Coruscant |
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Coruscant was the capital of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, and the Yuuzhan Vong occupation at various times. It is generally agreed that Coruscant is the most important world in the galaxy, evidenced by the fact that its hyperspace cordinates are (0,0,0.)
There was a huge city covering the entire planet of Coruscant, as early as 100,000 BBY. New buildings were built on the old. As a result, there was virtually no exposed land. In the forgotten underlevels of the city, there was darkness, pollution and crime. Higher up, there were government offices and penthouses owned by elite.
The concept of a city covering an entire planet is not entirely new. The planet Trantor in Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels is probably the first fictional planet to be totally urbanized, but it was not the last. Indeed, one of the draft names of Coruscant was "Jhantor", in homage to Asimov's work.
The name itself is literary English meaning "sparkling" or "glittering" and probably refers to the night side of the planetwide city. Traditionally pronounced with a hard 'c' - ko'-rus-kant' - the word is pronounced Ko'-ru-sant in the Star Wars Universe.
Originally the planet, which was then called "Alderaan", was to appear in the first Star Wars film, but the budget wouldn't allow, so a lot of action on Alderaan was moved to the Death Star and Alderaan became the name of Princess Leia's home planet which is destroyed. The concept of seeing the Empire's home world, renamed "Had Abbadon", came up again in the Return of the Jedi, and the concept of the entire planet being a city came up for the first time. However, realizing such a city on screen was impossible at the time so the idea was abandoned.
The planet first appeared in the Expanded Universe and was called "Coruscant" for the first time in Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire. Coruscant wasn't originally seen on screen until The Phantom Menace. It was seen on screen in the 1997 Special Edition release of Return of the Jedi. There is a speeder chase through the skies of Coruscant in Attack of the Clones that eventually leads to a nightclub in the bowels of Coruscant.
In various novels, characters aligned with the Empire refer to Coruscant as "Imperial Center". Within the stories, this is explained as an administrative renaming undertaken to emphasize the differences between the Old Republic and the Empire. The new name never resonated with the general population — it was only called Imperial Center in government documents. The name was abandoned when the New Republic retook Coruscant.
In the New Jedi Order series, Coruscant is the capital world of the New Republic until Star by Star, in which the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong overwhelm the Republic defenses in three attack waves and take over the planet. The Vong designated it "Yuuzhan'tar", after their homeworld, and terraformed it to overwhelm the city covering its surface and restore a natural ecology. The vast majority of the planet's non-Yuuzhan Vong population was shipped offworld in massive refugee ships, though some people did stay behind in the substructure of the city. The Galactic Alliance eventually retook Coruscant back from the Vong. Within the Star Wars universe, there is currently a debate on what is to be the fate of Coruscant.
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