Zsinj's rank?

I've been working on the Zsinj page over at Wookieepedia, and I've run into a minor but rather confusing issue. What was Zsinj's actual rank, and what rank did he choose for himself when he went rogue?

Zsinj was referred to as a captain who was promoted to admiral when he was given the Iron Fist, shortly after the Battle of Yavin. But I've only found four pictures of Zsinj as I was researching him, and the depictions of his rank plaque have me confused. Here's a compliation of all four in order of publication:

[image=http://starwars.wikicities.com/images/9/9d/ZsinjRank.png]

(I'm going by McEwok's work-in-progress page on Imperial insignia here, since it seems to account for all the canon evidence better than other sources.)

Cracken's Threat Dossier is the earliest depiction, and it shows him wearing a plaque that's 2 rows of 3 pips, but it's not in color. The Essential Chronology shows a similar (greyscale) plaque. We can probably guess that it's blue-over-red in both cases. Both pictures are said to depict the "Warlord," but we don't know the exact timeframe they were intended to show. Neither picture shows him wearing code cylinders.

The New Essential Guide to Characters (and by extension, the Official Star Wars Fact File) shows a totally different badge. It appears to be 6 blue pips on top and 2 red/4 yellow on the bottom. The New Essential Chronology repeats that layout in a clearer form.


This makes little sense to me. A 6-pip badge with no cylinders is, as far as I know, not generally used. But the Rebellion Era Sourcebook lists a cylinder (in the singular) as part of his equipment, so that would make him a captain by the Imperial Sourcebook and by the insignia used by Death Squadron at Hoth. If we go by the Endor system, that could put his rank as high as Piett's, but the Endor system is problematic in itself.

(And if we assume he has 2 cylinders, as the Essential Chronology picture cuts off the area of the pockets those are held in, he could be as high as a commander by the Imperial Sourcebook system.)

So what was his official rank? Was he a captain or a commander with a brevet posting, or was he an admiral by the Endor system, or were those pictures just wrong, or is everything depicting him in different timeframes despite all of them calling him "Warlord Zsinj"?


Then we come to the rank badge he wore after going rogue. He was repeatedly described as wearing a Grand Admiral's uniform (though none of the four pictures show it), but his rank plaque in the New Essential Guide to Characters and the New Essential Chronology isn't a grand admiral badge. I don't know what it is.

Going by Saxton's rank system (which seems to infer a bit too much, and tries to apply a "formula" where there might not actually be one), it would be a Supreme Moff plaque. But I can't find any actual reference to that rank outside of Saxton's system, and I think a grand admiral would still militarily outrank a Supreme Moff (so why wouldn't Zsinj just use the GAdm. plaque?).


So is there an answer for these burning (but actually totally unimportant) questions? Am I overthinking this? Is there even a theory to account for it? McEwok? Anyone?

 

He was an Admiral before he want rogue when refusing to retreat from Quelli Sector. He wore the uniform of a Grand Admiral when he was a warlord (at a time, he controlled 1/3 of the Galazy, that could be when hw wore the Grand Admiral uniform.

 

I know that. My question is, what kind of admiral was he, and what rank did he choose for himself (ignoring the white uniform of lack thereof).

In the last few months, I've absorbed every fact I can find about Zsinj, but I can't figure this one out on my own. I'm trying to find specific information where there may not actually be any.

 

Culator: That page still needs a lot of work - and new graphics... and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier to put it OOU, to avoid cute circumlocutions around things like "the Ensign/Nadeau team are inconsistent on rank insignia"...

... and I also have a major revision of the Chiss page to finish...

As to Zsinj, though - all the pics show him in khaki, so - IMHO - pre-warlord; in the real world, the various pictures obviously derived from each other, but the CtD/Ess. Chron. insignia is different from that in the NEGtC/NEC, so there's room for "creative reading" here...



Now we know from CtD, pp. 39-40, that Zsinj was at one point the Captain of a VSD (the text implies he got his command straight out of the Academy, jumping straight from his performance there to his posting as captain - but it doesn't say so outright, so there is wiggle room)... at a guess, the CtD/Ess. Chron. pics are thus representations of him back in his Captain days - you can just see a moustache in the CtD pic if you look for one, but I'm not sure it's really there, and absence might make it definitively "earlier"...

Why Zsinj lacks any code cylinders, I couldn't tell you... he should have at least one, so perhaps it's slipped down inside the pouch...

At the time of Endor, CtD (again) calls him "then-Admiral Zsinj", and says: "no-one had the raw power Zsinj commanded; he controled the resources of the Quelii oversector, not to mention the awesome firepower of Iron Fist".....

I suspect - although it's never said outright - that Zsinj was a military High Admiral serving under a civilian Grand Moff for the Quelii Oversector - the six blue/two red, four gold is interesting, though, especially as it's shared by two "independent" images... and I have to confess I hadn't noticed it before...

Purely speculatively, I'd say that the six blue over a total six red-and-gold indicates an Oversector High Admiral of some sort...

The obvious comparison is Tarkin's six blue over three red, three gold, also worn by a number of other Moffs/Grand Moffs; the old ISB has the same badge with no code cylinders as a "Priority Sector High Commander".

For a shift in the red/gold balance, we can look at Moff Marcellin Wessel's 19 BBY badge, which had five blue over one red and four gold, as against Moff Tarkin's five blue over three red and two blue - though just to be confusing, Tarkin wears six over six in RotS, and I can't make out the colours there...

There's also some evidence that six blue over four red and two gold could be the badge of the Supreme Fleet Commander: the NEGtC gives this insignia to Daala, definitively different than JA3, while in the NEC Pellaeon has the same, with two cylinders...

(Of course, for Pellaeon, we also have to take into account the WotC NJOSb, which has him in a grey uniform with standard Admiral insignia and four cylinders, and also the Nightsaber download, which calls him already "Grand Admiral Peallaeon" as of the start of the Orinda campaign on the turn of 12/13 ABY... )

One last person we can mention here is Leonia Tavira: she normally uses a "Tarkin" as Moff of Ettiau (though a few frames lop a square off the end on either row, this being Nadeau/Ensign), and she has a normal Admiral's badge in the later comics and I, Jedi, but on the cover to one issue of The Warrior Princess, she has six blue over six red, with no gold at all...

Obviously, the key differentiation here is the red/gold balance in the lower row: I suspect that more red indicates higher position, but it could be the other way around...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Daala's uniform is somewhat odd in itself, though. And that badge looks to me like it's actually 2 rows of 5, which Zsinj's NEGC badge could be interpreted as if we ignore the squished half-boxes on the right (though the New Essential Chronology pic would seem to agree with a 6 pip-2 row plaque).

Maybe both Daala and Zsinj are using a rank that's a relic from the early Imperial era-Daala because she's been in seclusion since shortly before the Battle of Yavin, and Zsinj just because he feels likes it.

Maybe Zsinj just made it up. Maybe he think's it's a Grand Admiral rank plaque (or superior to one) and nobody dares to question him. Maybe he just wants to see if people will comment on it. There's ample room for speculation.

(If I were Zsinj, I think I'd just put a datapad or hologram projector on my chest that cycled through random combinations. Of course, I'd also invent a whole new title, like Superior General Delvardus. I like "Ultimate Admiral" or "Extreme Moff." And one name wouldn't be enough either. I'd have to be "His Indisputable Magnificence, Ultimate Admiral Augustus Demetrius Herbert Zsinj Octavius the First, Extreme Moff of the Universe, Overlord of Every-Kriffing-Thing and Don't You Forget It.")

 

We just need to accept what he is mentioned to be in various sources. There is a great deal of ambiguiity in the use of the rank insignia, and none of that information gained by illustrations is generally reliable.

 

You're absolutely right. And I'm a donut.

Daala's uniform is a bizarre rephrase of the spacesuit she wears in the original EGtC, which I'm struggling to explain rationally (I have a work-in-progress fanfic in which both represent successive computer-enhanced versions of a holo snapshot of her flagship's bridge, taken by something moving very very fast)... but her lower row looks like three red and something too wide to be one gold - a Tarkin-style insignia, as on the JA3 cover? Perhaps on the non-uniform kit she wears in Planet of Twilight?

As to Zsinj - the "squished half boxes" are the sides of the end tabs... so the NEGtC shows him with five over five.... Compare that with Tarkin and Wessel's: if we're retconning some sense into these, that could be Admiral Zsinj before Quelii becomes an Oversector...

All very true!

One question, though - did Zsinj earn the title of Warlord properly, before Endor?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Um, what? A donut?

The sides of the end tabs? I guess that works, but why don't the other sides have any sort of definition like that? Odd artistic choice if correct. And then that means we have three different insignia for Zsinj. Maybe the 3-wide insignia is pre-admiralty, the 5-wide is post-admiralty, and the 6-wide is his I'm-better-than-everybody, post-Warlord, pre-white uniform insignia.

Who actually did earn that, aside from Thrawn?

 

Promoted to admiral by Palpatine and award the Superstar Brawl (renamed Iron Fist) for quick action against the Nightsiders.