and only one way it may be saved: a peace treaty with the New Republic. But other Imperials are unwilling, and try and sabotage his effort by capturing the messenger Pellaeon is sending. While the Supreme Commander waits for a response, they contrive to make it seem as if [[MagnificentBastard Grand Admiral Thrawn]] has come BackFromTheDead.

The Caamasi people were a group of peaceful {{Actual Pacifist}}s, so respected by even some warlike species that "caamasi" was a word for "friend from afar" or similar in numerous languages, and there is even a legend that the first Jedi came to the Caamasi to learn ethical use of the Force. Shortly after the Clone Wars, their planet's surface was razed; the few survivors were offworld or didn't see what initiated the Holocaust, but the genocide had long been believed to have been directed by Palpatine. Palpatine's copy of the Caamas document confirms this--but more importantly, notes that a number of Bothans, working for him, helped to lower Caamas's planetary shields, allowing the destruction. Unfortunately, the document Leia has found is corrupted, and the actual list of names is lost. When the news gets out, the New Republic is engulfed by demands for justice. The heatedness of the debate, with leaders of entire species coming down on either side, leads to a resurging of old inter-species rivalries, and the New Republic begins to fracture... just as word arrives on Coruscant that Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned.

Before the Caamas crisis rose up, this would have caused the New Republic to react decisively and overwhelm the pathetic fleets still guarding what is left of the Empire, but in the current political climate, there is no consensus on if it is even real. The Imperial conspirators spin their webs larger yet tighter. Luke's clone hunt falls short, and he learns that Mara Jade has vanished on a hunt for a mysterious alien ship that's buzzed her twice. Taking a chance, rather than lending his efforts to the larger danger, he listens to the Force and goes after her. Leia struggles desperately to keep the Republic from collapsing into all-out Civil War, and Han mainly works to keep Leia from going crazy. Pellaeon waits, wondering why the New Republic general he's waiting for in an isolated area of space hasn't responded, and utterly annihilates the fleet the conspirators send after him.

* BatmanGambit: At the end of ''Specter of the Past'', Pellaeon shows how much he learned from Thrawn. The conspirators have staged an attack on the ''Chimaera'' to make it look like General Bel Iblis has rejected Pellaeon's offer and is attacking him. Pellaeon creates a new variation on one of Bel Iblis' own tactics, [[ContinuityNod the "A-wing slash" from the Thrawn Trilogy]], and uses it successfully against his attackers--thus proving they can't possibly be led by Bel Iblis because he wouldn't have fallen for his own trick.
** At the climax of ''Vision of the Future'', [[spoiler:as the Battle of Bothawui escalates due to the reveal of the three cloaked Star Destroyers, Han remembers "Thrawn" dropping a little tidbit about Borsk Fey'lya having his own private army, and contacts the Bothan to state that, should a Bothan play a major role in turning back this attack, he'd have a lot of political leverage. Unfortunately, [[BlatantLies there was a lot of singal leakage thanks to damage]] to the ''Falcon'', so half of Bothawui heard this. And of course, no self-respecting Bothan is going to sit back and let Fey'lya claim all the credit. . .]]
* BecomingTheMask: The clones of Soontir Fel. They're part of a sleeper cell, becoming [[FarmBoy farmers]]... and they loved the soil too much to return to duty. [[spoiler: Which turned out to be Thrawn's objective - if/when any powerful alien species from the Unknown Regions or outside the galaxy invaded, the sleeper cells would be there to stop them, and would fight all the harder because they'd be fighting for their homes.]]
* BigBadDuumvirate: There are three people working to create and maintain the illusion that Thrawn has returned, but of the three, Disra and Tierce are the ones at odds. Flim mostly serves as TheWatson, though he gets his own jabs in now and again. At the end it turns out that Tierce contributed more to the scheme than anyone else could have realized.

* {{Bookends}}: Of a long-running variety. ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'' ends with Luke and Mara having a heart-to-heart on the roof of the Imperial Palace, before Luke goes downstairs to make an appearance among the delegates working to pick up the pieces after Thrawn's offensive. Mara, deciding to put her past behind her and embrace a future which includes the New Republic, ends the book by saying "Wait. I'll come with you." ''Vision of the Future'' ends with Luke and Mara discussing [[spoiler:the peace treaty between the New Republic and Empire, the future of the Jedi Order, the Unknown Regions, and their impending marriage,]] before Luke heads out to make an appearance before the assorted delegates working one of those things out. Mara ends the book by saying "Hold on. I'll come with you."
* BreakingSpeech: Pellaeon does this to Tierce in the climax of ''Vision of the Future''. His lecture consits of pointing out that Tierce is nothing more than a vision-less, [[RevengeBeforeReason vengeance-obssessed]], [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], [[TheChessmaster tactically brilliant]], [[spoiler: flawed clone of a]] Red Guard [[spoiler: with some of Thrawn's cunning]] who doesn't have what it takes to be a true MagnificentBastard like Thrawn. This causes Tierce's full-blown VillainousBreakdown and Pellaeon shoots down Tierce's MotiveRant during the lecture.
* BrickJoke:

** Also, at the end of the book, after [[spoiler: the good guys win]], they repeatedly refer to [[spoiler:the near-disaster as a scheme caused by Disra and Flim, the two members of the triumvirate who ''weren't'' clones, despite Tierce orchestrating most of it. How much of that is due to Tierce being a clone, and how much of it is due to Tierce being ''dead'', while the other two are still alive to be tried for their crimes, is not entirely clear. A third option is because Tierce was only included in their existing plot at the last minute]].

* TheConvenientStoreNextDoor: Variant in the second book, in that it's not a robbery. Bothawui's capital city, Drev'starn, is home to the planet's planetary shield generators, and there's a Ho'Din tapcafe two blocks away from the shield generator building... but it's sitting right on top of one of the power cable conduits to the generator building. So a couple of the villains manage to get access to the tapcafe's basement and dig down to the conduit, then use that to send [[WeaponizedAnimal lizards with bombs attached]] through it and into the generator building to destroy it, bringing down the shields right as a massive space battle breaks out overhead, which could devastate the planet's surface.
* CurbStompBattle: [[spoiler: Shada]] versus [[spoiler: Tierce]]. Considering how much of a badass the latter is supposed to be, it's surprising he was defeated so quickly.

* DoorStopper: At 694 pages - some versions have more or fewer pages than others - Vision of the Future is the longest Star Wars novel, at least as of 2008.

* TheDreaded: ''Something'' in the Unknown Regions has Thrawn's followers spooked and terrified. [[spoiler: Not surprising given they know about the Yuuzhan Vong]].

* DrivingQuestion: Where can we find an intact copy of the Caamas Document? (Technically this is really 'Which Bothans were involved in the attack on Caamas?', but in practice this is resolved offscreen once the Document is found).

* InvincibleHero: This is how Zahn saw the overpowered Jedi of the books. He couldn't retcon them into more Yoda-like power levels (Pulling a starfighter out of a swamp wasn't easy), so he insinuated that demigod Jedi are relying so heavily on sheer power that they've blinded themselves to the subtler sides of the Force, like precognition (both in the immediate sense - as an awareness of danger before it hits - and in the longer-term, as visions) and that Luke was drawing on the Dark Side by using the Force as a solution for every problem. Zahn was telling other EU authors that they were making Luke out to be a MarySue and cheapening the Force by making it a source of cool powers and nothing more.

* ExactWords: Bel Iblis uses these to [[FalseReassurance reassure]] Booster Terrik about his continuing authority over his ship, the ''Errant Venture'' (an ''Imperial II''-class Star Destroyer he captured back in ''[[ComicBook/XWingSeries The Bacta War]]''), which Iblis plans to use as part of an infiltration mission.

** The very last Bantam novel was actually ''[[ComicBook/XWingSeries Starfighters of Adumar]]'', but it was set before this duology anyway, and it rather nicely explains how Wedge went from dating Qwi Xux in the [[Literature/JediAcademyTrilogy JAT]] to being married to Iella from the X-Wing Series here.

* ShoutOut: [[ComicBook/XWingSeries Corran Horn]] makes a minor appearance in the first book and shares a somewhat larger subplot with Wedge in the second. Also a general ShoutOut to L/M fans and their [[FixFic requests that Zahn fix this mess]].

** "The Hand of Thrawn" is the only uncorrupted sentence found on one of the damaged Imperial datacards unearthed at the beginning of ''Specter of the Past''. Everyone speculates about what it might mean, but Luke and Mara only find out when the latter realises what the damaged Chiss fortress on Nirauan, with its five remaining towers, looks like....

* BecauseImJonesy: As part of Garm Bel Iblis's attempt to capture an intact copy of the Caamas Document, he has the ''Errant Venture'', an ''Imperial II''-class Star Destroyer owned by Booster Terrik, masquerade as the ISD ''Tyrannic'' fleeing Republic attack, as New Republic Intelligence has the actual ''Tyrannic'' listed as missing in action. Moff Disra doesn't fall for it because he's using the ''Tyrannic'' as part of his own BatmanGambit, and knows ''exactly'' where she is.

* CloningBlues:
** There's a lot of FantasticRacism directed at them, that's for sure. Lando in particular - he calls them "subhuman" behind their backs, and antagonizes them to their faces. (This may be an ironic in-joke, as the character of Lando was originally going to be a leftover Clone Wars clone in early drafts of ''The Empire Strikes Back'').
** Also, at the end of the book, after [[spoiler: the good guys win]], they repeatedly refer to [[spoiler:the near-disaster as a scheme caused by Disra and Flim, the two members of the triumvirate who ''weren't'' clones, despite Tierce orchestrating most of it. How much of that is due to Tierce being a clone, and how much of it is due to Tierce being ''dead'', while the other two are still alive to be tried for their crimes, is not entirely clear. A third option is because Tierce was only included in their existing plot at the last minute]].

* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: [[spoiler:Tierce]]

%% * ProphecyTwist

** Subtle (it's never explicitly stated) but remember that tractor beam guy in ''The Last Command'' who Thrawn promoted instead of punishing him because he tried an imaginative solution to prevent Luke escaping his tractor beam, even though he failed? The one who Thrawn then ordered to work on the solution properly? Guess how Lando tries to escape an Imperial tractor beam at the end of ''Specter''... same method, only ''now'' [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the Empire has a way to defeat it]].

* MemeticBadass: In-universe example. Thrawn is perhaps the most terrifying (non-Force-sensitive) figure the galaxy has ever seen, so even his impersonator's appearance freaks out Lando and others who see him. It takes Pellaeon, who knew Thrawn best and is not threatened by him, to ferret him out.

* VillainSue: An interesting twist here. Thrawn (especially compared to the straight-up MagnificentBastard of ''The Thrawn Trilogy'') initially shows all the hallmarks of this: ridiculously genius strategist, [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] ''par excellence'', WickedCultured, and the good guys are practically paralyzed with terror at the mention of his name. Here's the twist: [[spoiler:he never shows up]]. So it's a case of in-universe word of mouth inflating his ''reputation'' to VillainSue levels.

* GambitPileup: Half the fun of this series is watching gambit after gambit get thrown on the pile, the bottom layer of which was laid by Grand Admiral ''freaking'' Thrawn over nine years ago.

* ConflictBall: One attempt to avenge the past leads to a host of ethnic conflicts flaring up, nearly destroying the New Republic. Justified in that for most species, the Caamas crisis really served as an excuse to legally get at longstanding enemies and rivals. For example, the Diamala and Ishori, between whom Han and Luke try to mediate an argument early in ''Specter'', take opposite sides on the debate, partly due to their racial outlooks, but mostly because their opponent is on the opposite side. Not a lot of people cared that profoundly about something that had happened so long ago.

* BecauseImJonesy: As part of Garm Bel Iblis's attempt to capture an intact copy of the Caamas Document, he has the ''Errant Venture'', an ''Imperial II''-class star destroyer owned by Booster Terrik, masquerade as the ISD ''Tyrannic'' fleeing Republic attack, as New Republic Intelligence has the actual ''Tyrannic'' listed as missing in action. Moff Disra doesn't fall for it because he's using the ''Tyrannic'' as part of his own BatmanGambit and knows ''exactly'' where it is.