TOPIC: How did Yoda know about the "Rule of Two"?

h2soy wrote:
How do you deduce from Yoda entering Banes tomb during the clone wars evidence that he possessed knowledge of Bane pre TPM? That's an assumption. All we can safely say is he knew of Bane before entering his tomb(since he had answers for all of Banes questions) But by no means does that say he knew this 10 years ago before the TPM. He could have learned everything after TPM. He could have learned it the week before he went to Korriban for all we know lol. Nothing that happens during the clone wars is evidence of what Yoda or the Jedi knew about the sith prior to the phantom menace. And if it is then it creates the problem of why the councils position in TPM was that the "Sith had been extinct for a millennia."

As for the pre TPM EU. Until something replaces it, in my view, that's the story.

It's a logical conclusion. In TPM Yoda and Windu reference the Rule of Two. Bane was the founder and Yoda clearly knows about him in CW.

You're assuming that what Ki-Adi is referencing is the Sith genocide at Ruusan: Nothing indicates that this is what Ki-Adi is talking about. He makes no explicit reference to Ruusan or a large scale battle. The explicit information we have from TPM and the CW indicate at some point in the past the Jedi Order became aware of the survival of the Sith via Bane and the Rule of Two and after that interaction, it can be assumed, that the Sith who disclosed the information was killed/captured causing the Jedi to think they were all dead.

I suppose the larger bone of contention remains valid here: that there are holes in the canon and both of our stances contain arguments from silence.

h2soy wrote:
But its not really a logical conclusion. While Yoda and Windu do reference the rule of two in the phantom menace, THAT was exactly my issue. There was no known mechanism for them to have known about it. You have to remember that at the time TPM was written the EU was still cannon. The EU makes it pretty clear that during the era of the rule of two the chain of sith was unbroken. From Bane and Zannah in the beginning to Maul and Sidious when they finally revealed themselves, they lived in secret and no one, including the jedi knew of their existence. I maintain that whether or not Yoda had learned about this by the time of the clone wars is irrelevant because it doesn't explain how he knew about it during the phantom menace, when according to canon he couldn't have know about it.
Which is exactly why the Kibh jeen story was probably written. To explain this apparent non sequitor.

Honestly this is why making the pre TPM EU non canon while leaving the clone wars canon makes no sense. If the clone wars is cannon, then Bane is canon. If Bane is cannon, then his story must be canon. I could go further and say if Banes story is canon then all the sith mentioned in his story(Revan, Andeddu, Freedon Nadd) must also be canon, which would then make their stories canon and at that point you might as well just make the whole EU canon again. This is why the whole canon-noncanon thing is dumb. Its like pulling out a thread in a sweater, everytime you do you end up pulling out another and another until the whole sweater comes apart.

And yes I am technically assuming that Ki Adi mundi is talking about the Battle of Ruusan when he speaks of the extinction of the sith. As I said, at the time TPM came out, the EU was still canon, and since that was how the sith met their end, theres no reason for me to assume he was talking about some other time a thousand years ago when the sith met their end. That is a logical assumption.

Yikes, you feel strongly about this, I appreciate that.

My POV about the EU us very different than yours. While I appreciated The EU I am also very aware of all the problems it caused for the actual canon. Canon was defined by The Luca Licensing editor as this: TPM and CW were written or produced by Lucas, therefore they take precedence over an material written for the EU such as the Bane novels. Functionally the EU is more like fan fiction written by professional writers and licensed by Lucasfilm. Lucas himself had an uncompromising stance on the EU: Lucas and Lucasfilm never considered the EU to be canon. It was a licensed product. This is the POV I've adopted and which informs my conclusions about how to address apparent conflicts between EU sources and the actual canon material. While they may be an interesting stories the Bane saga, much of the EU Clone Wars material, and sundry other stories directly contradict what is indicated in the canon. I for one was glad when the new regime relegated everything in the EU to Legend status because, frankly, it was getting bloated.

If you want to get caught up in the minutia of the EU/canon discrepancies that cool, there's a place for that in the fandom and I appreciate that you enjoy parsing it apart. However I think it's unreasonable to hold the canon hostage by material that the canon writers/creators didn't consider as part of their Star Wars universe since the EU ran parallel to (sometimes influencing but never determining) the canon.

Im not the one holding the canon hostage though, Disney is. Take Disney out of the equation and all of a sudden we would have no conflict. The Kibh Jeen explanation would serve just fine. The only reason you're trying to find a different explanation for something that clearly was just bad script writing is because Disney has decided to just mass erase entire parts of the backstory and now you are looking for some official way to explain this bad script writing.

The problem is your answer doesn't tell us anything. What your saying is, well Yoda and Mace knew about the rule of two in TPM so they must have known. And then pointing to an example of Yoda's knowledge from 10 years later and saying see, he knows. Yoda and Mace knowing about the rule of two in TPM was never in dispute, I wanted to know how they knew.

And yoda having such knowledge 10 years later entering Banes tomb is also not in dispute, but again, it doesn't tell me anything about how he knew this before the TPM. See what Im saying?

The Kibh Jeen story does tell us these things just by virtue of it having taken place before TPM.

I really don't feel that strongly about the EU to be honest, Bane trilogy aside because those were really good. And I maintain that if clone wars is canon, then Bane and his story are canon. In 2014, two years after they were acquired by Disney, Lucasfilm agreed with me and ruled Bane canon.

EDIT: Also I just love debating. Its like mental warfare to me. Il never be mean or insulting about it or anything like that because when someone resorts to name calling in a debate its the same as throwing in the towel and giving up to me. But Il never stop so long as you keep replying and giving me reason to keep going. So if you want to end this debate you're going to have to be the one to end it, because Im a hopeless debating junkie lol.
I enjoy it and I hope you don't take any of it personally.

The character of Bane is canon, the EU novels are not. All that is canon comes from the movies/SW, and publications post the Disney acquisition. Read up via this: Darth Bane . It delineates what is and what is not canon from canon material about Bane. Choice passage:
I'm not taking any of this personally, it's enjoyable. I'm a teacher so I'm used to engaging in long discourse. That said I think we're at an impasse; I think we should just agree to disagree. We have very different views on what constitutes the official canon material.

h2soy wrote:
I have read that wookipedia page before. Obviously I don't agree with it. Its story is basically the same as that told in the novels, albeit much simpler and a lot less specific However making Bane canon while making his story non canon isn't reasonable. Its just a matter of Del Rey books having the publishing rights and not Disney. If Disney owned them, Im sure they would be canon. And that's just silly to me.

That being said, I agree weve reached an impasse. There are certain constants that have to be agreed upon(in this case what is, and isn't canon) and we cant do that here. I will concede you have official Disney position on your side. But Disney's position means very little to me because what they've done is create huge gaps and created a lot of confusion by simply erasing things that were previously considered canon.

At any rate, all I wanted to know was how Yoda and Mace could have known about the rule of two during the events of the phantom menace when the sith were secret and they shouldn't have known. The Kibh Jeen story explains that nicely(it was probably written for that purpose) And I don't give a hill of beans whether Disney considers that canon or not.

One does not have to acknowledge the effects of gravity for them to be real.

I do understand your position on LucasFilm's move to relegate the EU to Legend status. However, as this is their world, it does not matter much how we feel about it. I imagine if there had been someone actively overseeing the EU content for consistency, it would have been easier to incorporate it into canon, rather than disregard it. But, since the authors were free to go pretty much any direction they chose to tell a story, it resulted in some inconsistencies that would have been hard to reconcile. I believe it to be a case of a few errant story lines (like the one that had Chewbacca dead), spoiling it for all of the great ones that could have served to enhance the saga. So, it was just easier for them to invalidate it as a whole, rather than pick and choose. I am sure there were legalities that would have made it difficult to do anything but go completely in one direction, or the other.

In the end, they cleared the decks of things that would have been much more difficult to write the post-ROTJ movies around, and they gave themselves the option to cherry-pick elements of the EU that do work, and incorporate them when possible. Perhaps not the best solution for all fans, but understandable from a business perspective. I don't really blame Disney for this, as LucasFilm has continued to operate as they did before the acquisition, just as Marvel Studios has. I think Disney gets the blame for a lot of things that were not directly their fault, but that is the way it goes when you are one of the big boys in the film game, or any other game for that matter.

Brax wrote:
There actually was a whole team at Lucasfilm that did exactly that, oversaw the continuity of the EU. That doesn't mean there weren't mistakes made and there were never any contradictions. Of course there were.
I freely admit that all EU post ROTJ had to go. You cant write an entirely new movie trilogy that completely contradicts post ROTJ stories and expect fans to swallow it along with the EU. In Star Wars movies always win so the post ROTJ EU had to go. No debate there. Im in full agreement.

Pre-TPM EU is a different matter I believe. To use your gravity analogy, lets assume the theory of gravity represents the preTPM EU. The phantom menace was written and released during a time when many of those EU stories were considered canon and to some degree some things established in that canon were used in TPM or influenced it.
So Disney may not acknowledge the EU as canon, nevertheless its effects are still felt since there are many things taken from the EU that made their way into, or influenced the prequel trilogy. So in your analogy, it would be Disney who is denying the effects of gravity, not me.

When it comes to explaining how Yoda and Mace Windu knew about the rule of two during the phantom menace when by both the Disney and EU accounts the sith lived in secret, the EU gives us a story that directly accounts for this, even if its a retcon, or something written later to account for this apparent bad script writing on Lucas's part(Something the EU often had to clean up btw) it still takes the time to clear up this non sequitor.

The official Disney canon doesnt really acknowledge this contradiction at all, except to say well they must have found out about it sometime before hand. In other words, they know because they know. That doesn't answer anything for me. The only thing Disneys ever said is the jedi learned of the rule of two sometime after Bane died. It doesn't say how or when. So where do I turn to explain this apparent discrepancy? The EU which has a story that directly accounts for it? Or Disneys position which tells me nothing and leaves me with the same question I had when I started the thread?

The truth is its just a result of bad writing on Lucas's part during the phantom menace. He attributed to the jedi knowledge about the sith that they should never have been in possession of. Even without any of the EU we can establish that the sith lived in secret, by Darth Mauls remark that "At last we shall reveal ourselves to the jedi, at last we shall have our revenge" It goes without saying that they wouldn't be revealing themselves if the jedi already knew of their existence.

But at least the EU took the time to explain this contradiction, while the official canon today says, well they knew because they knew.