I know they are in different canons written decades apart so are probably not even meant to be continuous, but having read the Thrawn 2017 trilogy first, now that I’m reading Heir to the Empire it’s interesting to consider the path that must have taken him from who he is in the imperial trilogy to who he is in the Thrawn trilogy.
In the Imperial Trilogy, Thrawn is fundamentally optimistic, he aims to avoid brutality when he can instead gain a more complete victory. He aims to foster talent to improve the Imperial military, consulting with his underlings and taking their opinions seriously. He has people he cares about, even if he uses them as pawns for his games at achieving what he thinks is the greater good.
In Heir to the Empire, Thrawn is very different. The Empire is a corpse, though Thrawn denies it. He failed to realise that the empire was not a state, it was, in reality, nothing but the great cushion of evil built to protect Palpatine, and with him gone Thrawn keeps the dregs alive through sheer force of will. He’s lost faith in the officers and underlings around him, and in this time of desperation he has decided that there is no room for imperfection, and acts accordingly, acting with brutality in the face of minor failures from his staff. He doesn’t consult or consider, because he no longer trusts anything but his own personal genius.
I think these are distinctions that make sense when you consider his life’s path. Thrawn was always a fascist, who believed in might makes right and authoritarian/totalitarian rule, he always beleived the ends justified the means, he always had an ego and a vindictive streak (look at his campaign against nightswan), but all of these have been amplified and made sharper by years of failure and the slow realization that the empire which he staked his dignity and the future of his people on was a bad idea.
Now, I’ve only read half of heir to the empire so far (I don’t mind spoilers too much), so idk how much his backstory will be different between the trilogies, I’m mainly commenting on the differences in characterization and how those can be explained when patching the two.
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