Mara Jade
fictional character from the Star Wars universe
Mara Jade Skywalker is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. She appears in the Legends continuity as the wife of Luke Skywalker and mother of Ben Skywalker. She has been voiced by Heidi Shannon, Edie Mirman and Kath Soucie in various Star Wars video games.
Concept and development
Her first appearance was in Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire (1991). Zahn imagined Mara Jade as a strong, complex female character, somebody he thought lacking in the Star Wars universe. While competent, she is flawed. When the Thrawn trilogy ended in 1993 with The Last Command, Zahn thought it was the last book for which he would develop the character. Asked to write another novel, he established two goals: "to end the war between the New Republic and the Empire, and to get Luke Skywalker and Mara together." Although Lucasfilm resisted the idea of Luke marrying Mara, they eventually acquiesced.
In 2018, Zahn said Lucasfilm gave him some creative control over the character of Mara Jade: any appearance of Mara in new works requires Zahn's approval. Zahn also explained that Lucasfilm Story Group held the authority to prevent him from incorporating Mara back into the canon, so any appearance of the character must be approved by both parties.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mara Jade” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.