Star Wars EU - Blog Posts

Real question: how tall are the Chiss to you? 

There are no official heights for like any of the Chiss and that is a shame. Thrawn is roughly 6′4″ we know this because of the great Lars Mikkelsen. I’ve always imagined Thrawn to tower over everyone else. Lanky beanpole when he was a teenager type. Ba’kif is probably right at 6′ and Ar’alani is the same height. Thrass is either in the upper 5′ range or lower 6′. He is definitely not taller than Thrawn, but when they stood side-by-side I always imagined him to only be a few inches shorter. So maybe 6′1″? 6′2″? Thurfian isn’t 6′, about 5′10″ or 5′11″. He’s considered on the shorter side of the average. Zistalmu is taller than him, possibly Thrawn’s height. Thalias is shorter than him. Anywhere from the 5′7″-9″ range. Samakro is right at 5′11″. Kharill is about 6′5″-6″. He’s slightly taller than Thrawn.

But that’s not saying that Thrawn is overly tall, in fact he’s surrounded daily by chiss who are taller than him (personal headcannon that chiss grow to nearly 7′ on average). It just so happens that the people he finds himself with are usually shorter than him. Going to the Empire where everyone is human is a little bit of an adjustment, he feels like he’s a towering over them all. And on average he is half a foot taller than them.

Excerpt from The Last Command by Timothy Zahn (1993):

 “But…It was so artistically done.”

Thrawn’s last line starts with the word “but,” almost as if under normal circumstances he would be furious that his plans had unraveled so spectacularly and without him knowing it. Instead, he says “but,” and he says it calmly, with a smile on his face. He can’t be mad, because to him, his opponent beat him with the same level of attention he put into his plans. Because it was masterful and because even he could not have predicted the genius of turning the Noghri against him and then silently infiltrating Wayland.

The irony here is that our heroes actually didn’t put that much thought into his defeat specifically. I would argue that Thrawn’s true opponent was Leia, as it was her skill in politics, negotiation and empathy that both turned the Noghri against Thrawn and got Mara Jade to reveal the location of Wayland. In a way, it was Leia’s art that Thrawn didn’t account for.

This line alone also makes me ask – what does Thrawn really care about? Looking only at Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy and no other material, it is clear that Thrawn likes to win. He also likes to prove his worth, becoming one of the few high ranking, non-human imperial officials. But more than that, Thrawn loves art and psychology. He craves knowledge, surrounding himself by other cultures’ art in order to learn, to improve and to win.

So, did Thrawn really care about the Empire at all? What was his true motivation? There is little evidence in the trilogy to suggest that Thrawn cares a lot about ruling the galaxy or in reviving the Empire. In fact, Pellaeon even states at one point that Thrawn has created a new empire, different than the one before, with his ingenuity and proportional punishments for failure. So why is he doing it? Truthfully, I don’t think this question really answered in the trilogy, leaving it up to the readers to decide. But from his last line as he dies, I’d hazard to say Thrawn doesn’t care about the empire or superiority or anything of the sort. He cares only about the art of war. To him, war is a chessboard, a game for him to play. Sure, he loves to win but he can appreciate when he loses. And that is why he can’t be mad at his defeat. Because it was so artistically done.

Look, @coppermarigolds, Space Kuvira rides again!

The most passive-aggressive move Star Wars’s tie-in novels ever made toward their scifi franchise competition: the cover artists started drawing the evil Admiral Daala in a very similar way to Voyager’s Captain Janeway.