Awhile back, I wrote a post on EUCantina about the prequelization of the post-Return of the Jedi era of the Expanded Universe. The article’s basic point was that in the early days of the EU, the authors had no official knowledge about the Jedi Order in the Old Republic. None of us did–all we had was our imaginations. We didn’t know that Jedi lived in a Temple on Coruscant, were taken from their families as babies, and trained from the time they were children. As such, Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy was full of adults from many different worlds, of different ages, and varying careers. Some of them even came from families of Jedi. Tionne was a historian, Corran was a pilot and a cop, Mara was a smuggler, Kirana Ti was a warrior, Streen was a hermit, etc. etc. No matter what your opinion of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, I have to give credit to Kevin J. Anderson for creating a diverse group of Jedi, personality and background wise (although in retrospect there could have been more non-humans and people of color). Even in other eras, like the Tales of the Jedi comics, being a Jedi seemed to be more “what you did” and less “who you were.”
Then the prequels came out, and everything changed.