Preface
A long time ago, in a galaxy that is ... right here, a movie came along, and the story captured the imagination of many of my generation and of those to follow. Recognized characters are not of my imagining, but rather that of George Lucas (at least to him belong the rights). There are some original characters here, as my story diverges rather sharply from Mr. Lucas' in a great many places. I will presume that readers are familiar enough with the movies to know which ones I made up and which ones I've just turned on their heads.
This is unapologetically AU. Episode IV (the true Star Wars--oh, and Han shot first!) is the gold standard to which I am adhering, while the other five episodes will have changes of varying degrees of significance. So, when you read and review (and I hope you will), please judge this AU solely on its own merits as a story and not how close or far I might be from canon. While I'm enjoying the writing immensely, I hope that you enjoy the reading for the story I've chosen to tell.
My stories are not truly suited for children, nor do I think that Star Wars should be for children. My stories contain some fairly dark matter, including unflinching violence, non-consensual sex, nudity, and other more mature themes. I will note some of the sharper divergent notes in my AU here. In the first place, in episode 1 (mine being subtitled "The Puppet Master"), I have made Anakin's age older than it was in the movie/novel. I will freely confess that despite its canon nature, I never found the Padmé-Anakin relationship believable as presented. While I could believe he would fall for her, I found nothing in the movies made it seem likely that the reverse would be true. I also rather abhorred the midichlorian hypothesis, and never really liked the 'Ani' nickname (and I'm still convinced that "Annie" is a girl's name). Also, the birth name is not Anakin, but Deak. If you've encountered some of the earlier incarnations of the script for what came to be known as Star Wars (subsequently Episode IV or subtitled A New Hope) you'll know where the Deak name came from. He will become known as Anakin Skywalker, but not until the end of the first episode. Furthermore, Deak's abilities have been toned down, because canon-Anakin quite frankly came across as far too good to be believed (if he were an OC in a fanfic, he'd be deservedly mocked as a Marty Stu).
I have limited myself to the movies, novelizations of the same, and a few other source materials (the official website and Wookiepedia) to shore up knowledge regarding planets and species of the Star Wars universe, as well as spellings of various persons, places, and things, and to my imaginings of how things shouldbe. You will note that the Gungan species has been wholly re-worked (JarJar is sort of present, but you may not recognize the character, as I did feel the character had a place in the story which was better provided by the changes to the character and the species), and several details regarding pod-racing have been revised. Other details (like the ownership of C-3PO), the full names of the handmaidens, and various characters' ages (and family trees) have freely been altered where I felt necessary. Additional given names or surnames that I cannot find in canon have been added according to principles that made sense to me, as well as altering Sith names when I felt appropriate.
A few notes on conventions that I am using: italics with no quotation marks indicates thought; italics inside double quotation marks indicates that the speaker is using a foreign language comprehensible to the POV character. Such languages will be evident either by the species of the speaker or be identified at the beginning of the dialog.