How to Create the Definitive Star Wars Canon Timeline
Trevor, the keeper of the Youtini timeline, walks through the process of breaking down a Star Wars book in order to find its accurate placement in Star Wars history.
Apr 25, 2025
Lucasfilm/Youtini Illustration
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Today, I invite you to join me inside my head as I share some of the timelining process I use both with my work on our Youtini timeline pages, and when adding a new book to my own super detailed Canon timeline project.
Some books are easy - a quick adventure taking place in a short space of time will unlikely require breaking up and therefore will just have one singular entry on the timeline. Other books, such as the recent Reign Of The Empire: The Mask Of Fear by Alexander Freed, are the complete opposite.
Random House Worlds
The Mask Of Fear is a dense book, spanning months, with several character POV’s each taking place over a slightly different time-frame, lending a non-linear angle to a large chunk of the book.
Exactly the sort of timeline challenge I love and it’s this book we’re going to dissect here.
Step 1 - Read The Book!
Seems obvious, right? Not always.
As a hardcore timeline nerd I am burdened with the need to read everything, every piece of Star Wars content that comes out. Sometimes a book just doesn’t land with me and the act of reading it becomes for timeline purposes rather than enjoyment.
For a book like The Mask Of Fear, which is right up my alley (and I think the book is a masterpiece by the way) I try my best to quiet the timeline-obsessed part of my brain and simply read and enjoy the book like a normal person
Step 2 - Into The Detail
Lucasfilm
Second read through is where the fun begins.
I go through the book line by line, making notes on specific timeline cues in the text.
Chapter 4 is “4 days” after chapter 2
Chapter 7 directly follows chapter 6
During this part of the process, I’ll quotation marks to identify direct quotes from the text. I’ll also scan the text for anything that could later prove useful, such as time of day (morning, afternoon, evening).
For The Mask Of Fear my note taking ends up with a list of chapter notes that look like this:
1 - "weeks" after order 66. bail on jedha |
|---|
2 - Saw has left Onderon, finds Soujen |
3 - 3 weeks after anakin crashes ship into coruscant, Mon meets Lud, republic credits have been replaced with imperial "Chief justice administrator fired after eight days on the job", been an Empire for "less than a month" |
4 - bail back on coruscant. "first appearance since returning from Jedha," |
5 - soujen at saws camp, night. day after 2? |
6 - Bail and mon on coruscant. Chain codes have been introduced, evening |
7 - bail in his apartment, . Haki (Imperial Intelligence) has been watchng him for "weeks". Bail recieves inteligence relating to the jedi that the senate rquested "over a month" ago, putting us at maybe 5 weeks AFE |
8 - meeting of the 2000. "He’s proposed appointing governors to oversee whole sectors" |
9 - saws crew on mission, "The grand vizier announced this afternoon that we are one month from Reintegration Day" |
10-13, bail meets haki, "a week" after 7, arranges to meet haki in 2 days |
14 - Mon, "days" after 8. reintegration day "less than a month away", part 1 - afternoon, part 2 - implied to be several days later as Mon mentions spending "evenings" calulating the chances of passing the bill. spans 2 days, part 3 evening after part 2, part 4 night - zhuna killed |
15 - Soujen on li'eta. starts straight after 9, part 1 - night to midmorning, part 2 - midafternoon to following evening, part 3 - night, chain codes being rolled out, part 4 - "third day" to "fifth day" after part 3, part 5 "three days after the murder" |
16 - "morning" after zhina's death |
17 "days" after Zhuna's death, at least 3 due to mention of Mon not visiting Zhuna's family on the first or second day |
18 - bail and haki on Olkrastrus IV, assuming 3 days after ch13 (meeting as arranged after 2 days plus an extra day to organise/travel), part 1 - day 1 on planet, part 2-3, day 2, part 4 - "over the course of a week" after part 3, so day 9, spans whole day |
19 - bail and haki - day 9 night |
20 - zhuna's funeral, "nearly a week" after her death, less than 3 weeks to reintergration day. Mon on hesperidium. banking clan has been nationaised, part 1 - "morning", part 2 - "afternoon", part 3 - "later, over dinner", part 4 - "an hour" later, part 5 - mon back at apartment |
21 - part 1 - "3 days" after the funeral, part 2-3 - morning after pt1, part 4 - second memorial service, day after part 3? Chemish meets the 4040s |
22 - saw and soujen arrive on Eyo-Dajuritz, part 1-2 - day 1 part 3 - day 1 night to day 2 morning, part 4 - day 2 , reach cache |
23 - . They’d made four stops since the business with Bana Rhuus (4 days?) |
24 - saw and soujen on Eyo-Dajuritz, part 1 day 2, night, spot bail's ship arriving |
25 - mon and lud. lud heard about mon on hesperidium "yesterday", so this is maybe 2 days after ch20, Mon gets tattoo message |
26 - bail arrives on eyo-dajuritz, "2 days" after 23 |
27 - 4 days (2 days of instruction, 2 days of travel) after 25, mon meets Tychon Nulvolio |
28 - bail captured by saw. "Reintegration is barely a week away. ", part 1 day 2 night, part 2 - day 3 orning? |
29 - bail/saw. bail been prisoner for some hours? |
30 - mon still with nulvolio |
31 - part 1-2 chemish has been with the 4040's a while, gets interrogated, evening. , part 3 next morning, sends message to haki |
32 - breha on coruscant |
33 - saw's crew on march |
34, saw's crew. part 3 - 12 hours after 2, |
35 - mon finishes with nulvolio |
36 - saws crew, follows ch 34 |
37 - chemish reports to imperial intelligence |
38 - day after end of 36? bail been with saw for "days", clones attack |
39 - clones attack |
40 - mon back on coruscant, assume another 2 days travel, "days" from reintegration day, arrested |
41 - saw & bail, "hours" after 39 |
42 - part 1 - bail and soujen leave planet, 2 - "hours later", 3 - land on ylagia, 4 - sunset, 5 - night, 6 - midnight - morning |
43 - haki (after bail has lefi planet?) |
44 - pt 1 - bail and soujen arrive on coruscant, "2 days" before reintegration day, protests |
45 - mon being interrogated, "protests have started", mon's security detail havene't seen her for "several days", spans everal hours (check later if needed), ends with er and bail being released at the same time. |
46 - bail & mon, straight after 45 |
47 - soujen on the run, night |
48 - 1- after soujen goes on the run, potests started "72 hours" (5 days) before reintegration day, soujen event happens during first shift of protests. 2- after bail & mon are released |
49 - attack on coruscant was "a few months prior", mon meets nuvulio, night |
50 - bail was "away from poiltics for a few weeks" |
51 - soujen |
52 - "days" after 37, cheish warns mon |
53-59 - ch53 "nearly dawn", and hour after 52, mon last visited the reahbilitation zone "weeks before" (ch3), incident with reporter droid in ch3 "all those weeks before". ch 58 pt1 - morning, soujen dies |
60-64 - "36 hours" after soujens death. reintegration day, senate votes on the imperial rebirth act, bail captured by saw "roughy one week ago", timline discrepancy between ch44 & 60 |
65-66 - "better part of a day" later. |
67 - pt 1-2 "a week" after 59, mon in hospital, pt 3 - "day after". mon meets mas amedda, "vounteer force" is coming, to replace the clones - still being designed, pilot programs shown great success, pt 4 - "few days" after, dinner with lud |
68 meeting between saw, mon, bail |
69 - bail "events of the last month" |
70 - saw |
71 - chemish, "days" after 52 |
72 - mon & perrin |
*This is a direct copy & paste of my actual notes, please ignore spelling and grammar errors*
You’ll see I’ve noted as many uses of the words “day”, “week”, “month”, as well as the passage of time over the course of a day. I’ve also split chapters up into their individual parts to go into even more detail.
Sometimes chapters can take place over the course of days or even weeks. If I need to split a chapter, then I limit myself to paragraph breaks, and label them as parts.
If a part spans a longer period of time then I will make sure to add a note reflecting that but place it at its end.
Step 3 - Rip It Apart
Lucasfilm
I mentioned the non-linear aspect of this story earlier. Now that we have rough notes for each chapter the discrepancies become apparent.
In Chapter 18, for example, Bail Organa and Haki are on the planet Olkrastus IV for 9 days whilst Mon Mothma’s storyline is progressing at a different pace across surrounding chapters.
Mon’s meeting with Tychon Nulvolia starts in Chapter 27 and ends in Chapter 35, a meeting that lasts a few hours at most, while the Bail & Saw storyline between those chapters spans a couple of days.
So, how do we figure out the actual chronology of it all?
We start at the end and work backwards, of course! In the book there is one key event that is referred to, in advance, several times - Reintegration Day. The murder of, and subsequent memorial service of, Zhuna also has some specific timeline cues. Using all this, in conjunction with the notes I’d taken, allow me to attempt to build a linear chronology of the books events giving me something that looks like this:
12 days after Reintegration Day |
|---|
72 - mon & perrin |
71 - chemish, "days" after 52 |
70 - saw |
69 - bail "events of the last month" |
11 days after Reintegration Day |
68 meeting between saw, mon, bail |
10 days after Reintegration Day |
67 - pt 4 - "few days" after, dinner with lud |
7 days after Reintegration Day |
67 - pt 3 - "day after". mon meets mas amedda, "vounteer force" is coming, to replace the clones - still being designed, pilot programs shown great success, |
6 days after Reintegration Day |
67 - pt 1-2 "a week" after 59, mon in hospital |
1 day after Reintegration Day |
65-66 - "better part of a day" later. |
Reintegration Day |
60-64 - "36 hours" after soujens death. reintegration day, senate votes on the imperial rebirth act, bail captured by saw "roughy one week ago", |
1 day before Reintegration Day |
53-59 - ch53 "nearly dawn", and hour after 52, mon last visited the reahbilitation zone "weeks before" (ch3), incident with reporter droid in ch3 "all those weeks before". ch 58 pt1 - morning, soujen dies |
2 days before Reintegration Day |
52 - "days" after 37, cheish warns mon |
51 - soujen |
50 - bail was "away from poiltics for a few weeks" |
49 - attack on coruscant was "a few months prior", mon meets nuvulio, night |
47 - soujen on the run, night |
48 part 2- after bail & mon are released |
46 - bail & mon, straight after 45 |
48 - part 1- after soujen goes on the run, potests started "72 hours" (3 days) before reintegration day, soujen event happens during first shift of protests. |
45 - mon being interrogated, "protests have started", mon's security detail havene't seen her for "several days", spans everal hours (check later if needed), ends with er and bail being released at the same time. |
44 - pt 1 - bail and soujen arrive on coruscant, "2 days" before reintegration day, protests |
3 days before Reintegration Day |
40 - mon back on coruscant, assume another 2 days travel, "days" from reintegration day, arrested |
42 - part 1 - bail and soujen on ylagia, 6 - midnight - morning |
4 days before Reintegration Day |
42 - part 2 - bail and soujen "hours later", 3 - land on ylagia, 4 - sunset, 5 - night, |
43 - haki (after bail has lefi planet?) |
42 - part 1 - bail and soujen leave planet, |
41 - saw & bail, "hours" after 39 |
39 - clones attack |
38 - day after end of 36? bail been with saw for "days", clones attack |
5 days before Reintegration Day |
37 - chemish reports to imperial intelligence |
ch36 - saws crew, follows ch 34 |
ch34, saw's crew. part 3 - 12 hours after 2, |
35 - mon finishes with nulvolio |
30 - mon still with nulvolio |
27 - 4 days (2 days of instruction, 2 days of travel) after 25, mon meets Tychon Nulvolio |
32 - breha on coruscant |
ch34, saw's crew. part 1-2 |
31 - part 3 next morning, sends message to haki |
ch 33 - saw's crew on march |
29 - bail/saw. bail been prisoner for some hours? |
28 - bail captured by saw. part 2 - day 3 morning? |
6 days before Reintegration Day |
28 - bail captured by saw. "Reintegration is barely a week away. ", part 1 day 2 night |
31 - part 1-2 chemish has been with the 4040's a while, gets interrogated, evening |
26 - bail arrives on eyo-dajuritz, "2 days" after 23 |
24 - saw and soujen on Eyo-Dajuritz, part 1 day 2, night, spot bail's ship arriving |
22 - part 4 - day 2 , reach cache |
22 - part 3 - day 1 night to day 2 morning |
7 days before Reintegration Day |
22 - saw and soujen arrive on Eyo-Dajuritz, part 1-2 - day 1 |
8 days before Reintegration Day |
23 - ." They’d made four stops since the business with Bana Rhuus" (4 days?) |
9 days before Reintegration Day |
25 - mon and lud., Mon gets tattoo message |
11 days before Reintegration Day |
19 - bail and haki - day 9 night |
18 - bail and haki on Olkrastrus IV, part 4 - "over the course of a week" after part 3, so day 9, spans whole day |
15 days before Reintegration Day |
21 - part 4 - second memorial service, day after part 3? Chemish meets the 4040s |
16 days before Reintegration Day |
21 - part 2-3 - morning after pt1 |
17 days before Reintegration Day |
21 - part 1 - "3 days" after the funeral |
18 days before Reintegration Day |
18 - bail and haki on Olkrastrus IV, part 2-3, day 2 |
19 days before Reintegration Day |
18 - bail and haki on Olkrastrus IV, assuming 3 days after ch13 (meeting as arranged after 2 days plus an extra day to organise/travel), part 1 - day 1 on planet |
20 days before Reintegration Day |
20 - zhuna's funeral, "nearly a week" after her death, less than 3 weeks to reintergration day. Mon on hesperidium. banking clan has been nationaised, part 1 - "morning", part 2 - "afternoon", part 3 - "later, over dinner", part 4 - "an hour" later, part 5 - mon back at apartment |
15 - Soujen on li'eta.part 5 "three days after the murder" |
22 days before Reintegration Day |
10-13, bail meets haki, "a week" after 7, arranges to meet haki in 2 days |
17 "days" after Zhuna's death, at least 3 due to mention of Mon not visiting Zhuna's family on the first or second day |
23 days before Reintegration Day |
15 - Soujen on li'eta. part 4 - "third day" to "fifth day" after part 3 |
16 - "morning" after zhina's death |
24 days before Reintegration Day |
14 - Mon, part 3 evening after part 2, part 4 night - zhuna killed |
25 days before Reintegration Day |
14 - Mon, part 2 - implied to be several days later as Mon mentions spending "evenings" calulating the chances of passing the bill. spans 2 days, |
28 days before Reintegration Day |
14 - Mon, "days" after 8. reintegration day "less than a month away", part 1 - afternoon, |
15 - Soujen on li'eta. part 2 - midafternoon to following evening, part 3 - night, chain codes being rolled out, |
29 days before Reintegration Day |
15 - Soujen on li'eta. starts straight after 9, part 1 - night to midmorning |
8 - meeting of the 2000. "He’s proposed appointing governors to oversee whole sectors" |
7 - bail in his apartment, . Haki (Imperial Intelligence) has been watchng him for "weeks". Bail recieves inteligence relating to the jedi that the senate rquested "over a month" ago, putting us at maybe 5 weeks AFE |
30 days before Reintegration Day |
9 - saws crew on mission, "The grand vizier announced this afternoon that we are one month from Reintegration Day" |
6 - Bail and mon on coruscant. Chain codes have been introduced, evening |
5 - soujen at saws camp, night. day after 2? |
4 - bail back on coruscant. "first appearance since returning from Jedha," |
3 - 3 weeks after anakin crashes ship into coruscant, Mon meets Lud, republic credits have been replaced with imperial "Chief justice administrator fired after eight days on the job", been an Empire for "less than a month" |
2 - Saw has left Onderon, finds Soujen |
1 - "weeks" after order 66. bail on jedha |
You can see that Chapter 9 places itself as “one month from Reintegration Day” (and for ease, a month is always 30 days when I’m timelining), and although I was working back from the day itself there is a bit of a squeeze around 7/8 days before Reintegration Day to make the month fit.
What we don’t know specifically is the relation of the first 6 chapters to Reintegration Day. We know that the book opens “weeks” after Order 66, and Chapter 3 is “3 weeks after the Battle Of Coruscant, but that is only helpful in placing those chapters in relation to the events of Revenge Of The Sith and not the rest of the book.
However, Chapter 7 sees Bail Organa reviewing intelligence files regarding the “treasonous” acts of the Jedi Order which the Senate had requested “over a month ago”. We can then safely assume that at the very least this chapter takes place 5 weeks after the formation of the Empire.
Step 4 - Adding It To The Timeline
Lucasfilm
Now that we have established an approximate (and I always use the word approximate…what I do is ultimately highly researched guesswork) start and end dates for the book…it is time to place it on the timeline.
For the Youtini timeline, the end date is most important. Using the 5 weeks after the formation of the Empire assumption from Chapter 7 and the 42 mapped out before/after days in relation to Reintegration Day, we can make an assumption that the book ends approximately 11 weeks after the end of Revenge Of The Sith.
On its own…that data is pretty useless.
However, on my super detailed timeline, I try to track the months of every busy year, so for now, I will be placing the book after Season 1, Episode 6 of The Bad Batch with a subtitle stating that it starts “weeks” after Revenge Of The Sith.
Looking Ahead
Trevor Davey
In July 2024 I self-published The Definitive Star Wars Legends Timeline, a book I had been working on for years which mapped out the Legends continuity down to days and months.
While I had been keeping my own Canon timeline for years I had never applied the same level of detail to Canon as I had to Legends, but once the book was out? Well…I had to find something to occupy my time!
As such, I have spent the last 9 months going back into my Canon timeline to add as much detail as I can by rereading and applying the same process I have detailed here.
It’s a big job and there’s still a lot to do.
For The Mask Of Fear, for example, I still need to dive back into the first season of The Bad Batch as well as Inquisitor: Rise Of The Red Blade to map out those first few months post-ROTS as best I can.
Will I end up using every single note I’ve shared above on the timeline itself? Who knows. But if a story comes out next year that specifically dates itself as 7 weeks after the formation of The Empire…then I’ve got the data ready to go!
I hope you’ve enjoyed these ramblings from a timeline-obsessed nerd, and keep an eye on our official timeline for the rest of my continual work!
Trevor Davey is the Keeper of the Timeline at Youtini, and co-host of The Star Wars Archives. He lives and breathes the timelines of Star Wars universe ensuring the Youtini timeline is the most accurate on the internet.
