Let me begin this by stating up front; Thrawn is a villain. A brilliant, fascinating, charismatic villain, but a villain nonetheless. He is Holmes and Rommel and Moriarty all rolled into one. (Please don’t hate me for this.)
And I’ve tried to keep that front of mind as I have been writing this massive Alexsandr Kallus fic, Especially now that I am into the cat and mouse section where Kallus is spying for the rebels as Fulcrum, but having to interact with Thrawn on an almost daily basis.
To prepare to write this I reread all the Thrawn books. I even read the first Heir to Empire, and if people thought Thrawn was vile in Rebels he was far worse in that Legends novel. I’ve also been rewatching a number of Rebel’s episodes.
In the books Tim tries very hard not to have Thrawn be as loathsome as Tarkin or Vader and succeeds, but it’s still important to remember he is not a good, kind man. Yes, he tries to limit civilian casualties… when possible, but he won’t let the death of innocents stand in the way of a victory. In the end it’s always about the cold equation.
In the Ascendency novels he makes it clear to Admiral Ba’kif that he would have destroyed the planet Sunrise and all of its inhabitants in order to destroy the Grysk threat to the Chiss. And he would have leveled Capital City if Ezra had not capitulated.
He also uses and discards his own troops in the service of tactics and strategy. In Treason he cold bloodily sends a number of Tie pilots to their deaths to verify his theory about the alien’s battle tactics. War for Thrawn is like a giant game of tactica or chess.
I do love the fact that Thrawn was the perfect Chiss to send into Lesser Space to serve in the Empire. While Thrawn, unlike many of his fellow Chiss, is able and willing to work with aliens he comes from a culture that is every bit as bigoted as the high human cult in the Empire. Which is another reason he can so easily slide into serving Palpatine.
Basically, he seems to be a man who has great difficulty forming personal relationships. (To be fair Tim has no choice, but to write books that focus on battles and strategy and political skullduggery and not much on the inner lives of the characters, and it certainly provides fanfic authors a rich playing field. Actually that is one of my complaints about the books. Nobody seems to have any personal attachments. Eli blithely waltzes off to the Ascendancy without a thought for his parents, but I digress).
So, to lay our Blue Meanie on the coach for a moment….
All of his relationships take the form of mentor to mentee whether it’s with Thrass or Ar'alani or Samakro or Che’ri or Faro or Eli. And his emotional reactions to Thrass’ death, or sending away Eli seem very muted. The books do give us a potential reason for this reticence – the loss of the sister. The fear that he would be hurt again makes him avoid deep relationships and leaves him isolated.
At his core, I think Thrawn is a man of the mind and not the heart. I think he fears strong emotion, passion because it might cloud his judgement, and open him up to pain again.
All of which combines to make him a tragic figure. Which really is the best kind of villain. The ones who had the possibility to be heroes, but are brought low by their own fatal flaw.
But that’s exactly what Thrawn is. It’s all there in the text. Thrawn murders someone on his deck for refusing to own up to a mistake iirc. He’s perfectly able to be an asshole, and the recent books, while making him more sympathetic, also made him less kind in many ways.
I totally agree that the characters have no internal lives. To me, the books are written for a target audience of 13 yo boys, old school style. Love is yuck and nobody even thinks about kissing.
You’d think my aroace ass would be happy, but it’s not just romance that gets nuked, it’s also deeper, more meaningful relationships and small believable things. Characters jump from plot point to plot point without taking the time to develop much emotionally.
So yes, leaves a ton of room for fans to woobify him. It’s fun too, but ofc he’s a villain, and not some tragic anti hero or whatever.
I think people sometimes also lose sight of how frightening it would be, for a guy like Thrawn to tour a couple of art exhibit and use that to annihilate us on the battlefield. Imagine your beloved fanart being a major point through which the empire subjugates your entire planet.
It’s a super cool element from his pov, it’s horrifying from everyone else’s. And the one culture he couldn’t crack, he destroyed from orbit.
I really can’t wait to see how he’ll be treated in Ahsoka. (many) fears.
Heres your reminder with season 3 out that Queen Maeve is bisexual, not a lesbian. The entire point is that Vought thinks a lesbian relationship is more profitable and marketable than going out of their way to state that one of the girls in the relationship is a bisexual woman. By not acknowledging her bisexuality you’re going along with vought’s bi erasure
Also to add, the point of Homelander thinking of her as a lesbian is because its how he’s coping with his bruised ego. If she’s bisexual and still attracted to men, that means she left him because she had the choice to. If she left him because she wasn’t attracted to him entirely, in his mind, that soothes his ego. That’s why he specifically erases her bisexuality
Say what you want about the mxtx English releases but honestly the way they tapped into fandom talent and dedication to bring them to life is absolutely incredible.
I’ve seen so much bullshit hate towards the art in the books and I’ll never understand it, honestly. All the artists hired were established fanartists, respected by the community and dedicated to the source material – these are the kinds of people you want to contribute to your project!! It’s honestly just so reassuring to see a direct payoff for a hobby that’s so often degraded as being a waste of time. And I hope it steers younger artists away from the trap of thinking their art needs to be stiff and professional to be valuable and encourages them to continue to make art for things that THEY’RE passionate about!
