## Chapter 1

1 Each of the three classic Star Wars movies includes a Star Destroyer in its opening scene. All of my Rebellion-era books do the same.

—TIMOTHY ZAHN

2 I wanted to set up the Fleet as having suffered during the chaos and retreat of the years since Endor, slipping back from the generally efficient war machine shown in the movies to something less polished. Lieutenant Tschel was an example of the eager but inexperienced crewers that the Empire now had to whip into fighting shape, contrasting with the old-school competence and tradition of Captain Pellaeon.

—TZ

3 The Grand Admirals were to be part of this same overall plan: an extra layer put in at the top of the military command, its members appointed by and answerable only to the Emperor.

—TZ

4 Later, after the 501st Legion fan group began, it was also established that Vader similarly liked to grab the Empire’s best stormtroopers and add them to his personal legion. I got to play with that idea a bit in later books.

—TZ

5 When Heir first came out, I got a few questions about how this fit with the celebrations we saw at the end of Return of the Jedi. My answer was that those were spontaneous shows of relief and defiance by the galaxy’s ordinary citizens, but that the Empire’s military was far from defeated. In fact, it would be ten more years of Star Wars time until Vision of the Future, when the war with the Empire would finally end.

—TZ

6 I don’t see Thrawn as the type to use unwilling conscripts. Clearly, this was something other Imperial leaders had initiated before his return.

—TZ

7 I wanted Heir’s villain to be a military leader, as opposed to a governor, Moff, or Sith. But a normal admiral seemed too commonplace. Hence, the Grand Admirals.

I first ran across the title, by the way, in connection with the German navy in William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

—TZ

8 With none of Vader’s backstory available at the time, and having just invented the Noghri species for this story, I came up with the idea that Vader might have designed his mask to look like a stylized version of a Noghri face, the better to facilitate his command of the death commando squads. (At the time, of course, I didn’t know that it would be revealed in RotS that Palpatine had provided the mask.) I wasn’t allowed to explicitly make the mask/Noghri connection in Heir, but I thought I might be permitted to do so later in the trilogy, so I went ahead and designed the aliens’ faces with that resemblance in mind.

Of course, we know now that the mask (which had originally been based on Ralph McQuarrie’s preproduction drawings) was provided by Palpatine, based on his own twisted, evil Sith specs, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Noghri.

Just as well that LFL hadn’t let me run with this one. Yet another instance where their caution about letting my imagination stray too far saved me from future embarrassment.

—TZ

9 Originally, I had Rukh and his fellows being Sith, keying off Vader’s title Lord of the Sith. Since at that point the term hadn’t been defined, I figured I was safe. But Lucasfilm was concerned that George would want to use the Sith at some future date (which, as we all know, he did) and told me to pick some other term for them.

I fumed about that for a while, but of course I’m very grateful now that they ordered me to make that change.

—TZ

10 My original idea was that Noghri skin started out a pale gray in childhood and gradually darkened to black as the Noghri grew to adulthood. But there were concerns about possible racial questions (even though the Noghri were eminently honorable and would eventually become New Republic allies), so I changed the skin to gray.

—TZ

11 We never saw a command chair in any of the movies. The Star Destroyer bridge seemed to be modeled on the old sailing ship design, where the officers stood or paced as they observed the deck and rigging and gave orders. But it seemed to me that Thrawn would spend a lot of time up there, and to minimize the distractions of fatigue would arrange to have a chair.

Also, of course, ringing the chair with repeater displays would allow him to keep a closer eye on what was happening aboard his ship.

—TZ

12 Thrawn’s—and Palpatine’s—real agendas for the Unknown Regions campaigns were fairly vague here. The background for all of that would be slowly developed and revealed in future books.

—TZ

13 Heir to the Empire wasn’t my original title for the book, but was suggested by Lou Aronica at Bantam. My choices were Wild Card (which was vetoed because Bantam was also doing the Wild Cards superhero anthology series) and Warlord’s Gambit. Though we ultimately went with Heir, there are still bits of setup—such as here—for that other title.

—TZ

14 Assault Frigates were modified Dreadnoughts, a little more than a third the size of a Star Destroyer. They were older ships—Clone Wars era—but still packed a hefty punch.

Both Assault Frigates and Dreadnoughts came by way of West End Games (WEG) and their Star Wars role-playing games sourcebooks.

More about WEG later.

—TZ

15 One reason we proposed Tim to Lucasfilm as the author of the new Star Wars trilogy was his background in writing military science fiction. His previous novels-including the Cobra series and Blackcollar-were excellent examples of the craft.

–BETSY MITCHELL

16 One of the criticisms often thrown at Star Wars is that X-wings fly like atmosphere fighters, banking and turning when the vacuum of space shouldn’t allow that. However, the movies posited S-Foils (which at the time I interpreted as “spacefoils,” as opposed to airfoils), which I also assumed were “pressing” against the universe’s vacuum energy (sometimes called zero-point energy). In that same vein, I created the etheric rudder, also interacting with the vacuum energy, to give steering capability.

The term never caught on, though, and has since quietly been dropped. But I think the principle still stands.

—TZ

17 One of the coolest parts of writing Star Wars books is when you occasionally see something you’ve done borrowed for use in another part of the vast Lucasfilm universe. In this case, it was the “Storm Over Ryloth” episode of the Clone Wars TV series, where the Marg Sabl maneuver is used against a Trade Federation blockade.

What’s even cooler is that the featurette of that episode on the DVD specifically credits the maneuver to Heir. Thrawn would have been pleased.

—TZ

18 I’m often asked where the whole art-as-tactical-insight idea came from. Sadly, I have no particular epiphany or historical reference I can point to. It’s just something that popped into my mind during the Thrawn development process.

—TZ

19 One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is how I came up with the idea and person of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

The Star Wars movies revolved around villains who led by coercion and fear. That may work for short-range operation (Vader’s crew certainly put their hearts into their work), but it’s not so good long-range or long-term.

So I decided to do something different to try to create a commander who could lead by loyalty.

What qualities does such a commander have to have? The first, obviously, is strategic and tactical skill. His troops must believe that any operation they’re going into has a good chance of success, with as few casualties on their side as possible.

There will be many other examples of Thrawn’s tactical skill throughout the book, but here’s the first: he defeats an entire New Republic task force without, apparently, ever even bothering to leave his meditation room.

There are a few other qualities that I came up with when mulling over Thrawn’s character. I’ll comment more on those as we go along.

—TZ

20 Thrawn never did accept the legitimacy of the New Republic. Later, as I’ve filled in more of his backstory, I’ve tried to give some of the reasons for his stubbornness on this point.

—TZ