Star Wars characters- Do they age?

[EnsignRicky]

Legacy has avoided telling us what happened to them, so that they don't handcuff the novel line too much. We definitely know that Luke is dead, as his Force ghost visits Cade Skywalker on a fairly regular basis.

And they even kept Luke's fate fairly vague. He could have either been a spirit, or a hallucination. Cade was pretty hopped up on spice or deathsticks or whatever, at the time.

He's appeared when Cade has been sober.

Oh, cool. I'm a little backed up on my comic pile, I'm only up to his first appearance. Thanks for the correction. RIP Luke.

 

[Jono]

I guess my big question is, what enabled the Old Republic to thrive and continue to exist for a millenia and why did the New Republic and Galactic Alliance ultimately fail to succeed? Heck, even Palpatine's martial/authoritarian Empire didn't even last longer than 20-22 years (although remnants remained). The only theory that I've been able to come up with is Palpatine's destruction of the Jedi Order and the years and generations that would likely be required to fully re-constitute the order to the level seen during the height of the Old Republic- although it looks like Luke's New Jedi Order doesn't exactly manage to thrive either during the years between LOTF and the Legacy series.

According to the EU, the Republic lasted for so long because it managed to keep the peace. One of the officials on Naboo even said that there hadn't been a full blown conflict since the birth of the republic a thousands years previous. The Sith, probably the most destablising factor in the galaxy went into self imposed exile for that peroid. Look at the Old Republic, the Sith nearly tore it down on half a dozen occasions before they succeeded. Look at the KOTOR era, the Republic seems to be on the verge of total collapse at the hands of the Sith every other week.

The difference between the Republic and the empire and NR is that the latter two were in near constant states of significant warfare.

The Empire was fighting against its own citizens and in some cases covertly encouraged dissent and conflict within its own borders. It also seemed to stack the upper echelons with borderline psychotics and crazies. It was designed so that only Palpatine could be an effective ruler, once he died the empire, at least in its pre-remnant phase, was unworkable.

The NR lasted two decades but it was constantly fighting for its survival against the Empire and trying to piece the galaxy back together after the Emperor's death fractured it into dozens of pieces (large and heavily armed pieces). It was also faced with two extra-galactic invasions, the most serious was the Vong invasion. I doubt many would say they handled that situation at all well. The senate was still bickering and sitting on their hands as the Vong burned entire planets in the rim to dust.

The Jedi seem to be doing not too bad up to the fall of the GFFA in Legacy. THe GFFA didn't seem to fall because there weren't enough Jedi, but rather that the Sith and Empire had done a very good job weakening the GFFA before the war militarially thanks to succession of members and generally turning people against the Jedi and the GFFA.