Jean-Luc Picard is currently the most discussed Trek character. Many of his adventures were written down in novels. He had to deal with crisises - both professional and private - throughout his career. In PIC he has to help the Romulans, who have a difficult past with the Federation and have the Tal Shiar watching over them. Not to mention dealing with rogue Androids attacking Mars. In the literature timeline he remained aboard a starship. The Borg invasion left many worlds uninhabitable. No Risa anymore, Deneva and other worlds destroyed. The Federation with a shortage of manpower in their fleets, forcing many young officers to fast-track their career (e. g. Ezri Dax and others). The years following the invasion shaped by rebuilding efforts, single characters dealing with traumata of personal losses. I almost forgot the Section 31 exposure and Picard's involvement (I haven't read Collateral Damage yet). Which crisis is the biggest challenge for Picard and why?
Part of me wants to say the canonical version, because it could easily be argued that he didn’t live up to the challenge in the end, and entered a self imposed exile. But another part of me remembers him openly weeping on the bridge of the Enterprise at the moment of his impending defeat before the Caeliar reprieve, and I think that has to count for something as well.
I think both were very trying incidents for Picard to deal with. In a way, I'd think the Destiny timeline hit more close to home. After all this was a Borg attack and Picard was personally violated by the Borg. And the Borg had come back not to assimilate anymore, but to destroy the Federation. And it's been many years so we may forget, but they came very close to completely wiping out the Federation. Entire Federation worlds were destroyed. In the Picard show timeline, his home is never really threatened. That doesn't mean it doesn't come with it's own trials. Picard is basically exiled from the thing he loved most. Exploration, space travel. But he didn't have to face the annihilation of the Federation. Now, where the Destiny timeline wins out for Picard is now, after all that, he is in a better place, facing an optimistic future where he is still in Starfleet, still exploring and heeding Captain Kirk's advice to stay on the bridge of the Enterprise. He can never be promoted, and Captain Picard is ok with that, in fact he seems to see that as a gift. He is where he wants to be. So while he had to go through a living Hell to get there, Captain Picard of the litverse series is in a far better place than former Admiral Picard is in the canon universe by 2387.
The series because it's more interesting than what we get in the books - Picard failed in the show and the challenge is there an internal and personal one - billions of nameless nobodies dying isn't actually that interesting.
Not true. The incursion site in the Azure Nebula was very close to the "corner" where Federation, Klingon, and Romulan space all converge, and the Borg armada expanded outward from it in a roughly spherical front, taking sizeable chunks out of all three powers.
Wow... TIL. I didn't know this. Overall I think the Destiny timeline (is that what we're going to call this TrekLit era?) was a larger crisis. Nothing like the Borg invasion / war had ever hit the Federation and caused such devastation.
That's my feeling as well. I think since it's been years since the Destiny trilogy came out (and years have passed in story) that just how devastating that was has sort of been forgotten. In a way it was nice that "Collateral Damage'' brought that to the fore again with the Nausicaan storyline. Kind of a reminder that the Borg invasion was devastating in scope. Not saying the Romulan supernova was not. But for Captain Picard, facing the Borg yet again was personally jarring. Esp. since their new m.o. was obliteration. And Picard has a personal, extremely traumatic history with the Borg. And they obliterated entire worlds. Now as of 2387 where we left off the litverse? You can argue Captain Picard is in a much better place in that 2387 then Admiral Picard was in Picard's 2387.
It's never really been given any kind of official, or even TrekBBS preferred name, I've always gone with the Novelverse, but I've also seen it referred to as the Litverse, the Destiny universe, or the Typhon (as in Typhon Pact) universe.