Star Wars The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire

by Chris Kempshall

death and destruction are not justice.

As the galaxy Palpatine had once ruled began to burn, the war dragged on and yet more lives were lost. The end, when it came, was not soon enough.

The Empire that had originally been planned to stand for ten thousand years unraveled in just a single year following the death of the Emperor.

at heart I am a historian and an educator.

Peace could not be achieved through the mass stockpiling of weapons of war.

It is perhaps one of the most noble undertakings in recent galactic history. If only it had been successful.

So concerned were many Senators at the prospect of starting a new war while still recovering from the last, that they allowed the First Order to build up its own military forces with no consequences at all.

There was a growing number of civilians within the New Republic who also looked to collect such relics, justifying their interest and obsession in the language of historians, without having any real comprehension as to what exactly they were playing with.

I do not know how to once again be the historian who left Lerct because I do not know if that person still exists. I do not know how I am supposed to teach students the same age as the stormtroopers I have killed. I do not know how to interact with my older colleagues who stayed silent and neutral as Hosnian Prime burned and as the First Order cut a swathe across innocent worlds and systems. I do not know how to live with myself for the things I have done and seen. Necessary though they may have been, I now struggle to move beyond them.

There is much hope that can be found in the realization that resistance and rebellion will always rise to meet totalitarianism.

We need to say “never again” and then, crucially, we need to mean it. We cannot turn our eyes away nor sleepwalk into destruction as those before us did. We must see, we must learn, and we must remember.

One of the difficulties of being a historian is the constant concern that things are being forgotten.