Jedi Prince

Jedi Prince (along with The Glove of Darth Vader) is the informal name given to a series of Star Wars young reader novels that "take up where Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi left off." The title "Jedi Prince" refers to Ken, the twelve-year-old hero of the series who teams up with Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance to fight the Empire.

The Empire, led by Grand Moff Hissa and Supreme Prophet Kadann, attempt to install Trioculus as Emperor, claiming that he is Palpatine's son. Palpatine's real son, according to the series, is a madman named Triclops. It is for this reason that the series is also sometimes called the The Trioculus Saga or the Son of Palpatine series. Both Trioculus and Triclops are mutants who have three eyes.

The books were written by a married couple, Paul and Hollace Davids, and illustrated by Karl Kesel.

Books in the series

 * 1) The Glove of Darth Vader
 * 2) The Lost City of the Jedi
 * 3) Zorba the Hutt's Revenge
 * 4) Mission from Mount Yoda
 * 5) Queen of the Empire
 * 6) Prophets of the Dark Side

Fan reaction to the series
The series is generally not popular with fans of the movies, who consider them to be silly. Fans have accused the series of being preachily politically correct, with every book having a "save the environment" theme. Fans also believe the film characters don't appear very often and, when they do, act out of character.

In response to the negative critique, Paul Davids points to the popularity of the series among student readers and their sales of millions worldwide.

Jedi Prince and the rest of the Expanded Universe
Despite the unpopularity of the series, its places, situations, and technology are frequently referenced in other Expanded Universe sources. However, facts in the series are contradicted by most of the Star Wars universe: for example, the readers learn the difference between male and female droids, while robots are not qualified as female if not necessary, like Guri.

The series has been retconned in many ways. For example, according to Paul Davids, the series takes place over the course of five years, but the Star Wars timeline lists all the events as taking place within the same year and as being generally of little importance. Another retcon is that the right glove of Darth Vader was a Mandalorian crushgaunt fitted with Lord Kaan's Sith amulet, explaining how the glove survived the destruction of the second Death Star.

The wedding of Han Solo and Leia Organa depicted during the ending of Prophets of the Dark Side is considered non-canon. The novel ends with them walking down the aisle, and the retcon states that the wedding was interrupted as they were walking down the aisle. Han Solo and Leia Organa were canonically married in the later novel The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton.

A retcon in The New Essential Chronology revealed that Trioculus, Grand Moff Bertroff Hissa and other members of the Central Committee of Grand Moffs were trying to overthrow Director of Imperial Intelligence Ysanne Isard&mdash;who ruled the galactic capital of Coruscant&mdash;and usurp control of the Empire. Grand Moff Hissa connived to install Trioculus as the public leader of the Empire and gain support from the majority of the Imperials loyal to Isard. Isard is never mentioned in the series&mdash;in fact, it is frequently suggested there is no Imperial leader other than Trioculus&mdash;but this particular retcon was invented to fit the series into the established timeline.

A retcon in the unlicensed Polyhedron 103 magazine stated that the Jedi Prince series had in fact been a children's story of the actual events told by Leia Organa Solo to her children Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin. However, this retcon was later ignored in The Dark Side Sourcebook which retconned the story to be true, but with numerous fixes&mdash;one of the most prominent, that the Kadann featured in the series was a con artist hired by Imperial Intelligence and the Prophets of the Dark Side were pretenders working for the Church of the Dark Side. The original Kadann never appeared in the novels, and the true Prophets of the Dark Side were hiding on Bosthirda during the events of the series. Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals established that the false Kadann met his end after Grand Admiral Afsheen Makati&mdash;who hated the true Kadann&mdash;mistakenly thought that the pretender was the Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side and destroyed Scardia Station, killing the the false Kadann.

The origins of Triclops were revealed in Aliens of the Empire. Triclops was not Palpatine's biological son, but the product of a scientific experiment in which Darth Sidious hired scientists Mammon Hoole and Borborygmus Gog to study the spontaneous generation of life. Sly Moore obtained the test subject for the project, a Human female called Niobi. Niobi gave birth to a three-eyed mutant, and she and her son were banished by Sarcev Quest, a Dark Side Adept loyal to Emperor Palpatine.

Author commentary
"If we had written #7, however, I would remind you that it takes MANY STEPS to get down the aisle, and there is not one chance in hell that Han and Leia would have made it to the end of the aisle and sealed their marriage before a harrowing IMPERIAL ATTACK would have savaged their hoped for wedding and left it all in ruins. No nuptials took place that night, my dear friends." – Paul Davids "This has been about 10 years and it's very hard to remember, except I recall we would have called one book SHADOWS OF OBIWAN. That was before "Shadows" showed up in other STAR WARS titles." – Paul Davids "It may be helpful for you to know that our contract with Lucasfilm (and Lucasfilm's contract with Bantam on our series) was for six books with an option for an additional three, which would have made for a nine book series. At the time we anticipated the probability that the series would go to nine books, and therefore we had to plan ahead for where the next three stories would go. Though complete story outlines for the next three were never written, we definitely decided on some aspects of the future three stories (7-9) before books 4-6 were published. Our intent definitely was to have the Empire attack and ruin the intended wedding of Han and Leia before they ever said 'I do.' The wedding never would have happened&mdash;and that's how book 7 would have begun." – Paul Davids