I’ve never been all that much into the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the massive set of books, comics, and other works that build on the original movie trilogy and, to an extent, the prequel trilogy. I will say that I have always respected the amount of work, attention to detail, and commitment to maintaining continuity that seems to have gone into building the SWEU. (With some major exceptions—[cough]Ewok Adventure[cough]—of course

Now, Lucas himself mucked about with the continuity a bit in the prequels, such as with the story of who built C-3PO, but the SWEU (mostly) effectively fills in the historical and narrative gaps of the world Lucas created.

Until Disney took over, that is, and proclaimed that the SWEU is not canonical anymore, to the extent that it ever was. (To be fair, Disney spent more on on Lucasfilm in one fell swoop than I’ve spent on Star Wars properties in my entire life, but that only means that, in a strict capitalist sense, they have more say over the Star Wars canon than I do individually. Strength in numbers, fans….)

Some people take Star Wars very seriously.

Now, it appears that they are introducing a new timeline to the Disneyfied Star Wars universe (the “DSWU”). Fans have generally measured time in the SWEU based on the Battle of Yavin at the end of Episode IV: A New Hope. The battle (you know, the one where Luke blows up the Death Star with Han’s help) therefore takes place in the year 1 ABY (after the Battle of Yavin) (or 0 ABY), and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back takes place in 3 ABY. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith takes place in 19 BBY (before the Battle—you get the idea.)

It looks like the DSWU might start counting years at Episode I: The Phantom Menace (a/k/a that movie that doesn’t actually exist, but that we all imagined in the same bad dream we had after eating an entire jumbo-sized bag of Red Vines.) As one commenter at io9 noted, this makes no sense for reasons unrelated to existing Star Wars calendar standards: nothing terribly important happened in Episode I. If any date should serve as Year 0, it should be the establishment of the Galactic Empire in Episode III, which happened in the year 19 BBY in the SWEU calendar, or the year 13 in the DSWU calendar.

To make things as confusing as humanly possible, the person designated by Disney as the Keeper of the Holocron (not making that up) tweeted that they will continue to use the ABY/BBY system as well as their system.

I suspect most Star Wars fans won’t care very much about this. Maybe it’s just my undergraduate history education that makes me see this as a big deal, but dangit, consistency can be a good thing, even in a fictional universe.