Saga Who started the Rebellion?

Star Wars starts with a very organised Rebellion in full swing. They have a large fleet, troops, a serious military hierarchy (with a worrying habit of making random mercenaries into Generals).

Yoda and Kenobi have both foofed off. The Jedi aren't being of help.
So who is the brave guy/gal who gets it rolling?

I'm sure it has a definite AU answer....

 

Criminals/outlaws who were later backed by anti-imperial senators.

 

Probably the first Rebel faction, in the EU, was the Republic Group:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Republic_Group

which saw the writing on the wall for Palpatine's power grabbing even before the Clone Wars, and acted accordingly.

The Delegation of 2000 were the "anti-Imperial Senators" - in the last days of the Republic, and shortly afterward:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Delegation_of_2000

There were many Rebel groups between the formation of the Empire and A New Hope - but they weren't all brought together as the Alliance to Restore the Republic, until shortly before ANH, with the Corellian Treaty:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alliance_to_Restore_the_Republic
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Treaty

 

but who shot the deputy?

 

What Rebels seems to be going for is that different Rebel groups started at different places and at different times. You have the Lothal group in rebels(Kanan, Hera, Ezra, Zeb, Chopper, and Sabine), the phoenix squardron etc and they all seem to be getting support covertly by people like Bail Organa who are in the Senate but cannot openly rebel yet. eventually these groups will merge under and form what we know as the Alliance to Restore the Republic aka the Rebel Alliance probably by the end of SW Rebels tv run. It actually is kinda of cool how the new canon is really making the Alliance start out as several separate factions whose only contact with each other maybe Bail's covert funding and Fulcrums info. Makes them a real Alliance.

Old Eu had the Remants of Padme's group of Senators, who had not signed the delagation petition(Bail, Mothma) coming together with Bel Iblis, Starkiller, and Rahm Kota's milita. and it was all actually a plan of the Emperors that got screwed up by Starkiller turning to the light.

As much as I like the force unleashed games and the Corellian treaty. I prefer the more organic way they are going with the begining of the rebellion now.

 

There are two canon answers so far

(1) The Delegation of 2000 senators founded by Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Padme. Although this arc was unfortunately relegated to deleted scene status, it still seems quite legitiamte considering one of the founders turns out to be one of the, if not the main, Rebellion's primary leaders, Mon Mothma. Since Lucas provided commentary for this arc, it might have canonicity, hopefully.

(2) In Rebels, the gang start to join the Rebellion, which seems to be already founded, more or less. It seems Ahsoka might have had a hand in it, not sure honestly.

Non-canon answer: In The Force Unleashed, Vader manipulates Starkiller to gather the Rebel Leaders into a formal alliance. Same members as the Delegation for the most part: Bail Organa and Mon Mothama IIRC. There was also Leia.

 

Ultimately, Palpatine started the rebellion by becoming something that needed to be rebelled against. But that's not what you meant, is it?

 

Pretty much everyone sitting here, in some form or another.

 

I have a feeling we may learn more about this in (the aptly named) Rebels.

 

[Filoni] "Ahsoka, of course."

 

It started with Padme and the other senators like Bail and Mon Mothma, the Delegation of 2000, and after Padme's death Bail and Mothma took over, with Mothma being considered the "Chancellor" ala the new comics. I believe Bail met up with Ahsoka, and being a friend of the Jedi, knew she'd be a great help, so she was either persuaded to join or felt the Empire was too tyrannical. In the end, it was essentially Padme, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma who started it, and helped build up to what we see in ANH by bringing all the Rebel cells like the Ghost crew together.

 

We'll find out in Rebels, of course. But naturally it'd be Bail Organa.

 

I thought it was established in EU novels set between the Prequel Trilogy and the Original Trilogy who was responsible for the creation of the Rebellion.

 

Probably a group of rebellious senators like stated before. Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are good bets as they are still IN the rebellion in the OT. Leia might not be the best bet, as she would be somewhere around 7-15 while founding it in that case. Do we have canon confirmation of when the rebellion was founded? It would probably be somewhere around 17-12 BBY seeing as their technical advancements in A New Hope (0 BBY). Anyway, according to Rebels, it is as AnakinColodin said above, different rebel groups at different places, that found out about each other at some point, somehow through Bail Organa and Ahsoka, a.k.a Fulcrum. Anyway, Mon Mothma would be a good answer, of course accompanied with several others. I mean, you can't just walk into a town on for example Lothal and just randomly say "Hey, I just started a rebellion against the Empire, wanna join?" to someone. There must have been people of higher standing, for example, Bail, or Ahsoka. What happened in between Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Rebels (my opinion is that Rebels is from before A New Hope, seeing as Bail is still alive, but I suppose he could have survived the destruction of Alderaan through being away from the planet at the time), we don't know (through canon info at least), but hopefully we'll get to know in the new spin-off films coming later on.

 

You mean the Rebel Alliance? Bail and the other senators as seen in the deleted scene. Of course, it grew later on by including more and more local rebellious groups throughout the galaxy.

 

Mon Mothma

 

[Filoni] "Ahsoka, of course."
------

touché

 

"Mon Mothma who???"

 

I take it he's no longer a founding member? http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Garm_Bel_Iblis

 

Galen Marek. That's my canon at least. But that's about the most simplistic answer I can give to this question, when it is indeed quite an interesting one.

The origins of the Rebellion started in Revenge of the Sith, with Padme, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and the other leaders of the Delegation of 2000. From what I've seen in Rebels, Bail (and presumably the other leaders of that delegation as well) went their separate ways, but still provide resistance to Darth Sidious's regime. They are united by Marek, who is under the command of Darth Vader and (unknown to Marek himself) Sidious.

So, in essence, Marek is to me the one who officially started the Rebellion, but there are multiple people responsible for its formation, including:
- Padme Amidala
- Bail Organa
- Mon Mothma
- Ahsoka Tano
- Galen Marek
- Garm Bel Iblis
- Darth Vader
- Darth Sidious

Keep in mind, I know this isn't official canon, but it is my own canon (as I like to choose works from both Legends and Canon and fit them together).

I think the canon answer would be whatever happens on Rebels.

 

"Mon Mothma entered the room. A stately, beautiful woman of middle age, she seemed to walk above the murmurs of the crowd. She wore white robes with gold braiding, and her severity was not without cause—for she was the elected leader of the Rebel Alliance. Like Leia’s adopted father—like Palpatine the Emperor himself—Mon Mothma had been a senior senator of the Republic, a member of the High Council. When the Republic had begun to crumble, Mon Mothma had remained a senator until the end, organizing dissent, stabilizing the increasingly ineffectual government. She had organized cells, too, toward the end. Pockets of resistance, each of which was unaware of the identity of the others—each of which was responsible for inciting revolt against the Empire when it finally made itself manifest. There had been other leaders, but many were killed when the Empire’s first Death Star annihilated the planet Alderaan. Leia’s adopted father died in that calamity. Mon Mothma went underground. She joined her political cells with the thousands of guerrillas and insurgents the Empire’s cruel dictatorship had spawned. Thousands more joined this Rebel Alliance. Mon Mothma became the acknowledged leader of all the galaxy’s creatures who had been left homeless by the Emperor. Homeless, but not without hope." - ROTJ novelization

 

As Darth-Sinister said, it started with Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Padme Amidala, who sowed the seeds of the Rebellion when the Empire was born. It was through their influences and finances that the rebel cells could pop up in the first place.

 

The deleted scenes in ROTS, showed the seeds of it. The Corellian Treaty is what brought the rebellion in full force instead of single planets going against the Empire. Alderaan, Corellia, and Naboo were represented in the deleted scenes, the other three are unkown.

 

A while back, some EU sources actually suggested that the 'father' of the Rebel Alliance was none other than Finis Valorum - the Galactic Chancellor thrown out by the vote of no confidence in TPM.

IIRC, following his fall, he met with other Senators and expressed his concerns about Palpatine's rise, leading to the more active movement that began getting underway in ROTS. I think this has either faded into obscurity or been completely retconned, it's not on the Wook any more.

For all intents and purposes, the founders of the Rebel Alliance were those we saw in the ROTS deleted scenes - Mon Mothma, Bail Organa & Padme Amidala, plus the other Senators present in their discussions. When it came to active rebellion, scratch Padme off the list, she was dead by then.

Of course, different rebel groups might have originated separately during the Empire's rise, then Mon Mothma & Bail Organa could have been responsible for bringing these groups together, hence the Rebel 'Alliance'. It might have been a decade or more before Mon Mothma or Bail Organa actually became properly involved (pretty sure both were still Senators at the time the Senate was dissolved, at the time of SW/ANH), due to their positions, while smaller groups could well have been active years earlier, but without the political clout to influence matters on a broader scale, or unify the various organisations actively opposed to the Empire.

 

I like to run with the idea that the Rebellion was formed by an alliance of numerous interest groups, started at different times and different places with various agendas, that became the organization we see in IV, V, VI as the Rebel Alliance, starting before the Clone Wars even concludes, including but not nec. limited to:

• Separatists. I love the RotS Padme line: "Have you ever considered that we may be on the wrong side." Of course, we know the head-honcho leaders, your Nute's and Wat's and so on were wiped out on Mustafar, but there were still plenty of Sep's against the Republic/Empire after the end of RotS.
• Mon Mothma/Bail/Delegation of 1000. Working "right out in plain sight" in the senate after RotS, eventually having to get out of Dodge because of the heat, or getting caught with rebel sympathies like Leia.
• Small freedom fighter operations like the Lothal Rebels. Even a few episodes into the series we are seeing this handful of people ally themselves with larger elements we will come to associate with "the Rebellion."
• Disenfranchised and oppressed systems that are in some way able to band together to oppose the Empire (e.g. Mon Cal).

I'm not including unleashed, and am not really crazy about the idea of one person "starting" the rebellion. I prefer the alternative that resistance to the Empire was there from even before Palpatine became chancellor. Now, how and who pulled the various interest groups together is an area I feel like that has a lot of room for exploration. I don't think it should or needs to be Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Yoda, or Ezra/Kanan. I would rather that honor be a group effort by Bail, Mon Mothma, Leia, Ackbar, and others we don't know yet, not the time for a Jedi/near-Jedi to be calling the shots.