Star Wars The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire

by Chris Kempshall

I recall the shock I felt when Resistance agents brought back from Batuu—among other things—word that there were traders in Black Spire Outpost selling busts of Emperor Palpatine and other trinkets of his fallen Empire. How could this be? What must have happened to make the image of the Emperor—a man responsible for the murder of billions—acceptable enough to sell and own, even long after his apparent death at Endor? How could we all have gone so astray?

We know why the Rebel Alliance believed they won the war. Do we know why the Empire lost it? Because the Galactic Empire was so misunderstood, it is necessary to begin the process again. That is the point of this study. To deconstruct the entirety of the Galactic Empire beyond just notions of Palpatine himself. To see how it actually worked, the ideas and ideologies that drove it, the ways it waged war, and the motivations behind its most awful crimes.

it is arguable that Palpatine was not so much elected but that the previous supreme chancellor was ejected.

Palpatine did not simply want to rule the galaxy, he wanted to rule it forever.

That is, the Empire wove the Senate into the decision-making processes for some of its most unsavory crimes. Rather than allow the politicians to stand apart from the grim reality of Imperial rule, the Empire sought—as this chapter will outline—to make sure they were also culpable.

This is an important lesson for the galaxy moving forward: there will always be those who are prepared to accelerate the death of democracy if they believe power is being given to someone worthy.

Aside from the rebels preventing the obliteration of their base, killing Tarkin might actually have been the most significant outcome of that battle, rather than the destruction of the Death Star. As would be shown in time, the Emperor could always order the construction of replacement—bigger and better—Death Stars. Palpatine could not create another Tarkin.

His death, and those of the other joint chiefs still onboard the Death Star, did not simply open a vacuum in the rank hierarchy, but also one of cohesive military strategy and direction. As a result, the senior officers of the Empire would fight it out among themselves for the best course of action while the Galactic Civil War was unfolding around them. Similarly,

As parents grappled with the dramatic fall of the Jedi, many younger children did not fully understand what had happened. Some still liked to play with fake lightsabers in the streets of various planets. This was unacceptable.

The attack on him had been a grand betrayal of all. Palpatine’s near-death experience had been personal not just to him, but to the galaxy as a whole.

becomes increasingly clear the extent to which the laws of the Empire existed not to protect its citizenry but rather to define the extent to which ordinary people had to accept Imperial rule.

had its own laws, rules, and customs that existed to protect or dictate acceptable behaviors and norms within their own individual societies.

Above them, however, lay the more formalized and wide-ranging structure of Imperial law. This legislation was generally accepted to overrule any contradictory localized laws,

The Imperial Legal Code was essentially composed of five major forms of illegal activity—albeit with many subsections and clarifications.4 It would be wrong to say that a Class Five infraction, at the bottom of the scale, was not a serious crime. As mentioned above, the Empire did not tolerate lawbreaking and, for example, vandalizing or putting graffiti on Imperial property could quite easily land the perpetrator a lengthy prison sentence.

However, at the top of the legal code sat the Class One infractions that were almost guaranteed to provoke harsh responses, sentencing and, at times, wider repercussions. Coming under the heading of a Class One offense were things such as fomenting rebellion, active sedition, assassination attempts against senior Imperials, or active piracy.

To reiterate: the laws existed to serve the Empire, not protect the citizenry.

Palpatine was a human male who had risen to the pinnacle of galactic power and politics. For the most important—and therefore presumably the “best”—sentient being in the galaxy to be a male human suggested that there was an underlying aspect within all male humans that made them superior. This was eagerly seized upon by various Imperial officials and officers who were looking for a reason to create a human-centric and patriarchal aspect to Imperial organization.

Those who resolved to murder their fellow Imperial citizens did so willingly. We should never forget that.

This process was then coupled with the implementation of her planned Military Disarmament Act. This was probably the most controversial policy that Mon Mothma forced through. Her reasoning was that violence and centralized armed forces had long ruled and ruined the galaxy. That a large standing military would always produce the circumstances for further conflicts. Peace could not be achieved through the mass stockpiling of weapons of war.10 The New Republic’s military would be reduced in size by 90 percent, leaving just a peacekeeping force behind.

Was the New Republic an institution doomed to failure and destruction? How much of its failure can perhaps be understood as the outcome of post-Imperial agents or activities within the new system? In such close proximity to the collapse of the New Republic, we may not yet fully understand the various strands and threads of the way the government both functioned and fell. In time it may become clearer.

found. Because for all of the power, and the terror, and the destruction of the Empire and the First Order one thing is also true: they always lose. If one half of the legacy of the Empire is death then the other is defeat. Given enough time and enough people dedicated to resisting them, then the Empire—and the First Order that followed it—can be defeated.

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.