I’d like to ask veteran Star Wars fans, who remember a time before the prequels, what your perception of the Clone Wars was?

 

While details on the Clone Wars where scarce prior to the release of Attack of the Clones, what brief mentions of it from the Expanded Universe that did exist seem to paint a very different picture than what Lucas decided to go with in the movies. Most notably the Thrawn Trilogy, which suggests that the clones were the antagonists. Other sources mention that the Clone Wars ended decades before the formation of the Empire.

Edited November 6, 2015 by -Chickenwalker-

Yes, I always thought the Clone Wars were a war of the republic against an army, or several armies, of clones. And that they had help from Jedi Knights, which I didn't see as that huge, organized Order it turned out to be in the Prequels.

Whether this war was something like a clone rebellion, or a war against an outside power, I didn't know of course. But I certainly didn't expect anything like I saw in the Prequels eventually.

 

I became a Stawars fan around 1983 I think, when I was 6 years old. So I was living with my personal view, of these clone wars and Jedi background for more than 10 years, until it all got shattered.

And of course I thought Obi-Wan met Anakin as an adult freighter or fighter pilot, and not as a child. But that's another topic I guess

SPOILER WARNING: A few details of Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn" Trilogy are revealed below; if you haven't read it and intend to, you should probably skip this post (and if you are a SW fan of any generation and haven't read those books, you are missing out).

 

This was one of my biggest issues with the prequel trilogy - Lucas approved and authorized the EU novels as canon, and then ignored everything he had accepted as part of his universe.

 

Yes, the Thrawn trilogy had a lot of references to the clone wars, as cloning played an important role in the plot. A few key discrepancies that I recall off the top of my head (I haven't read the books in probably 5-6 years) is that 1) both sides in the clone wars were using clone soldiers (I believe in part because combat droids had been outlawed, but I could be mistaken), 2) the clone wars took place at least 40 years or so prior to the events of the original trilogy (as evidenced by the battle over the Noghri homeworld that "contaminated" their planet, and 3)Darth Vader (not Anakin Skywalker) was a participant in the clone wars, indicating that he should have been much older, and that Luke & Leia would have been born well after their father had turned to the dark side (also evidenced by the tale of the battle over the Noghri homeworld, and Darth Vader's appearance and "saving" of the Noghri shortly after that battle).

 

I'm sure there was a bit more that I'm not remembering, as well as details that aren't exactly contradicted by the prequels, but which were more or less ignored (such as the tendency for quickly-grown clones to go insane after a few years). All in all, I think the clone wars as presented in the EU would have been a much more interesting event to see than what we got in the prequels.

Before reading the Thrawn Trilogy I never really gave the Clone Wars much thought. I just viewed them as this legendary thing Obi-Wan had fought in. I purposely tried not to think about them too much because I liked the mystery.

 

I do remember very specifically feeling that the Clone Wars had happened decades before and I got the feeling that the Empire had been around for at least 30 or 40 years. Not the 16 or 18 that was revealed.

 

The Thrawn Trilogy mentions that cloning is outlawed specifically because of the Clone Wars which implied to me that someone was using a constant supply of clones to keep the conflict ongoing.

 

It certainly gave the the idea that the clones were the bad guys and that there was this stigma against cloning in the SW universe.

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I'm also fine with the actual depiction of the Clone Wars. The whole droids vs clones and the was itself being a big con Palpatine was running on the galaxy is pretty neat too.

 

Those were my impressions and I'm old enough to have seen Return of the Jedi in theaters in 1983.

Edited November 5, 2015 by CaulderBenson

The destruction of Honoghr part is explained in Star Wars Republic 68 and during the Siege of Saleucami the CIS infact do create their own Morgukai clones to fight the Republic. So you do have clones fighting on both sides.

That seems more like a retcon than anything else. Just one way the Expanded Universe authors tried to address the continuity errors between pre-prequel and post-prequel stories.