Lit Fascism in Star Wars

I hope nucanon gives us a better sense of what it even means for a world to be a member-state of the Republic, New or Old.

 

I always enjoyed her Republic Commando novels. Then again, I love military literature, both non-fiction and fiction, and her writing of actual combat tactics and military operations was some of the most (if not the most) realistic depiction we ever got in SW. It wasn't for everybody, but it was nice that there was this little niche corner in the GFFA for people who like these kind of books. Too bad she had her fallout with Lucasfilm. Closest we got to military novels in the new canon so far are the Battlefront novels, which I like both, especially the first one.

About the way she wrote Mandalorians, I think she was trying to make them into a SW version of the Klingons. She even developed alphabet and some basic grammar and words for them, which I think was her attempt to develop the Mandalorian language into something similar Trekkies have with Klingonese. But I think George Lucas was totally not okay with what she was doing and his Mandalorians were very different from her vision of them. Ironically, the current Mandalorians we have in canon are sort of a weird mix between George's and Traviss's version of them, because her depiction of Mandalorians became super popular with part of the fandom, so Lucasfilm had to compromise.

People like warrior cultures based on codes of honour and brotherhood. Its why Klingons are popular in Trek, its way real world cultures like the samurai are still super popular in people's imaginations even today and its why Mandalorians are popular in SW. There's nothing "extreme right" about it.

I think we already got that in the PT at least for the Old Republic, especially in TPM. The way the Republic is depicted in the PT, it reminds me a lot of how the EU functions. Its not a nation state, but its something more than just a normal international organisation. There are taxes the member worlds have to pay to the Republic, which the Republic uses to finance its operations, there are binding laws that are passed in the Galactic Senate that all the member worlds have to adopt, like the law against slavery for example, but other than that, each member world is allowed to have its own domestic form of government, its own way of economy, own laws, traditions, culture, etc. So for example Alderaan is a hereditary monarchy, while Naboo is elective one, meanwhile Neimodians are an oligarchy, and so on. The PT and TCW very clearly show that your world/system/organisation doesn't even need to be democracy domestically to be member of the Republic. All you need to do is respect the democratic principles of the Galactic Senate and the Jedi Order authority if they ever come knocking on your door for whatever reason, like kidnapping little babies for example.

 

That too. I thought it interesting that Bloodline had the Senate split into factiojs that wanted a string centralized govt and those that didnt, and both factions had conservative and liberal members.

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You've asserted this before and I disagree because....well, it's kinda crazy.

If the Nazis conquered England and Himmler overthrew Hitler then Himmler couldn't rely on England to dominate Germany. Also, it kind of forgets the Imperial military was loyal to Grand Moff Veed and Grand Admiral Yage.

The Butcher of Ossus was the guy who led the Imperial military, not Roan Fel.

We saw one GA Admiral who defected but we saw lots of Fel Imperials fighting Roan Fel's Imperials like the issue "Noob.", The issue where he was almost assassinated, and also everytime Gunn Yage fought them.

 

I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say here, I'm not saying the people who believed in freedom and democracy up and suddenly became supportive of a murderous Sith regime. No, I'm saying those people either remained hidden or joined Gar Stazi's forces. The thing with being a galactic government, is, and I've said this before too, that a lot of your bureaucracy is going to be too massive to control, ergo a lot will sign up just for the benefits. The same goes for some of the military forces that basically just act as police forces for individual worlds. So what happened is the bulk of that 'indifferent' military force just defected to Krayt and kept doing the same job they did for the GA.

Meanwhile as to the Empire, we know that it expanded from the core regions that Fel had under his command, meaning Veed, Yage and other officers had the potential to establish their own powerbase separate from Roan Fel's. New recruits, trained at 'regional' bases and instilled with loyalty not to the rightful Emperor but to the "Throne" (or whatever Veed/Yage were paying them, lets be honest). We know some ambitious Imperials were plotting treason even against -Palpatine while he was still alive- (Zaarin comes to mind) so this is the problem with the system of Grand Moffs - they become too autonomous once you start expanding, which is why I'd say they supported Krayt's war. They wanted to branch out of Roan Fel's powerbase, which remained loyal to him.

 

I'm just saying the vast majority of the Sith's forces are going to be Imperial.

A pity we can't ask Ostrander.

 

I disagree, I think the majority are pencil-pushers mass-recruited by both the GA and the expanded Fel Empire, having loyalty to neither. I don't think the Empire and Sith ideology is very compatible to the way in which that you'd really push them together for long. Even Veed was clearly only in on the whole thing to eventually get the Sith out of the picture and make himself Galactic Emperor.

Mind you, even as an Empire fan, my ideal government for the galaxy isn't the Galactic Empire. It isn't a Republic, Alliance, or Confederacy either. It would be having -no- galactic government at all, and vast regional entities following their own national ideals, and the individual worlds aligning with whichever regional entity they find most pleasing to their own ideals and economy.

 

The apologia for sci-fi authoritarian regimes is pretty heavy no matter what the fandom you belong to.

In the Expanse novels, there's a lot of people who support the Laconian Empire. They're the people who want to unite all of humanity under the draconian rule of their dictator. They're also a breakaway faction from the Martian military which was, already, authoritarian and dictatorial. The fans are like, "We need someone like Duarte to guide humanity through the crises." They also point to the mildly humanizing things they do to justify them.

In the Gundam universe, there's all manner of Zeon apologists. The Principality of Zeon being something that wants independence from Earth but committed all manner of atrocities in order to achieve it. This includes nuking half of the Earth (and admittedly Earth retaliated by nuking half of the colonies).

 

It's true, probably, that your average low level Imperial is following orders from their superiors. I think the upper echelons of the Imperial machine had a culture, though, and as with any military or other organization, the higher you move up in those echelons the more and more you're exposed to that culture and are either brought along with it or you reject it, but it's there. And I think the *culture* of a lot of devoted Imperials is that the Fels are bad, that the Jedi are silly even if they wear red armor and all wield the same lightsaber, and that the Empire was best under Palpatine. They support Krayt because they're pining for the bad old days, and because killing Jedi is what they're supposed to do.

 

I think it's also the fact they're more likely to obey their Imperial military superiors than the unpopular Head of State.

After all Morlish Veed is the greatest hero the galaxy ever knew.

 

The major defections would be top-down, so it stands to reason that people are more likely to follow their defecting superior than defect from their superior to follow the king somehow, although that appears to have happened some as well.

 

My biggest issue with the One Sith is they're so completely devoid of charisma that you can't imagine anyone wanting to follow them. The book tries to portray them as the Ultimate EvilTM and the Imperials as the lesser evil serving them but the Empire are Space Nazis so it falls flat. I'm inclined to believe Dark Side force users are more likely to turn good than fascists.

 

I've always taken issue with post PALPATINE Sith from a aesthetic choice, to punk rock for my taste. Plus then there is the whole does it undercut the propshesy thing were Vader was meant to destroy the Sith but to be fair that prophecy is so muddled anyway.

 

I think in Legends it's not "The end of the Sith" but "The End of the Baneite Sith."

Which isn't all that impressive.

Mind you, in Legends, Palpatine was a Dark Side God who ended up defeated by Luke and Leia and Anakin.

 

Well, in Legends, Palpatine was finally killed by Han Solo. Maybe Han is the chosen one?

 

But it was the random cyborg Jedi who prevented Palpatine from resurrecting himself for the 100th time... Brand is the Chosen One of Legends!

 

Also, Carnor Jax and Palpatine's Doctor plus the entirety of all Jedi in Heaven.

So it was a group effort.

 

To be fair, Lumiya's Sith were really just jumped up Dark Jedi, I don't think they even followed the Sith Code, considering she preached order which is antithetical to the Sith ways. It seemed more like she was promoting some Dark Side cult that had a weird authoritarian flavor to it, and just stuck the Sith name onto it. Which fits, really, Lumiya was an Imperial Agent that didn't really understand much of the Sith ways.

The One Sith were just brutal as hell, and I don't think any kind of anti-Fel Imperial culture would've been allowed to prosper. As far as it was expected, The Fel Imperial was the proper Imperial, and had been the case for literally a century. If anything, Veed associated a bunch of paid mercenaries that all too willingly followed a brutish variant of COMPNOR-style Imperialism. I agree there'd have been Imperials in the One Sith Empire, along with GA personnel, but like I said I assume they'd be opportunists that had joined in the recent years of the Imperial Mission's success. The core territory of the Second Empire remained with Roan Fel, willingly and completely.

Also I figure Veed was just playing the long con game with the One Sith, intending to Order 66 them in due time and make himself Emperor.

 

One of the random bits of RPG history is she had the holocron of King Adas who is a Pre-Dark Jedi takeover Sith Lord. How the hell he had a holocron is a question by itself and it's presumably Ratakan technology. The Holocron was the property of Naga Sadow, who had it stolen by Freedon Nadd, who passed it down to his descendants so it presumably was taken from Onderon at some point.

Roan Fel didn't have control over Bastion until the comic time skip so there's a serious contradiction there. He wasn't actually ruling anything and on the run with his daughter until he took over Bastion so I assume that the territory in the maps were taken after his takeover of the former Imperial capital.

Well, Veed THOUGHT he was doing that but the comic really made it clear he was a blinding incompetant. Calixte seems to have been behind all of his successes. It seems she wanted to replace Roan Fel but Yage was insufficiently ambitious and Veed was her only shot until he screwed it up.

I wonder if she should have just gone after Roan himself since he seemed quite willing to be manipulated.

Mind you, I think this implies the Empire is sexist in the future as well since Calixte never attempts to take the throne herself ala Isard.

 

Well yeah he didn't reveal himself, so they couldn't really pledge loyalty to a MIA monarch, but when he appeared they clearly all bent the knee.

Could be (isn't something mentioned regarding Marasiah?), but I also see it that Calixte wants to be the power behind the throne, not the one on it.

 

There's an entire subplot that the Old Imperial Regime is spread out among the Krayt promoted loyalists. They're keeping it in secret to get the Old Regime transferred to Bastion so they can consolidate their forces, which they can't do because of Marasiah being rescued. Notably, this makes Roan Fel furious as he valued their forces far more than he valued his daughter.

So it wasn't remotely that easy.

I do note Roan Fel treats his daughter as completely useless and doesn't care about his line ending with her death.

 

Well, yes, it wasn't. It needed to be carefully planned. Even if you have loyalists already in place, you need to make your move at an appropriate time, otherwise Krayt's agents would catch on, and we know he had some of those around as the initial officer over Bastion refused to bend the knee. For all he knew, Krayt could've replaced the entire 501st, shot him and it all ends there. He had to clear it up, and its clear he's a cautious man.

Roan's not a 100% moral good guy, that's very clear and intended. He does kill an entire crew that he believes might be associated with Krayt. I think he valued himself as the figurehead over her, because he saw it as he could always sire another child.

 

In the first issue, between Darth Nihl appearing on the landing platform and Krayt swaggering into the throne room, I was totally on board. Then Wyyrlok III proves himself to be really interesting. Maladi, who's a more interesting character, lacks charisma. And everyone else is boring.

That said, I really think it's as simple as a large contingent of Imperials preferring to serve the Sith than the Jedi. The First Order tries to do the same thing.

 

Legacy #0 outright says it's sexist, with people contending Marasiah would ever be able to inherit the Throne (pre-war/coup).

But Calixte herself says several times that she's more comfortable as the power behind the throne.

 

Roan Fel is, ultimately, a pragmatist, the way I see it. He might not be necessarily an evil man, but he's not above using any means necessary to achieve his success, which could include some questionable methods. He's a Bismarckian type of politician, he's not a moralistic Jedi nor a mustache-twirling villain, but he'll do what he sees as necessary for his nation. So in some cases, he could be seen as a good guy and in others not so much.