Romantic relationships are forbidden among Jedi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project implies that they may have been permitted at one point in the order’s history. Forbidden love is (in)famously one of the reasons why Anakin Skywalker converted from Jedi to Sith, so the restriction is ultimately one of the many flaws of the old Jedi Order. In the original Star Wars timeline, the Expanded Universe (aka Legends), Luke Skywalker establishes the New Jedi Order, which, among other things, allows Jedi to fall in love. How the Jedi throughout both continuities view romance at various points in their history provides insight into how they relate to the common people of the galaxy.
The prequel-era Jedi Order was rife with emotionally unhealthy practices. Romantic relationships were forbidden, along with owning possessions, expressing one’s individuality, and feeling emotions. For this, the Jedi at that time were the polar opposite of their ancient enemies, the Sith, but neither order was balanced. The most balanced Force-using group was the Legends-era New Jedi Order, whose members lived normal, albeit spiritual lives that being a Jedi was only part of. They weren’t controlled by their emotions, nor did they suppress them, and each Jedi followed their own path. Romantic relationships were not forbidden or even discouraged, with Luke, the Jedi Grandmaster himself, being married to Jedi Master Mara Jade.
The reference to romance among canon Jedi is found in The High Republic: Light of the Jedi, where Merven Getter, a Republic technician aboard a monitoring station, sees his co-worker reading what he assumes is a Jedi romance novel. He thinks:
“Probably one of the Jedi romances she was always obsessed with. Merven didn’t get it. He’d read a few — they were all set at outposts on the far Republic frontiers, full of unrequited love and longing glances . . . the only action was the lightsaber battles that were clearly a substitute for what the characters really wanted to do.”
In addition to possibly being a sarcastic shout-out to the divisive relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren, this indicates that Jedi at this time may not have banned romantic relationships. The High Republic takes place around 200 years before the start of the prequel trilogy and has shown a very different Jedi Order than what’s seen in the films. High Republic Jedi, like the Legends-era New Jedi Order, taught their students to form their own personalized connections to the Force, with many Jedi having completely unique definitions of the Force itself.
Like Luke’s Expanded Universe Jedi, they also remained in touch with the common people of the galaxy, rather than becoming a political tool of the Republic. The High Republic-era Jedi were also far more relaxed when it came to attachments, including, evidently, romance. While Jedi romance novels could still exist if the order forbade relationships, they do indicate that Jedi did fall in love more often here than in the prequel era.
Just as the dark side is unnatural, the Force represents the balance of what is natural. Emotions, individuality, and romance are natural to sentient beings in the Star Wars galaxy, and thus their suppression by the prequel-era Jedi left the order unbalanced. In Legends, the order corrected its mistakes, becoming the ideal iteration of Jedi. In canon, before the Jedi Order became corrupt and vulnerable to the machinations of the Sith, they were far more in-tune with nature and the ordinary beings they protected.
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