Do we accept novel blurbs and publisher summaries?

They're not always too unreasonable, but are they canon?

I'm thinking of a few in particular:

- Marka Ragnos being dubbed "the most powerful of the most powerful" in Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith's publisher summary

- Darth Bane being "the dark side's most powerful master" as of his time according to the back cover of Dynasty of Evil

- Darth Plagueis being stated to be the most powerful Sith Lord who ever lived up to and of his time in the back cover of Darth Plagueis

- The internal flap of Legacy of the Force: Invicible describing Caedus' aptitude of the Force as having surpassed even Darth Vader's

So, do we accept these?

No.

Oh, and remember to vote. I'll be counting KMC's votes to declare an official consensus.

I say we take them as evidence, but not infallible decrees. The last two make statements that are reasonable enough to shift the burden to the other side to counter it.

The first two hardly state that said characters are the strongest of all time, it could just mean "currently alive".

I know. I mentioned that it only refers to their time.

Right, so it doesn't even mean "up until their time", so those specific quotes are kind of useless - nobody disputes that Bane is the strongest sith that was alive at some point in his life.

I mentioned "up until their time" for Plagueis' quote, not Bane's. Plagueis' quote specifically makes use of the words "who ever lived", which refers to all of history until that in-universe moment.

Originally posted by SunRazer
Oh, and remember to vote. I'll be counting KMC's votes to declare an official consensus.

Get out.

There is nothing outside the text 🙄

So no. And I doubt it's a case of votes either. They're not part of the canon as it's defined. So if you're thinking of using appeals to popular belief, then let me remind you the same philosophy is commonly used to rationalize bribery. And in the past, slavery. 👆

I've debated against ad populum arguments for ages now, and I'm aware that a majority does not make something canon. However, I doubt they'll be a verdict on this from the SW publishers, so we might as well establish an agreed norm on this board.

It doesn't have to be either/or. To dismiss publisher summaries on face would be to argue that publishers possess no creative license over the continuity, and that's both empirically and legally false - they hold some sort of contractual license from Lucasfilms, and obviously influence the writers' storytelling decisions. There's no basis to dismiss their statements. That's not the same as using these blurbs as infallible statements, but they're still pieces of evidence.

Well, a number of people's support for/against this is hinged on the Plagueis quote, because if that turns out to be "accepted", then Plagueis > Vitate and thus TPM Sidious > Vitiate becomes the accepted norm.

And for our friends like Ziggy, no, that doesn't mean it becomes canon.

Unless it's supported by evidence ( I.E. feats ) then no.

So Yoda isn't more powerful than Rivi-Anu because he doesn't have better TK feats than supporting a falling capital ship, despite numerous quotes and all logical sense putting him above her?

The vote against is currently winning.

The people against it have no actual basis in LFL policy beyond their personal opinion that the publishers care too much about money (???) or something.

Yes, from aa certain point of view

Somewhat, but not infallible.

Originally posted by SunRazer
So Yoda isn't more powerful than Rivi-Anu because he doesn't have better TK feats than supporting a falling capital ship, despite numerous quotes and all logical sense putting him above her?

Yoda manipulated two CIS transports. Rivu Ani only managed to hold up a Venerator class SD for a brief time. Yoda is thus superior.