VITAL STATS

Name:  Anakin Solo Aliases: Bail Lars, "Jimmy" Callsign: Little Brother Homeworlds: Coruscant, Yavin IV, born on Nespis VIII Gender: Male Height: 1.73 meters (approximately 5'8") Hair: Dark Brown Eyes: Ice Blue Affiliation: Jedi Order; New Republic Weapons of Choice: Lightsaber (purple blade, modded with lambent) Vehicle of Choice: XJ X-Wing Astromech: Fiver (modded R7)

LIFE SCIENCE

Anakin Solo was born during the reign of the cloned Emperor.  Chronologically, he is a year and a half younger than his brother and sister, the twins Jacen and Jaina.  His parents, of course, are Han Solo and Princess Leia.

The resurrected Emperor Palpatine tried to take over Anakin's body when Kin-Kin was still in Leia's womb.  He failed.  (At least, we think he did--wouldn't that be an ironic treat?)

At first, Han wanted to name his youngest son Han Solo Jr.  Leia, however, opted to name the poor baby with a more psychologically damaging name:  Anakin.  She claimed in a later book that she wanted to redeem the name 'Anakin', not subject her poor child to traumatizing nightmares and awful namesake comparisons.  Whatever helps you sleep at night, Leia.

When Anakin was a baby, Luke Skywalker and Admiral Ackbar arranged for him to be kept in an armored fortress on Anoth, where he was looked after by Winter, his mother's best friend.  After a nanny droid saved Anakin from being kidnapped by EVIL IMPERIAL DUDES, Han and Leia decided to reunite infant Anakin with the rest of the family on Coruscant.

Anakin was a curious toddler.  When he was five, he and his brother and sister were kidnapped by Hethrir, another EVIL IMPERIAL DUDE who wanted to sacrifice Anakin to this Star Trekkish blob named Waru.  Obviously this did not happen, although Mr. Waru did get to go home.  Young Anakin enjoyed playing with puzzles and machinery--he disassembled and modified his nanny droids and ordered stuff off the holonet.  E-bay!

When Anakin was seven years old, he was swept into the events of the Corellian crisis, an ultimately defeated insurrection attempt led by Han Solo's cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo. Conspirators attempted to take over immense planetary repulsors scattered throughout the system and harness their superweapon powers. (Plans like these always sound magnificantly devious in theory but tend to fail in practice.)  Through the Force, Anakin was not only able to discover the repulsor hidden on Drall, but was able to instinctively activate it just by touching it.  (Simple enough.)  He saved the galaxy from destruction without quite knowing what he was doing.

When Anakin began training in an accelerated kids class at his Uncle's Jedi Academy at the age of 11, it was obvious that besides inheriting the name and a major guilt trip, Anakin Solo had also inherited crazy Force talent, piloting prowess, and mechanical affinity from his grandpie, Darth Vader.

At the academy, Anakin befriended the loveable, talkative Tahiri Veila. The two clicked right from the beginning and shared dreams and nightmares (no, perverto, not those kinds of dreams!)  Together, they were able to free the spirits of trapped Massassi children from an ancient Sith temple, hang out with mermaids, trek across the desert, awaken the ancient Jedi Master Ikrit, and recover the long lost lightsaber of Obi-Wan Kenobi (but not all at once.)

When Anakin graduated from the Jedi Academy's kid genius class thing, he spent a few years on Coruscant attending school while Jacen and Jaina trained on Yavin Four.  There he developed his piloting skills and studied under the careful tutelage of C-3PO.  Anakin would return to the academy to help out with the reconstruction of large exploded temples and the like.  He was instrumental in taking down the Black Sun organization.  In addition, Anakin became an extremely capable pilot, although not quite as talented as his sister Jaina.

After the twins graduated from the Academy, Anakin and Jacen studied as apprentices under Master Luke Skywalker while Jaina studied under their aunt, Mara Jade.

Twenty five years after Return of the Jedi, Anakin, Han Solo, and Chewbacca were all hanging around this planet, Sernpidal, when EVIL INVADING YUUZHAN VONG DUDES pulled a moon down on it ala Deep Impact.  Fifteen-year old Anakin was forced to fly the Millennium Falcon and flee. The freighter was taking on as many refugees as possible before Sernpidal's moon could crash into its surface. Anakin kept the Falcon grounded as long as he could, soaring away from the cataclysm at the last possible instant. This decision resulted in the death of Chewbacca, who was unable to board the Falcon in time.  Dangit.

The death of the beloved Wookiee forever changed the dynamics of the Solo family. Han blamed Anakin.  Anakin blamed Anakin.  Rabid Chewbacca fans blamed Anakin.  Then they decided to blame R.A. Salvatore.  Anyhow, basically, Han was so consumed by grief and anger, he wasn't worried about hurting his son. It was many dark months before the two reconciled.  The Solo family also had to deal with the invaders, who possessed foreign technology and were a blindspot in the Force.

A month later, Anakin accompanied his ill aunt Mara to Dantooine.  The trip was supposed to be one of meditation and healing (and, according to some fans, sex) but it was interrupted by the Yuuzhan Vong.  Anakin valiantly defended his aunt from the evil baddies.  News of his defense spread across the galaxy and soon Anakin was the everyman hero who made lithe twi'lek women twitchy.

When Octa Ramis and Daeshar'acor tried to hunt down a superweapon, Anakin helped Luke stop them and in the process earned a new friend in Daeshar'acor.  They fought together on Ithor but Daeshar'acor succumbed to her injuries and guilt-ridden Anakin lost yet another friend.  Dangit.

Because of his losses, Anakin pushed himself harder and harder against the invading enemy forces, trying to live up to Chewbacca's sacrifice while keeping other loved ones from slipping away.

Further straining familial relations were the fundamentally opposed Force philosophies adopted by Anakin and Jacen. Anakin believed the Force was a tool, while Jacen wanted to be the Force's tool debated that it was something much more.

When the Corellians wanted Anakin Solo to again activate and use Centerpoint Station, this time as a weapon to destroy the Yuuzhan Vong fleet at Fondor, Jacen felt that using the Force to wield a weapon so huge was tantamount to mass murder. Anakin gave in to his brother's arguments, but Thrackan pushed Anakin from the controls and fired anyway.  Although the blast took out much of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, friendly fire tore through the New Republic's Hapan helpers.  Dangit.  Knowing that, had he been at the controls, he would have aimed better, Anakin blamed both Jacen and himself for the friendly casualties.

When the Yuuzhan Vong bore down on Yavin IV and the New Republic refused to send aid, Anakin impetuously ran off to the system in an attempt to save the students studying there.  In the ensuing battle, Anakin's childhood mentor Master Ikrit was killed (dangit) and his friend Tahiri captured.  Anakin found unlikely ally in Vua Rapuung, a Yuuzhan Vong outcast, who helped him infiltrate the enemy encampment and rescue Tahiri.  Anakin's lightsaber was damaged in the rescue attempt and he had to rebuild it using a Yuuzhan Vong lambent as a focus crystal.  He attuned his lightsaber to himself and discovered a way to sense the Vong through the Force.

The Yuuzhan Vong had performed numerous experiments on Tahiri during her captivity.  Anakin helped her recover from the ordeal and the two of them fell in love.  Meanwhile, rumors of their exploits on Yavin IV ran rampant through the working class "shamed ones" of the Yuuzhan Vong, who soon began to see Jedi as their salvation.

When the Yuuzhies bioengineered Jedi hunting creatures, voxyn, Anakin's mermaid friend (all the cool Jedi have mermaid friends, shut up) Lyric was among the first to fall.  Anakin led a strike time into the Myrkr system; its mission was to destroy the cloning facility where the creatures were being bred.  But things went wrong from the beginning when Ulaha Kore, one of the strike team tacticians, was gravely injured.  Jaina cracked when Ulaha was further subjected to torture.  The Yuuzhan Vong torturer decided to pick on Jaina and force her to choose between her brother or her twin.

"They're both my brothers," Jaina protested, but Anakin told her to to select him as the next victim.  The Yuuzhan Vong tortured him (those meanies!) but he didn't react.  He bought the strike team enough time to take over the ship they were on, but his decisions only served to widen the rift between him and his brother.

During another skirmish, Anakin impulsively ran to his sister's rescue and was stabbed in the gut.  The wound ruptured his spleen.  Even as his spleen was leaking away, Anakin refused to drop into a Force trance--his mission objective was more important to him that his own well being.  Even his spleen.  Anakin gave his life destroying the voxyn cloning samples.  Dangit.

His death forced Jacen into a leadership position, pushed Jaina to the squishy arms of the dark side (and later, Captain Cardboard), and launched Tahiri into the throes of despair.  His sister rashly attacked a Yuuzhan Vong mortuary and recovered his body.  She flew his body to Hapes, where the entire family gathered for a funeral.  At the funeral, people said nice things about him, Uncle Luke Skywalker lit Anakin's body on fire, and that was that.  Everyone mourned and roasted marshmallows.

Except for Jacen, who was not at the funeral.  Instead, he was in a torture chamber, and later Yuzzhan'tar (the planet formerly known as Coruscant).  There, he caught three glimpses of Anakin's "ghost."  (Whether it was actually his ghost and not silly drug or Vergere-induced hallucinations remains to be seen)

Then there's this kid, Tarc, whose face was modified to look like young Anakin.  He will presumably grow out of the plastic surgery, but talk about a weird plot device.  Tarc is currently travelling the galaxy with reporter Wolam Tser.

After Anakin's death Tahiri had nightmares about a lizard Anakin (hey, whatever floats your boat) planning to kill her.  These nightmares stopped after Tahiri was able to reconcile her Yuuzhan Vong personality, Riina Kwaad, with her Jedi personality.

Anakin's lightsaber also played a significant part in the outcome of the war--Ganner Rhysode used it to help Jacen Solo escape from Coruscant and later on both Luke Skywalker and Jacen Solo would use it in the final battle to end the Yuuzhan Vong war--Anakin's lightsaber turns out to be the lightsaber in the prophecy Jacen made in the second year of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.  After the war ends, the Solos and Skywalkers embed the lightsaber into a tree on Kashyyyk ala the Sword in the Stone.

Years later, Anakin's death is still fresh on the mind of his family and friends.  As a new threat looms on the edge of the galaxy and assorted Myrkyr mission survivors imitate bugs, who knows what will happen next?  No Krakana!

RECORDED HISTORY

Anakin first appeared in Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy's Dark Empire comic book series.  He again appeared in Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy as a bouncing babe.  In Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star, he's an adorable little kid who had no idea what the hell was going on, just like the reader!  McIntyre tried to sacrifice him to some Star Trekkish blob.

Anyhow, Anakin's character was defined in the Roger McBride Allen's Corellian Trilogy, where Anakin was a main character sketched entirely different from his brother and sister: as this dreamy kid who was off in another world and liked puzzles and staying quiet.

Anakin had his own series of kiddie books, the Junior Jedi Knight series, with books by Nancy Richardson and Rebecca Moesta.

He would later appear as a teenager in the first New Jedi Order novel, Vector Prime, by R. A. Salvatore.  This novel would introduce a new personality from previous versions.  The fifteen-year-old Anakin Solo was an assertive, confident young man whose perceptions of family, death, and the Force were shattered by an extragalactic invasion.

Novels with a decent amount of Anakin:

Champions of the Force
The Crystal Star
Ambush at Corellia
Assault at Selonia
Showdown At Centerpoint
The Golden Globe
Lyric's World
Promises
Anakin's Quest
Vader's Fortress
Kenobi's Blade
The Lost One's
Vector Prime
Onslaught
Ruin
Jedi Eclipse
Balance Point
Conquest
Rebirth
Star By Star
Traitor*

*whether or not anakin is really in this book is disputed, because he appears during hallucinations.