Star Wars Canon - The Holocron

The Holocron

By 1996, Licensing was keeping an in-house bible of reference materials as the volume of publications, facts, and figures grew to such unwieldy proportions that it became difficult to know everything relevant to a particular project. They finally decided something had to be done to organize the increasingly large collection of media which chronicled the Star Wars universe. A system of canon was developed that organized the materials into what was and wasn't fit for the Star Wars story.

In 2000, Lucas Licensing appointed Leland Chee to create a continuity tracking database referred to as the "Holocron". As with every other aspect having to do with the overall story of Star Wars, the Holocron follows the canon policy that has been in effect for years.

The Holocron is divided into five levels (in order of precedence): G-canon, T-canon, C-canon, S-canon, and N-canon.

G-canon is absolute canon; the movies (their most recent release), the scripts, the novelizations of the movies, the radio plays, and any statements by George Lucas himself. G-canon overrides the lower levels of canon when there is a contradiction. Within G-canon, many fans follow an unofficial progression of canonicity where the movies are the highest canon, followed by the scripts, the novelizations, and then the radio plays.

T-canon refers to the canon level comprising only the two television shows: Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the upcoming Star Wars live-action TV series. Its precedence over C-Level canon was confirmed by Chee.

C-canon is primarily composed of elements from the Expanded Universe including books, comics, and games bearing the label of Star Wars. Games and RPG sourcebooks are a special case; the stories and general background information are themselves fully C-canon, but the other elements such as character/item statistics and gameplay are, with few exceptions, N-canon.

S-canon is secondary canon; the story itself is considered non-continuity, but the non-contradicting elements are still a canon part of the Star Wars universe. This includes things like the online roleplaying game Star Wars: Galaxies and certain elements of a few N-canon stories.

N-canon is non-canon. "What-if" stories (such as stories published under the Star Wars: Infinities label), crossover appearances (such as the Star Wars character appearances in Soulcalibur IV), game statistics, and anything else directly contradicted by higher canon ends up here. N-canon is the only level that is not considered official canon by Lucasfilm. A significant amount of material that was previously C-canon was rendered N-canon by the release of Episodes I–III.

Leland Chee continues to answer questions about the Holocron in the Holocron continuity database questions thread at the starwars.com forums.

On August 4, 2004, when asked if the G and C-levels formed separate and independent canon, Chee responded by stating that both were part of a single canon: "There is one overall continuity."

In a December 7, 2005 post, Chee commented on how the Holocron is applied to licensees:

The Holocron comes into play for anything official being developed for books, games, websites, and merchandise. For anything beyond that, it is simply a reference tool.

In a December 6, 2006 post, Chee suggests the existence of a second continuity composed only of the films:

The only relevant official continuities are the current versions of the films alone, and the combined current version of the films along with whatever else we've got in the Holocron. You're never going to know what George's view of the universe beyond the films at any given time because it is constantly evolving.

On a post made on the same day, Chee stated that:

Anything not in the current version of the films is irrelevant to Film only continuity.

This statement confirms the existence of two separate continuities, the "film only" continuity maintained and followed by George Lucas himself, and the "films + EU" continuity that is used for licensed products; G-Canon, and Star Wars Canon.