"Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened!"—Dr. Seuss
These stories have taken place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—somewhere so distant in both space and time that everything about it has been forgotten. The beings who lived there have long been dead, as have their descendants. The stories of what happened there, all the lives lived and deeds done, are lost. Even the galaxy itself, a brilliant, scintillating spiral of stars and their planetary systems, is no more; the last star died several millenia ago in a super nova so tiny, so insignificant, that no one noticed its passing. No one had noticed anything about the galaxy in a while, in fact—it had been erased from intergalactic star-charts countless millenia ago, as easily as if it had never existed.
But just because the galaxy has been forgotten does not mean that it never mattered. Perhaps it does not matter to you or I, who dwell in a galaxy in the prime of its existence. It is all too easy to write it off, after all; as the saying goes, "out of sight, out mind." But if you were to travel back in time and ask one of the beings who lived there, I assure you they would tell you differently. The things that happened there, from the wars that threatened to splinter it in two to the pure, innocent love that bound together a single family, weren't just history; it was their story, their life. It may not even touch us, may not affect us at all—but for them, it shaped their very souls.
Some of these stories—most of them, in fact—are fairly mundane. A few are mildly exciting: the story of a young Knight falling in love with a Duchess, only to be forced to let her go in the end, or the tale of hardened veteran regretting the destruction of a world named Cercan. Only one story, in the end, is truly unique—and even then, it seems irrelevant. It is merely the story of a single family, one bloodline; how can it matter, when compared to the vast sea of stories encompassing it? But the odd thing is that it does matter. It matters greatly.
Everything that happened in that galaxy centered on that one family.
It began with two children: one born to a virginal slave woman on a desert world, the other the secret daughter of a Jedi Knight and the Duchess of a planet in political limbo. The son of the slave would go on to be trained by the man who loved the Duchess and learn to control the unfathomable power within him, while the daughter would live as the child of mercenaries, ignorant of the mystical force that coursed through her veins. But power, as you know, is not always a good thing—a truth the galaxy would learn all-too well when the boy lost control of his power, succumbing to it until it had twisted him beyond recognition.
The monster—those who had known him before refused to believe it was a man—would strip freedom from every single man, woman, and child under his reign, becoming a tyrant far worse than anything the galaxy had ever seen, or ever would see; the girl simply grew up under his shadow. She would marry, have a son, and continue to work as a mercenary, although more quietly this time around; and then she died. Hardly anyone outside her family even noticed her passing, much less cared…while the galaxy would dance in jubilation when the boy-turned-monster finally fell.
But in falling, the boy had lived up to his purpose: to bring balance to the Force. The only problem was that like most things in this life, the balance did not last. Evil once again found a way to poke its head to the surface, and with it came tyranny—albeit in a different form. As one of the wisest, most venerable of the Jedi once said, things never take the same shape twice; galactic history might seem cyclical, but its events are never identical.
The evil came from far away, from another galaxy that has since been forgotten. It was dormant for some time, choosing to wait until the proper moment to enact its plan, like a predator ambushing his prey. Some forgot about it; some, ignorant of the grand scheme of things, never even knew it existed. Only when the remnant of the Empire the boy-monster had toppled sought out its power did the evil finally reveal itself—and even then those who encountered it did not recognize its evil. A person born blind sees nothing wrong with darkness.
By then, the boy-monster's grandson was learning to reign in the power he had inherited, training to become a Knight just like his grandfather before him. He was a good boy, an innocent child; he'd loved his parents, and they'd tried to provide the best life possible for him. But even love and the best intentions cannot keep a child innocent for long. When the evil began calling to the grandson, he was already beginning to grow world-weary, stretched thin by his desire to receive attention from his parents, who seemed too busy saving the galaxy to notice him. He was already beginning to teeter on the edge. And, just like his grandfather, he was already beginning to fall—to become a warrior for the dark.
The circle of history had turned once more.
Yet history also had another turn in mind—a move that would move that galaxy toward balance, not destruction. For the secret child of the Jedi and Duchess had her own bloodline, her own lineage—all of them fierce, hardened warriors. As the boy was seduced by the new evil, her great granddaughter was born, her veins filled with the same power that had created the boy-monster. Indeed, her spirit was that of the boy-monster himself, reincarnated in the body of his teacher's descendant. This was the teacher's way of atoning, after all: he had let his pupil fall to the dark those many years before, so his bloodline would be the one to finally help the student achieve balance.
Not much can be said about what happened afterward, but I can tell you this: the girl would be victorious. She would fall in love with the dark warrior, and draw him back from the evil that had threatened to devour him. She would dismantle all tyranny until it became ashes beneath her boots, causing peace to reign throughout the galaxy. And she would bring about a balance that lasted until the last planet of her galaxy died, sucked into the black hole that had once been its star.
Yes, I know; she was unable to save her galaxy from destruction. But recall that this was not her purpose. She was born to bring balance, to make things right while there was still life; she was not supposed to sustain that life. Her great-great grandfather, the man who had fallen for the Duchess so long ago, had always taught his pupil that it was wrong to keep a thing past its time, to preserve it long past the moment it should have been laid to rest. And this is what she allowed to happen. She made sure the galaxy lived happily—but not ever-after.
And that isn't such a bad thing. After all, nothing ever truly dies. Bodies may die, yes—but the spirits within them never do. They simply move somewhere else—always, always moving.
And who knows? Perhaps some of the spirit of that galaxy isn't quite so far, far away.
Ecclesiastes 3:1: "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot."