"Choices of One" Talkback (Spoilers)

[Ahriman238]

Zsinji came across like an idiot, wasting resources as hard as he could. That was his main problem.

He's the only other guy I know who was supposed to be a great military genius and a credible threat to the New Republic.

My point is, if Thrawn were the unbeatable Mary Sue people keep complaining he was, he'd be sipping wine on Coruscant and snidely remarking that it was made by an insectoid species with no sense of taste. Instead, he's worm food, all of the gains he made for the Empire were eventually lost, and his protege was the one to surrender.

[Anguirus]

Zsinj is an interesting case. He was created as a completely two-dimensional villain in order to drive the plot of The Courtship of Princess Leia. His main purpose was to give Han a villain to obsess over and provide a reason for him to be separated from Leia at the very beginning of the book. Notably, most of his forces are defeated before the book even starts, and he only has one line! He also gets to serve several convenient plot functions later because of tech only he has for some reason, and at the big feel-good battle at the end of the book Han slams a missile into his face and his ship gets blown up (for the second time...the book was not well edited).

Then came the X-Wing novels. Due to the chronology and because he's pretty hardcore about continuity, Stackpole dropped several Zsinj references into his own books, but he was clearly just a borrowed bit of setting and didn't get fleshed out anymore.

Aaron Allston came along to salvage the character. He decided that Zsinj would be the main villain of his three X-Wing books, with the final book bringing Solo into the story and dovetailing with the beginning of Courtship. Problem is, Wolverton's Zsinj was a cardboard cutout, with nothing but a weird name and title, a big ship, and a temper problem. Solution? Allston revealed to us a character who was still, ultimately, power-hungry and shallow, but made him a worthy foe by presenting his "angry inept ruler" thing from Courtship as a deliberate facade. Despite the fact that he had incredibly intricate plots and plans (too cute for their own good usually) Solo and the Wraiths would underestimate him because despite a great deal of effort, they never quite figured him out.

However, the plot of the books relied on the Wraiths also fooling Zsinj (or a subordinate) all the time. So neither the good guys or the bad guys seemed too competent or "wanky" IMO.

And for the hat trick, Allston even forged a believable retcon for Zsinj's ship getting blown up twice in Courtship.

Zsinj is no Thrawn...he made only a halfhearted attempt to depose the NR and was on the defensive most of the time, and his rather ignominious death was never retconned away. But, he's even more ruthless (not quite a sadist, but utterly indifferent to "alien rights" and he felt it benefited him to be thought of as a sadist), much of his power is economic (and when the Wraiths figure that out that's when they REALLY beat him), and he gets a lot done by working through pirates and mercenaries, hiding his involvement. Also notable, his men were never portrayed as other than happy, productive, and loyal. It was refreshing that he had no higher motives than "let's all live like kings and rule our little chunk of the galaxy."

[JME2]

Yeah, I always loved what Allston did with Zsinj.

[DrMckay]

Yes, and what he retconned Melvar (Zsinj's 2IC) into; a bland, soft-spoken man who puts on the makeup and metal nails of a dedicated sadist to appear larger than life like his boss. Makes him scarier, and an interesting contrast with Pellaeon. As long as we're on the subject of other competent SW baddies, did anyone else like the portrayal of Tomer Darpen in Starfighters of Adumar? A New Republic intelligence officer using ethically questionable means (Starting a world war of unification and supporting an autocrat) to secure an alliance with an industrially important planet. I honestly wish we'd seen more of the darker side of the Alliance (ostensibly a terrorist group) than just Fel'ya's motivations and actions. I mean we get a bit of that with Red Hand Squadron in the Han Solo books, but that's about it.