Star Wars Updates: The Jedi of the Star Wars prequels banned intimate affairs, but the High Republic reveals that they may have allowed them at one point.
In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Jedi intimate relationships are prohibited, but the interactive project Star Wars: The High Republic suggests that they may have been allowed at some stage in the history of the order.
One of the reasons why Anakin Skywalker turned from Jedi to Sith is (in)famously forbidden love, but the prohibition is ultimately one of the many shortcomings of the old Jedi Order.
Luke Skywalker creates the Current Jedi Order in the original Star Wars timeline, the Expanded Universe (aka Legends), and makes, among other things, Jedi to fall in love.
How the Jedi interpret romance at different points throughout their history in each continuity gives insight into how they relate to the galaxy’s common citizens.
All About the Star Wars Prequel
The Jedi Order of the Prequel era was riddled with morally unhealthy activities. Along with possessing possessions, displaying one’s personality, and experiencing feelings, intimate relationships were banned.
Because of this, the Jedi were the polar opposite of their ancient rivals at the time, the Sith, but neither order was balanced. The Legends-era New Jedi Order, whose members led regular, albeit mystical lives that were just part of becoming a Jedi, was the most balanced Force-using community.
Their feelings did not influence them, nor did they inhibit them, and each Jedi pursued their own course. With Luke, the Jedi Grandmaster himself, being married to Jedi Master Mara Jade, sexual affairs were not forbidden or even discouraged.
In The High Republic, the connection to the romance between canon Jedi is found: Light of the Jedi, where Merven Getter, a Republic technician onboard a testing station, sees his colleague reading what he thinks is a romance novel by Jedi. He believes:
Perhaps one of the Jedi romances for which she has always been obsessed. Merven hasn’t earned it. They were all set at outposts on the distant Republic boundaries, full of unrequited passion and longing looks.
He’d read a handful. Lightsaber fights, which were obviously a substitute for what the characters actually needed to do, were the only action.
This suggests that Jedi may not have forbidden sexual relations at this time, in addition to likely being a satirical shout-out to the divisive friendship between Rey and Kylo Ren.
Around 200 years before the launch of the prequel trilogy, the High Republic took place which revealed a somewhat different Jedi Order than what is seen in the films.
Luke’s Expanded Universe
As the Legends-era New Jedi Order, High Republic Jedi trained their students to shape their own customized ties to the Force, with many Jedi possessing entirely distinctive meanings of the Force itself.
They still kept in contact with the regular people of the galaxy, rather than being a military instrument of the Republic, like Luke’s Expanded Universe Jedi. When it came to attachments, like, clearly, romance, the High Republic-era Jedi was still much more reserved.
Although Jedi romance novels may still survive if relationships were banned by the order, they do suggest that Jedi fell in love here more frequently than in the prequel era.
The Energy reflects the balance between what is normal, just like the dark side is unnatural. The order corrected its errors in Legends, becoming the perfect Jedi iteration.
In the canon, they were much more in tune with nature and the common beings they defended until the Jedi Order became oppressive and susceptible to the machinations of the Sith.
