Maythe Force Be With You
Stylised original portrait plate for Carnor Jax

DossierHumanThe New Republic

Carnor Jax

A Royal Guardsman with dark side training who murdered the Emperor by letting his clones rot.

Species
Human
Homeworld
Not established
Affiliation
Imperial remnant
Rank
Imperial Sovereign Protector
First appearance
Star Wars: Crimson Empire #1 (Dark Horse Comics, December 1997)
Continuity
Legends

Carnor Jax is a human Imperial Sovereign Protector — a member of the Emperor's Royal Guard given dark side training — and the antagonist of Dark Horse's Star Wars: Crimson Empire, a six-issue series by Mike Richardson and Randy Stradley published from December 1997 to May 1998.

Killing an immortal

The Dark Empire comics had established that Palpatine survived Endor by transferring into clone bodies. Crimson Empire's premise is the obvious next question: what if someone with access sabotaged the clones? Jax supervises the poisoning of the reserve bodies, ensuring that the next death is permanent, and then moves to take the throne himself. It is a coup carried out by maintenance.

The Guard as a subject

The series' real achievement is taking the red-robed background figures from Return of the Jedi and building an institution out of them — a brotherhood with a training world on Yinchorr, a code, and an internal politics. Jax has the massacre of his own order carried out to cover the coup, and the survivor Kir Kanos spends the rest of the series hunting him.

Continuity note

Jax is trained in the dark side and declares himself a Dark Lord of the Sith, but he is not part of any Rule of Two lineage and no Legends source treats him as one. He is a soldier with dark side instruction and an enormous opinion of himself, which is a distinct and rather more interesting thing.

Canon status

Star Wars Legends. Crimson Empire, Dark Empire and the cloned Emperor were moved to the Legends shelf in 2014, although the resurrected Palpatine returned to canon by a different route in The Rise of Skywalker.

On the record

Appearances

Where this figure actually appears, with the medium and the year. Nothing inferred.

Appearances of Carnor Jax
WorkYearMediumNote
Star Wars: Crimson Empire #11997ComicDark Horse Comics. First appearance.
Star Wars: Crimson Empire 01997ComicDark Horse Comics. First appearance. Legends.
Star Wars: Crimson Empire1997ComicSix-issue limited series. Legends.