Saga How good/bad was the empire actually?

I know that a lot of people hated the empire, but, in terms of their rule, how good were they?

Did they have a decent justice system and fair laws?
Did Palp pride himself on ruling well, and only be evil when something/someone threatened his rule?
How did they do economically?
Besides fighting the re'b'el's, did they keep peace in the galaxy?
Did people have a fairly decent amount of freedom?
Were imperial troops and higher ranking officials under the same rules as the common folk, just with licence to kill, torture and do worse things when they could prove it "reasonable", or did they have a far looser leash than the common people?
Did the planets under the empire often still have their own democratic systems and laws, which could be overruled by the empire, but the planets still could hold onto them?
What use was the senate between ep 3 and ep 4, and why did it take so many years to dissolve?
Was there any element of democracy within the empire itself, within limits?
Any other information you can give on the empire and how they ruled?
Were there any systems that actually liked being ruled by the empire (as opposed to supporting it because of what power and bribes they may have received)?

 

As far as the senate goes, Palpatine needed it to maintain his grip on distant systems until he was able to establish an authoritarian parliament (regional governors) and the Death Star.
I know from the EU that the Empire would take advantage of luxuries, even ones as trivial as restaurant seats, and deny them from civilians.
The senate for the first nineteen years was the only reassemblanxe to democracy that I know of, and that was eliminated obviously. And Palpatine would gradually send garrisons to planets like Alderaan, Bellassa and Samaria and Kashyyyk) to shut down the local democratic institutions.

As far as I know, Palpatine would keep everyone in a tight grip and crush them when they struggled, so I doubt that he treated the common people very nicely. Granted, some people had special privileges, but they were only around to enforce his wants or provide what he needed.
Imperial troops and officers were free to kill anyone at anytime, im sure there's an example of innocent people dying at the hands of the Empire.
I'm sure the justice system was much harsher than the Republics and I know that Palpatine gave no aid to any planets in need. He forced many human males to join the ranks of the Empire, promoted species prejudice, and persecuted aliens.

So no, it wasn't a good place to live for the average Joe.

 

But Palpatine made the galaxy great again. The Jedi were just losers. Sad.

 

One of the things why I love in-depth "in-universe" research is that it sometimes reveals little things that would otherwise go by unnoticed.

Here is a discovery from ANH about the way stormtroopers dealt with captured Alderaanian Guards in ANH: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/little-things-in-the-ot.50044232/#post-54183793

According to my research thus far, we see briefly some of these Alderaanian Guards in the corridor behind Threepio (while he is looking for Artoo), apparently going for the starboard esape pods. Well, they didn't really make it and surrendered. Vader, assuming these might have had the data carrier with the Death Star plans, questioned them, found out they know nothing and then probably made a gesture that the stormtroopers interpreted as "kill them when they don't expect it". Well, a few moments later (when Leia is brought before Vader) there are at least two dead bodies on the floor that hadn't been there previously....

 

I think the fact that given the highest ranking politician on screen so far is a man who blew up a planet out of sheer spite we can safely assume the Empire was not a particularly democratic or free system. The general theme of the Imperial government appears to be ruling through fear and overwhelming force. Probably somewhere in the vast reaches of the galaxy there's a Governor or two who are relatively more liberal and unoppressive but overall? I see no reason to assume that it's anything other than despotic.

 

It would be great to see more stuff about the every day empire, imperial life for loyal systems and systems that tolerate or are forced to live under the empire, but I think that it would be hard to do it in a way that wouldn't get boring. But to explore it little by little within the context of other movies, shows, canon books etc is always good.

 

Good/bad is a point of view. But from my point of view the Empire is evil. After all, authoritarian governments usually become so, sooner or later, even the ones that start ut with good intentions such as providing stability. And I don't think Palpatine ever had any intention of serving anyone's interests but his own and his twisted ideology. We see no evidence in the OT that the Empire is ever interested in improving the lives of its citizens. Cloud city is the only relatively rich or flourishing settlement that we see, and it was doing so without the Empire's help. Such is the Empire's reputation that panic immediately ensues in the streets upon Lando's announcement that they have taken control. That alone speaks volumes for how the Empire has been behaving.

 

The only good Imperial is a dead Imperial.

 

In fairness there probably are a few genuinely nice and decent Imperials out there somewhere in the fringes where they don't affect anything, but for one thing, they aren't the ones to go after the Rebels or that the Rebels would go after as a priority, and for another having the heroic Rebels fighting/killing good honest people and not Space Nazis and other such moral relativity is outside the remit of Star Wars in general - Rogue One being the most notable exception to the overall black/white, good/evil dichotomy, and even there the Imperials are pretty clearly worse than the Rebels overall.

 

Alderaan.

 

Jedha City. That little girl that Jyn saved during the firefight between the Partisans and the stormtroopers? Dead. Gone. Vaporized. Along with everyone else there. Also, the Imperial installation on Scarif; they literally fired on their own people.

 

Even Rogue One's ''shades of grey'' morality was suggesting the Rebels were not perhaps whiter than white. Even then the Imperials were far, far worse than the Rebels ever were. Saw is heavily implied to have done some really grim stuff but A) we don't actually see this and B) the actual main Rebellion boot him out for this exact reason.

 

That Ewok they killed.

 

They killed it for blinking.

 

To be fair, killing Ewoks proves the Empire wasn't all bad...

 

If we find out one day in some novel that the Empire killed Jar Jar Binks then brother, I'm on their side!

 

Thoughts GrandAdmiralJello ?

 

IMO any government who is willing to destroy an entire planet of its citizens (especially non-military) or destroy one of their own currently occupied and operable military installations has nothing "good" that can be said about them at all really. Their willingness to resort to such things really just instantly nullifies any perception of possible benefit their presence could've potentially offered.

I mean, the galaxy IS ruled by Sith, sooooooo...........

 

I think it's interesting and thought-provoking that (though we rarely get looks at Imperial planets) the Imperials don't seem to be mistreating the Ewoks, just avoiding them, and also that the Empire expresses *so* little interest in Tatooine.

Presumably the Empire is pretty brutal against smugglers and other outlaws, which is why they center on far-off areas like Tatooine, although the book SotE plausibly suggests it collaborates with/for fees tolerates organized crime.

Imperial planets do seem to have some degree of internal authority and democracy but that was probably sharply decreasing during the time of the OT. I somehow have the impression that both humans and Gungans of Naboo liked the Empire for a while.

While the Empire seemed sexist and species-ist in its military personnel, so did the Rebels early on, not sure if the Rebels changed (although I think that's more likely) or always were more diverse and it just wasn't initially shown.

Alderaan may have initially also liked the Empire or been mixed in view and slow to change ... it's hard to picture a whole planet actually having no weapons (if that was true, even if it was an exaggeration it was probably mostly true) and not developing some, especially given how bad the Empire was said to be and that its leaders Bail and Leia openly-secretly disliked it, unless the general population was pretty ambivalent and probably formerly supportive of the Empire.

 

These are the reasons I believe the Empire sucked:

1 - Palpatine demanded to be worshipped by all citizens of his Empire like he was a deity. They even had monuments for his glory. Most people didn't worshipped for whatever reason (they didn't like him or they had other religions).
2 - The Empire valued the human species above other species, some sort of racism.
3 - The Emperor didn't tolarate any kind of rebelion. It is a classic dictadorship.

 

They were ruthlessly evil. Blowing up Alderaan is enough to see that. I suppose the regular schlubs in the Imperial ranks were decent people -- but Tarkin, The Emperor, and a lot of the Imperials are some evil guys

 

Citizens, some troops, and some officers and politicians weren't all bad. The Empire as a whole was very repressive, violent, and even genocidal if necessary.

 

Uh... what even is this question? I think it should be obvious to even a small child that the Empire is the purest form of evil. They are directly based on the Nazis, after all...

 

Well they kept the floors of their starships pretty clean, so that's something.