Building of Empires
A Lost Hope

INTRODUCTION

My versions of the Phantom Menace sequels.

If episodes 4-6 were the great hero epic, then episodes 1-3 will be Greek Tragedy. In my own words, Greek Tragedy is 'in avoiding the curse, the curse happens.' The curse being Anakin's destiny to start down the dark path, and all the tragedy that ensues. Aristotle discusses man's fatal flaws--and that gave me the key to writing about the fall of Anakin: find his 'fatal flaw'. It is, of course, that same fatal flaw that will reclaim him to the light in ROTJ. Then there is the future Emperor. How did he come to power? I felt Palpatine was much too insidious to use brute force, and for him, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare gave me the answers I sought. The Prince, by Nicolo Machiavelli also provided answers (and material).

I tried very hard to bring book and film canon together. I know I didn't succeed. I deliberately chose to ignore some of the dates and events given in the books--especially those involving the Clone Wars. (I figure that can be explained by the confusion caused by the great calendar change early in Palpatine's reign. Missed this? I'm thinking of creating it and putting it into one of the stories.)

This is not a happy story, the best it can end is with hope.

I would also like to thank my editors: Janet and Jackee. Janet pushed me to keep improving the words. I would also like to thank Club Jade, whose interesting discussions caused me to ponder events of the Phantom Menace and the future.

I opted to create my own Alternate Universe that starts with TPM--mainly because I wanted to deal with one other unanswered question from the post ROTJ world. Building of Empires and A Lost Hope are, I hope, the first of 6 stories covering much of the Star Wars world. (Post Phantom Menace to Post Vision of the Future).

There are spoilers and references for The Phantom Menace, and many of the books (especially the Jedi Apprentice series, The Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn Duology by Zahn, and I, Jedi by Stackpole).

Disclaimer: The Star Wars characters and universe belong to George Lucas, several publishers, 20th Century Fox, and a number of authors. I am not making any money on this. I'm just stopping by (though it did feel like I moved in) to visit and play. I promise to return everything where I found it; I just couldn't wait three years, and this story wouldn't stay quiet. This was written strictly for fun...mine: writing it was a hoot--especially working to drag in famous and not so famous lines from the trilogy, the name-dropping, hints, ironies, parallelisms...etc. No wonder Lucas likes doing this.

"How many ages hence,
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown?"
Julius Caesar
Act II Scene 2
William Shakespeare