{"id":382933,"date":"2026-04-05T09:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T09:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382933\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T09:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T09:15:11","slug":"the-worst-sith-lord-in-star-wars-history-was-named-in-a-fan-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/382933\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Sith Lord in Star Wars History Was Named in a Fan Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you thought the modern Star Wars<\/a> franchise had been hard on Leia and Han, the sad truth is that the old Expanded Universe was just as bad \u2013 if not worse. In the EU (now branded non-canon, or \u201cLegends\u201d), the couple had three children. One, Anakin Solo, died during the Yuuzhan Vong<\/a> war, while his older brother Jacen was subjected to horrific torture at their hands. But Jacen\u2019s darkest story was years later, when Lucasfilm took him down a shocking road that was arguably adapted by canon into Kylo Ren\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

In the \u201cLegacy of the Force\u201d series, Jacen Solo became an actual Sith Lord. Lucasfilm retconned the last few years\u2019 worth of stories, revealing he had been twisted and manipulated by a secret Sith Lord named Vergere, who had been seducing him towards the dark side. Jacen embraced them, taking his dead brother\u2019s greatest love Tahiri Veila on as an apprentice, and eventually died at the hands of his own sister. It was a horrific twist, and weirdly\u2026 it even involved a fan competition.<\/p>\n

Jacen Solo\u2019s Sith Name Was Decided by the Fans<\/p>\n

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In 2006, Lucasfilm officially announced a \u201cDarth Who\u201d competition to name a new Sith Lord. American subscribers to the Star Wars official site were able to submit one name, and authors Troy Denning, Aaron Allston, and Karen Traviss chose the top five entries. These were posted on January 23, 2007, and fans could vote for the next month. The top five options were:<\/p>\n

Darth Archeron \u2013 named after the river over which Charon ferries the dead to Hades<\/p>\n

Darth Caedus \u2013 from a Latin word meaning cutting down, killing, or slaughter<\/p>\n

Darth Judicar \u2013 derived from the word Adjudicator<\/p>\n

Darth Paxis \u2013 a variant of pax, referencing a Sith Lord who believes he is bringing an imperial peace<\/p>\n

Darth Taral \u2013 a variant of tare, \u201cin chemistry, an empty vessel similar to one being used in an experiment and placed beside it to show or counter balance any change in its weight\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting the fans did not actually know whose Sith name they were choosing. At the time, the Star Wars: Legacy comics had introduced a distant future timeline, and many believed Jacen\u2019s sister Jaina was destined to become the Sith Lord<\/a> Darth Krayt. That theory was debunked as soon as the competition was announced; it turned out the fans had been focused on the wrong Solo sibling.<\/p>\n

The winner was Darth Caedus, a name now woven into Star Wars history. \u201cLegacy of the Force\u201d may be considered non-canon, but this story came to dominate the publishing line for years, and it set up lasting consequences for that timeline. It was also, sadly, one of the grimmest stories in the franchise\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Jacen\u2019s Fall to the Dark Side Was a Sad End for a Solo<\/p>\n

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You\u2019ll sometimes see old-school Star Wars fans who loved the old Expanded Universe praise Legends for its consistent narrative throughlines. The truth is, that\u2019s something of an exaggeration; like any franchise, there were countless course-corrections over the course of the EU. Jacen had been at the heart of a major shift in the Jedi philosophy, with the Jedi moving away from the traditional light-dark philosophy. Troy Denning\u2019s Dark Nest trilogy saw this as the Jedi believing the dark side could be used as well as the light, which is something of a misreading of those earlier stories, and \u201cLegacy of the Force\u201d doubled down on this.<\/p>\n

According to the \u201cLegacy of the Force\u201d story, the Jedi had abandoned this and returned to a more traditional approach \u2013 with the exception of Jacen, who still believed the dark side could be used. This was because he had been secretly manipulated by a Sith Lord named Vergere, prepared for the day he too would become a Sith. It was probably one of the biggest retcons in the EU, frustrating because it rewrites Matt Stover\u2019s Traitor on a fundamental level, and that\u2019s one of the best Star Wars books of all time. It also led to the heartbreaking ending, in which Jaina Solo killed her own twin. If you thought the end of The Rise of Skywalker<\/a> felt a little bleak after Ben Solo\u2019s death, this was so much worse.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below\u00a0and join the conversation now in the\u00a0ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you thought the modern Star Wars franchise had been hard on Leia and Han, the sad truth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270,64333,118118],"class_list":{"0":"post-382933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-regular-feature","13":"tag-star-wars-generic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}