Current Events > It makes no sense to me that the Empire loses in Star Wars.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I also would like to explore the ancient past of Star Wars. Right before Disney took over, a new era was starting in the EU. Set thousands of years even before the KOTOR setting. If KOTOR is like 5 thousand years before the movies, this era was like 50 thousands ago or something

It was about the first Jedi. But then it got dropped. I wish they had started it earlier so we would have had more time with it before Disney deleted it. I'd like that era to get movies

Zikten posted...

The real thing that is dumb is the rebels still being rebels in episode 7 8 and 9

The Republic should have been totally in power by then. And have the old empire loyalists be the new rebels, a reversal of positions,

From my understanding. The Republic was in power at the time, they were just huge liberal tolerance pussies and sat on their laurels while the space Nazis re-branded themselves and took advantage of it. Most of the people who actually did the fighting in the previous war, and other people who had paid attention to the obvious alarms, had to act independently and formed the Resistance.

They probably could have communicated this better, but I think they had the idea that it was better not to elaborate, since A.) everybody hated the contrived political stuff in the prequels, so if anything was going to be cut out, it was an explanation for the political stuff, and B.) come on. Everybody knows the real reason the Empire and Rebels are back.

The Empire is an authoritarian power structure, and the only legitimate authority is the Emperor's. He mostly seems to have empowered a legion of petty administrators (the moffs) to administer things, but they are accountable only to the Emperor, not the people: plenty of them, I'm sure, were abusive shits more concerned with enriching themselves and/or furthering their careers than the welfare of their subjects. Individual planets likely continued to enjoy some degree of autonomy: the Empire is simply far too big to administer everything directly. Importantly, the only one with anything approaching a legitimate claim to being the Emperor's successor is Darth Vader.

Although Palpatine is a savvy political operator who is popular (and likely remained so, to an extent) and no doubt used a number of clever means to enhance his reputation and suppress dissent off-screen, it's very clear that there is *a lot* of dissent, including from prominent political figures like Bail Organa. Perhaps it was initially centered on Alderaan. Anyway, they blow up Alderaan, and that was a huge unforced error: before that, the Emperor could easily cast himself as a reformer, a populist who seized power merely in a time of crisis to clear out the rot of the Republic, but after that, the only thing that kept anyone in line would have been fear. The Death Star was potent symbol of that fear, and no doubt an incredibly expensive one: its destruction was a massive blow not only to the Empire's military capability, but also its prestige and legitimacy. If you're relying on fear to keep your subjects in line and the Rebellion blows up your planet-destroying laser, you're going to have a bad time!

That's why the Empire immediately starts construction on a new one: it was their only avenue left to keep people in line. When that one gets blown up, with both the Emperor and Vader, the entirety of the Empire's legitimacy was blown up with it. This would have immediately fractured the surviving Imperial forces amongst the countless moffs, while also providing a huge boost in prestige, legitimacy, and visibility for the Rebellion. Likely plenty of Imperials would have thrown in with them, and then it becomes a matter of mop-up. Again: the territory of the New Republic is so vast it's impossible to watch the whole thing closely, and what's to worry about some crackpot on the fringes consolidating Imperial remnants into something called The First Order, anyway?

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

From my understanding. The Republic was in power at the time, they were just huge liberal tolerance pussies and sat on their laurels while the space Nazis re-branded themselves and took advantage of it. Most of the people who actually did the fighting in the previous war, and other people who had paid attention to the obvious alarms, had to act independently and formed the Resistance.

They probably could have communicated this better, but I think they had the idea that it was better not to elaborate, since A.) everybody hated the contrived political stuff in the prequels, so if anything was going to be cut out, it was an explanation for the political stuff, and B.) come on. Everybody knows the real reason the Empire and Rebels are back.

Basically the New Republic senate ran entirely on the sheer force of Mon Mothma's personality to accomplish anything. Once she retired it got increasingly deadlocked, since all the planets had their own ideas on how things ran and they lacked a centralizing unifying force. In particular you had two opposing factions on whether the Republic should actually have a standing military force, which a lot of the Senate had pretty understandable reservations about given the fall of the last Republic. *Bloodlines spoilers* Eventually, Leia was getting close to taking Mothma's place as head of the senate and likely building some cohesion, along with a plan to start addressing the rumors of an Imperial remnant building in Wild Space, but it got revealed that she was the daughter if Darth Vader. That killed her political career basically on the spot. Leia then went to found the Resistance because it was clear the Senate was not going to take action against the FO (partially because some senators were FO members, Tanking any proposals to handle them).

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Thank you.

What I'm seeing from certain people is "I enjoyed it so other people need to enjoy it in a 'real' format like a movie". If people were going to enjoy Jaina Solo, they would have done so when the books were out and sung her praises then. That didn't happen. Thrawn was always the big push in the fandom and thus he got a fit in the new canon.

There's no point in lamenting about it.

Haejin posted...

I mean if they used the resources and materials that buuilt the death star into a fleet of space ships they would dominate for centuries and centures and live out their immortal fantasies, there's no logical reasoning to built a death star lmao

But like all fascist regimes, they're not about the logistics and the sensible moves. They're about big grandiose and wasteful displays of power and theatrics.

CyricZ posted...

Thank you.

What I'm seeing from certain people is "I enjoyed it so other people need to enjoy it in a 'real' format like a movie". If people were going to enjoy Jaina Solo, they would have done so when the books were out and sung her praises then. That didn't happen. Thrawn was always the big push in the fandom and thus he got a fit in the new canon.

There's no point in lamenting about it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pretentious

Dunno why this popped into my head.

Zikten posted...

It was about the first Jedi. But then it got dropped.

That stuff mostly made its way into short stories in magazines and reference books. I too would be very interested in hearing about the Pius Dea era.

Great thing is we could still potentially get stuff like that. Because there isn't a lot of specific info anyway in either aspect, we could go back to it.

@synklare has gifted me Greedfall.
Thank you so much!

Like one thing I lament being left behind in the Legends canon is the X-Wing stuff. I'm a super pilot nerd and Stackpole made a good framework with Allston absolutely killing it in the latter books.

But I can still enjoy those books whenever I want to.

CyricZ posted...

But like all fascist regimes, they're not about the logistics and the sensible moves. They're about big grandiose and wasteful displays of power and theatrics.

I mean the Death Star was initially planned as a cost-saving move. Once the people saw the hyper-drive capable, indestructible, planet-deleting battlestation all hopes of resistance would die on the vine and the Palpatine and the Empire could go into autopilot mode knowing that nobody was ever gonna fight back against him.

The tiny misstep was they didn't quite make it indestructible.

Zikten posted...

The real thing that is dumb is the rebels still being rebels in episode 7 8 and 9

The Republic should have been totally in power by then. And have the old empire loyalists be the new rebels, a reversal of positions,

The sequels still portray the Republic people as rebels, as if the First Order owns the galaxy. It makes no sense. Really the First Order were the rebels but the movies don't act like it

I also had this issue with the sequel movies. Like what was the point if the OT if nothing changed afterwards

@NERDZofSTEEL

I think you've posted that in the wrong topic lol.

YoungMutual posted...

I also had this issue with the sequel movies. Like what was the point if the OT if nothing changed afterwards

Yeah plenty of stuff changed. They just never told you about it in the movies.

Compsognathus posted...

I mean the Death Star was initially planned as a cost-saving move. Once the people saw the hyper-drive capable, indestructible, planet-deleting battlestation all hopes of resistance would die on the vine and the Palpatine and the Empire could go into autopilot mode knowing that nobody was ever gonna fight back against him.

The tiny misstep was they didn't quite make it indestructible.

I mean you say "misstep" I say "inevitability". Nothing is indestructible. They just had the same thing all regimes have: traitors on the inside willing to leave the door open.

Also the galaxy's a big place with billions of planets. Not even the Death Star II or Starkiller Base could get them all.

And I disagree with it being cost effective. It's simple, certainly, but a few Star Destroyers with orbital bombardment could largely have the same desired effect of glassing a planet's habitable space. They wanted it to be big and obvious.

it aint uncommon for rebel factions to take down empires...

You don't see a lot of it but the empire does also try to appear legitimate and try to keep people from becoming so discontent they rebel. So once the news of the events of ANH spread, you can bet it sparked a lot of localized rebellions that the empire was forced to deal with and stretch them thin.

Ewoks defeated advanced walkers.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Ewoks defeated advanced walkers.

So did Luke Skywalker, and that boy was dumb

DrizztLink posted...

So did Luke Skywalker, and that boy was dumb

"Just tie them up like banthas" SHUT UP LUKE.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Ewoks defeated advanced walkers.

I know I'm nitpicking but I think Ewoks superior use of terrain and Empire's terrible defensive placements were the bigger factors (from my decades of RTS :P)

They didn't tell the Death Star's architect about magic space wizards

YugiNoob posted...

They didn't tell the Death Star's architect about magic space wizards

The Death Star's architect put the flaw there on purpose which kind of makes you wonder why they needed a space wizard to hit it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAOX_CHU0JY

CyricZ posted...

Like one thing I lament being left behind in the Legends canon is the X-Wing stuff. I'm a super pilot nerd and Stackpole made a good framework with Allston absolutely killing it in the latter books.

But I can still enjoy those books whenever I want to.

I just got the first 8 today for Christmas, never read any of them.

Ah be ready for them to mention "The Clone Wars" and go into no further detail. The X-Wing books came out before the PT.

There are ten books in the series altogether. 1-4 are a set, then 5-7. 8 is a standalone follow-up to 1-4. 9 is a standalone bit of a cap on the series in general, and 10 can be considered a bit of an epilogue.

Also once you finish 4 but before you start 8 it'd probably be a good idea to read "I, Jedi".

I fucking adore when old 90s-era EU stuff drops references to The Clone Wars.

One that always stands out to me is in Dark Empire when Luke is imprisoned on some ship with Artoo and he identifies it as a "prison barge used by the Empire for capturing Jedi during the Clone Wars"

CyricZ posted...

Ah be ready for them to mention "The Clone Wars" and go into no further detail. The X-Wing books came out before the PT.

There are ten books in the series altogether. 1-4 are a set, then 5-7. 8 is a standalone follow-up to 1-4. 9 is a standalone bit of a cap on the series in general, and 10 can be considered a bit of an epilogue.

Also once you finish 4 but before you start 8 it'd probably be a good idea to read "I, Jedi".

Thanks, that's on my short list of books to buy so I may just grab it and do so. I got the book set from my wife's parents, looks like it's an Amazon bundle but it's just 1-8 of the paperback Legends X-Wing books.

I have a couple chapters of The Witcher to go and i'll get on it.

Doom_Art posted...

I fucking adore when old 90s-era EU stuff drops references to The Clone Wars.

Remember when it was in fashion to name one's clone as your name but with one of the vowel's duplicated, Doom Aart?

Deep I can count, theres 9 here. I guess I'm missing the 10th?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/7/3/AAakoXAAEB1J.jpg

pegusus123456 posted...

The Death Star's architect put the flaw there on purpose which kind of makes you wonder why they needed a space wizard to hit it.

I doubt it.

Revelation34 posted...

I doubt it.

That was the plot of Rogue One, I thought

It kinda makes no sense that they wouldn't lose after the first death star was destroyed.

They lost countless amounts of money, firepower, military leaders, generals, command structure and so on. The sheer logistics of it all adding up likely cost them a lot more than the movies have ever shown.

Plus after that, their image was probably tarnished leading to mass rebellion and infighting, etc.

Pretty much a galactic take on why some real historic nations that seemed invincible fell or collapsed. Never put all, or even most of your eggs in one basket.

MabusIncarnate posted...

Deep I can count, theres 9 here. I guess I'm missing the 10th?

Yeah that's everything but Mercy Kill. Don't read the books in the order you see them. I'm pretty sure it says on the front which book it is.

itachi15243 posted...

It kinda makes no sense that they wouldn't lose after the first death star was destroyed.

Yeah, that's what my post earlier said. They basically did "lose" after Yavin as they lost their primary weapon of fear and the galaxy saw them destroy an entire planet (of known pacifists no less). From that point on they were basically on their back heels from a political standpoint, scrambling to crush the Rebellion to shift the momentum. Hoth was a big blow to the Rebels but even then it wasn't significant enough. The Emperor knew he needed a big finish which is why Endor had to happen. Eliminate the amassed Rebellion in a trap by using a resurrected Death Star that would be even worse than the first. That failed, and basically Jakku was mop-up a year after that.