SPOILER "Bloodline" by Claudia Gray (Discussion)

my impression is that Brendol and Carise are birds of a feather. maybe clever, maybe excellent at their respective ambitions, but also too greedy and too superficial to hold real power. maybe for that reason they were close in some capacity, which is why she wonders about him.

but to call Brendol a "mastermind" behind the FO seems like a stretch. Rax barely deigns to spare him from his purge of the Shadow Council. and though we don't exactly know why, we know he thinks of Brendol as an obnoxious, politically stupid pig. not really mastermind material. but again, perhaps a genius as molding officers, and so he has value to Rax as an administrator who can begin building the army.

maybe resident Hux expert @RockyRoadHux can offer an opinion on this one?

 

Looking back "mastermind" was a poor choice of words. I was trying to get across that in my head Brendol had a Part of making the FO army. I am really only going off the fact he talks so little and down about his own son, and I would like to think if he was able to turn his son into General material he surely had a part with the military side of the FO

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 9, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 9, 2016 ---

I do like your thinking that the Amaxine were a trail to see if they might be truly "serious" enough. It makes me think that whatever group of people that started the FO were pretty desperate to bring in a radical group like the Amaxine to help their cause.

 

it's an interesting introduction for Armitage Hux, that's for sure; not quite what one would expect of the future nazi General.
and yes, no doubt Rax has him build his academy to train his officers, which is not insignificant.

i just can't help feeling there's more to Hux than we're being told at this point.

 

I think what we found out in Bloodlines was only scratching the surface of what was out there. I wondered what got destroyed and what survived of that underwater city, and if there was any fingers being pointed or vendettas against the people who were involved in it's destruction.

 

The most important tidbit I got from Bloodlines regarding Luke/Ben is this:

Leia hasn't heard from either of them in years.

Luke does not respond to Leia's 'force texts,' (as I like to call them.)

What does this mean? From what I see, it seems like the incident where Ben kills Luke's students and joins Snoke happened several years before the events of Bloodlines, which means when TFA rolls around, Leia hasn't seen Luke or Ben in what may be ten years or more.

 

I just can't picture Greer with that lipstick, but otherwise, yes!

 

Much better!

 

1st, the book: I REALLY liked it, but I didn't love it. However, I love that I read it. It has a lot more politics than I was expecting, but it was a ton of really good backstory for the ST. It's not as good as some of the other new canon books I've read, but still a very good read. I liked getting to know Greer, Joph, and Ransolm. ....

2nd: And speaking of Ransolm Casterfo, I have the crazy wish that they would break him out of prison, give him a new identity, and have him join the Resistance. I know the Resistance has the support of the NR in TFA, so they would have to do it covertly. They'd have to make sure the NR would not know they did it. They could disguise themselves as pirates or bounty hunters. Either way, they'd have to do a really good job of making it look like another party broke him out. Perhaps the new boss of the Amaxines put a huge price on his head for his part in ruining their plans? I know it's crazy, but I REALLY liked his character. I hate to think they'd just let him get executed knowing he was framed because he helped them.

 

I’m reading through this again in preparation for The Last Jedi (36 days to go!!), and, well, some things struck me that really didn’t make me sit up and take notice in the same way the first time around.

If someone else has noticed this then I must apologise for bringing it up again: I think that Tai-Lin Garr is - somehow - linked to Snoke and the First Order.

Bare in mind that I’m a mere few hundred pages back in, and could still pick up on some more stuff as I go through, but I thought that it was some interesting food for thought.

Here’s the stuff which really made me sit up and think about the possibility:

• When Leia says that she considered retiring before running for First Senator and wanted to spend more time with her family, Tai-Lin responds “You would wish to join your brother and son, I imagine.” When Leia responds that she misses them and wanted to live with her husband, Tai-Lin doesn’t refer to Han or even acknowledge him, asking: “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, and finally I feel I know you well enough to dare. If I overstep my bounds, please tell me.” Leia then thinks that this is some kind of romantic overture, but instead, Garr asks: “Did you never consider following in your brother’s path and becoming a Jedi?”; Leia asks why, and he responds “They say on my world that the Force sometimes runs strong in certain families.” Tai-Lin continues, “If that is true, then you might have the potential just like your brother”, to which Leia thinks, but does not say: *And my son.* “If you have that ability, then I cannot imagine why you would not become a Jedi as well,” Tai-Lin finished. “Surely I’ve known few people who would make a finer Jedi Knight than you.” Leia sees Tai-Lin as an ally and friend, and responds her duty has “...always been here, in the work of creating a better government.” He sighed, as if in regret. “You alone can determine your rightful destiny.”

Perhaps it’s just me, but Tai-Lin’s probing about Luke and Ben specifically, and the possibility of Leia becoming a Jedi, seemed very off to me - and the fact that Leia is hiding the fact that Ben is even a Force-sensitive indicates that she might not trust Tai-Lin as much as the book might suggest. Gatalenta is known to have remained a Force-praising people during the time of the Empire, but even then, this behaviour seems very peculiar and prying.

• Tai-Lin escapes the napkin bombing with no more than a scratch, which is extremely suspect considering how Leia was the first to escape the room and was left injured enough for sedatives and bacta treatment; Greer was walking through the Senate grounds not far from the conference building and was still also much more injured than that. Is it possible that he was the one who arranged for the planting of the note and bomb?

• The constant references to red surrounding Tai-Lin Garr has me intrigued, considering that a certain shade is associated with Snoke’s throne room and his Praetorian Guards. In the distinctive scarlet robes of his planet, he cut a striking figure and On the wall hung the room’s one ornament, an elegant painting of Gatalentan origin, bold in brilliant swaths of red. She noticed him [Casterfo] looking at it. “A birthday gift from Tai-Lin Garr a few years ago. Maybe my favourite gift ever...”

• Finally, if I recall correctly, Tai-Lin Garr becomes the Populist candidate for First Senator, saying that he put himself forward to nullify the power of First Senator if he became it — and he wins. He is then assassinated by Hadrassian; sure, he was First Senator and that’s another great reason for Hadrassian to assassinate him for the FO, but what if Garr was actually tied to the FO too? Perhaps Snoke/someone thought that he would use the power for himself, or reveal the FO too soon, and so he was assassinated?

Another thing about the novel which struck me was the legend of the ancient Amaxine warriors:

“I’ve heard the legend of the Amaxines. It’s an old story — one my mother told me, dating back to the dawn of the Old Republic.” Princess Leia’s eyes gazed into an unseen distance. “Supposedly they were a warrior people, their entire culture based on battle. Instead of currency, they traded weapons for goods and services. The tale has it that they refused to make peace with the Old Republic but knew they could never defeat such an enemy. So instead they pointed their ships at the galaxy beyond ours and left forever, searching for yet another war to fight.”

I have two possibilities: Snoke is an Amaxine and/or his Praetorian Guards are Amaxines.

Snoke: the dawn of the Old Republic was around the dawn of the Jedi — fearing the Jedi and their allegiance to the Republic, Snoke fled to the Unknown Regions to wage war elsewhere. It’s possible that he feeds off war and it’s death toll, and this could mean that he could be both ancient (as old as, if not older than, the old Jedi Order) and a non-Sith Dark Side entity.

Praetorian Guards: seems more likely to me; these are warriors from the Unknown Regions, and there’s not really any reason to think that Snoke wouldn’t accept them as his own personal guards given how committed to war the Amaxines once were.

Either way, I think that it’s possible that the ancient Amaxines could also be tied to what the Chiss Ascendancy fear in the UR.

 

you raise some interesting points about Tai-Lin. i feel like maybe i want to reread this too now, before TLJ.
i think the first time i read it i was in too much of a white hot heat over Leia's blithe attitude regarding Ben and her flirting with Casterfo.

i'm also intrigued by how the Amaxines and the Chiss are potentially connected since i still believe (maybe wishful thinking), that it was Thrawn they were heading toward in the Outer Rim at the end of the Aftermath novels. or at least Thrawn was pulling the strings on Rax.

 

Honestly, I genuinely thought that Tai-Lin Garr could be the greatest candidate for being Snoke, if he weren’t shot dead right through the heart: his height, his close relationship with Leia, his commanding presence, etc.

I would absolutely recommend reading through it agin before TLJ, as it’s brought up a lot of potential stuff I would have forgot otherwise, and is also the only major novel close to TFA in the timeline to deal with Ben and politics.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I think that there’s a good chance that Ben might have turned before he would have found out about the true identity of his grandfather in the way stated in Bloodline (via the Holonet). Many have taken Gray’s implications a bit too literally; there were months, if not years, with contact between Luke, Ben and Leia. Actually, I don’t think that there’s anything in the book to imply that Leia even knew that Luke was attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order.

YES. This is what I’ve been saying since waaaaaaaay before Thrawn came back into canon: the TFA visual guide hinted that The Finalizer was by no means the largest ship in the FO’s Fleet, and whilst I think that I might have been wrong in guessing that they were referring to The Eclipse (what with The Supremacy and Dreadnought-class), and there’s no way that they would kill Thrawn off.

If anything, simply sending him off to the Unknown Regions like in Legends would have been enough, and I think what we read in Thrawn and the end of Empire’s End are the greatest implications that Thrawn is still around at this time. The real question is: is he still alive by TFA?

 

what if he's not really dead? : o O

now i definitely want to go back and read this.

i'm on the fence with this. it would make sense if Ben was already frustrated by being sent with his uncle and/or if training with Luke was not getting him where he wanted to be for the news about Vader to push him out of the nest as it were. maybe not cause his immediate fall, but certainly create a break. he goes off and finds the Knights of Ren, who accept him as their powerful Force-user master, and this is how Snoke "finds" him (or reveals himself to him). this all would play into Ben's feeling of self-actualizing without realizing he'd been manipulated in to the position, first of all, and secondly, that it's all a Dark side farce to begin with ~ meanwhile, the kid believe he's on the path of fulfilling his destiny.

in Bloodline Cerese (what's her name? i fergit), mentions somewhat dismissively that Luke's running around the galaxy with his acolytes (plural). this would seem to suggest that there's a general assumption that Luke is gathering people and teaching them about the Force. seems like Leia would know this too if her own son is one of those acolytes. whether that means she understood he was rebuilding the Jedi Order explicitly remains to be seen, but is seems like a safe assumption?

i think this is one of the strongest ways to tie all these disparate bits together. the fact that they introduced Thrawn in Rebels makes me feel like his character isn't done yet. and Lucasfilm/storygroup know he's a "fan-favorite" so it stands to reason they would do something big with him.

 

That was my first thought too. Something ain’t adding up.

It’s Carise Good memory! Literally just got to that part of the novel; it’s possible that Luke was rebuilding the Jedi Order and it was well known, but likewise, I think that the term “acolytes” could also be applied to both Ben and Lor San Tekka (in the literal sense of “follower”, and kind of in the sense of being “assistants”).

Couldn’t agree more. I genuinely can’t believe anyone thought that he could be killed off so quickly!

I think S4 will probably end with the Emperor believing that the Rebel Alliance is all but done for - as arrogant as ever - after the Battle over Scarif, and send Thrawn to the Unknown Regions; likewise, Thrawn learning of the Death Star, a concept he’s historically against, could be enough for him to request to travel to the Unknown Regions on behalf of the Emperor, or something like that.

 

thanks! i remembered the "sound" of it, but not how it was spelled!

this is true. just like the Knights of Ren could be followers of the Sith without being Sith or even FS themselves.
i guess i would think at least Leia would know Luke's plan. he does have her son, after all. though Leia's parenting skills as demonstrated in Bloodline weren't exactly A+ by any standards ~ hahahaha

i could be way off, but i have always had the sense that Thrawn had been lying in wait to overthrow the Emperor and that he seeded this plan by instilling in Rax the belief that it was Rax's destiny to rule the galaxy. he just couldn't foresee Vader flipping the switch ahead of time, nor could he predict that Sloane would take out Rax. but Rax doesn't even matter in the big picture. Thrawn was only interested in this "new ark" which Rax describes and passes on to Hux (of all people). so now Hux wants to take over the galaxy, but i think the whole thing: the FO, Snoke, all of it could still be the machinations of Thrawn who is still trying to wrestle power to restore his people.

 

Excellent post, but I wanted to cut right to this.

We’ve all had the sense at some point or another - I think - that Snoke could be some type of Wizard of Oz, and I find it especially intriguing that in TFA we only saw him via hologram on his throne, and in the stuff we’ve seen of him in TLJ’s promotional campaign, he’s either always seated or on his throne.

Totally out there, but what if Snoke isn’t at all as powerful as it might appear, and perhaps even just a proxy/hologram? Seeing as he’s always in his throne room - at least that we’ve seen him, anyways - and operates pretty much exclusively from The Supremacy - is it possible that the eight Praetorian Guards are, to some extent, Force sensitive, and together could make displays of great power on behalf of “Snoke”, whatever he may be?

I mean, TFA makes the point of us being informed that Bala-Tik of the Guavian Death Gang informs the FO of BB-8’s whereabouts, and we then cut to Snoke revealing this information to Kylo. Hmm...

 

from the start i believed Snoke was a macguffin. i'm less certain now that we will see him "in person".

part of me feels like the Thrawn connection might be far-fetched since we don't have any clues or evidence in the ST other than his appearance in Rebels and the new canon novels. but we're also only one movie in and if Snoke proves to be a ruse, Thrawn may yet emerge as the "big bad".

or Plagueis. you know. hahahaha