John David Wolverton, the creator behind the Runelords fantasy saga, Ravenspell, and extra—in addition to the creator of one of the crucial well-known Star Wars expanded universe tales round—has handed away on the age of 64.

Wolverton’s passing was introduced on social media final Friday by his son. The creator, who stored his identify for his sci-fi work, additionally penned a litany of fantasy novels and sequence underneath the identify David Farland, and wrote a number of time for the Star Wars saga within the wake of his personal sequence just like the aforementioned Runelords, Serpent Catch, and extra. As properly as brief tales included in well-known anthologies resembling Tales From Jabba’s Palace and Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Wolverton wrote entries within the Star Wars Missions and Star Wars Episode 1 Adventures roleplaying sport/novel sequence. But he’ll perpetually be remembered for his sole grownup readers entry into the Expanded Universe novel line: The Courtship of Princess Leia.

First printed in 1994—and really Wolverton’s debut work for the Star Wars saga—Courtship informed what was, on the time, the definitive reply to a query followers had had because the finish of Return of the Jedi: how did Leia Organa and Han Solo turn into husband and spouse, as they have been already depicted within the EU’s imaginative and prescient of Star Wars’ future? The reply… was admittedly very convoluted. Courtship is maybe beloved and reviled in equal measure for its labyrinthine plot to finally get Han and Leia married, involving Han briefly proudly owning a planet, a really foolish prince named Isolder from a very highly effective planet known as Hapes, and C-3PO singing a music about Han’s romantic prowess (“Han Solo, What a man! Solo. He’s every princess’s dream!”). Nostalgically, it’s maybe among the best examples of the Expanded Universe at its highest and lowest, greater than somewhat foolish, greater than somewhat loving, and by some means despite all that, one of the crucial enduringly influential items of Star Wars fiction round.

Courtship did extra than simply present us the wild highway to Organa-Solo matrimonial mayhem, it launched ideas to the EU that turned so deep-rooted that they’ve survived into the present iteration of Star Wars canon immediately. The Hapes cluster turned an necessary star system within the outdated EU as a part of the New Republic’s enlargement within the wake of Return of the Jedi, and launched necessary future characters just like the Imperial Warlord Zsinj and Isolder’s daughter Tenel Ka Djo, who grew as much as turn into a outstanding member of the New Jedi Order. But maybe most enduring of all is that planet that Han occurred to personal: Dathomir. A model of the world—dwelling to, because it was in Courtship, a tribal society of Force-wielding mystics often known as the Nightsisters—was elevated into major Star Wars continuity by means of its introduction to The Clone Wars animated sequence, which in flip remained a part of Star Wars canon upon Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm.

The ideas Wolverton created for the Witches of Dathomir, from their sinister lens onto the powers of the Force and its darkish aspect, to even the idea of them as warriors using into battle atop Rancors, helped form and affect the Dathomir we’d see in Clone Wars and past, because it turned very important to the tales of characters like Asajj Ventress and the returned Darth Maul. It’s a legacy that persists to this present day, with the Witches being namechecked in the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett, which hinted at the opportunity of its titular ex-Bounty Hunter entertaining the concept of studying the way to trip a Rancor himself.

Wolverton’s work might have proved controversial over the long-and-winding historical past of Star Wars tie-in fiction, however its continued and celebrated affect, despite all that, is simple. Our ideas are together with his household on this unlucky time.

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