Lit Legends: Isard and COMPNOR

I was re-reading some material from the post-Endor era, and I was curious why it seemed like COMPNOR, which essentially ran the Imperial bureaucracy, seemed to be content with Isard rising to take power. I would assume COMPNOR and the ISB would have allied with Pestage (and I’m sure they did), but the fact that it didn’t move to sieze control of the state after Palpatine’s and Pestage’s “deaths”. Seems odd that the secret police or the “party” didn’t have a stronger claim to power over the reins of government, or even do much to try to take over until after Isard’s death when the Imperial Civil War kicked into high gear. The Rogue Squadron books also essentially ignore COMPNOR/ISB entirely, which is a glaring hole. Thoughts?

 

Armand Isard seemingly helped organize COMPOR. He was the director of the Internal Security Bureau, a "Crisis branch" dedicated to "purging the Senate of disloyalty and corruption" and the director of the SBI and Intelligence as a whole. the Internal Security Bureau was later rolled into COMPNOR, presumably by Armand's suggestion. While it's never explicitly stated as such, I get the feeling that Ysanne was enrolled into COMPNOR's Sub Adult Groups as a child, explaining both her personality and command of the ISB. Her usurpation being backed by COMPNOR explains alot, even the Kryptos Virus plot feels ideologically very COMPNOR.

As for COMPNOR backing Pestage... people began turning against Pestage because he seemed either impotent or seeking to become the Emperor himself as per the Dark Empire Sourcebook, though ironically we the audience know that he knows Palpatine is alive and recovering.

In the eyes of COMPNOR, he appears as just another politician clinging to power and betraying the legacy of Palpatine and that of the New Order. While sadly WEG's planned Rogue Squadron Sourcebook was lost and never published... I am fairly certain that is how they would have explained it.

 

In the d-canon text The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, written fromnan in-universe perspective, Armand is stated to be the director of COMPNOR's board, with the exact directorship of the ISB unclear. And since the author, Dr. Kempshall, is familiar with legends, I assume he is being intentional here. He even leaves room for Ysanne, without naming her directly, as he says after Armand's death it is unknown who filled his place.

 

It does seem like a contradiction, but really wasn't. The Warfare Guide mentions that Isard eventually came to "oversee the entire Imperial security apparatus", so it's not a stretch to have her with some degree of oversight over ISB.

 

My headcanon is this:

Isard declared war on the ISB the second she got the news from Endor. She knew she ultimately wanted the throne for herself, and she figured her most dangerous opposition there was going to be the other main intelligence agency that was a rival to her own, so it had to be destroyed before she could move for the top chair. The war was bloody, but she ultimately succeeded, which allowed her to move on to the next stages of her plan as we saw in the X-wing comics. The result is that ISB is neutered, and eventually disbanded, which in turn pretty much neuters COMPNOR, since the ISB was its armed wing, the loss of which leaves it unable to compete and increasingly irrelevant in all the intra-Imperial fighting of the post-Endor years. Eventually, COMPNOR is dissolved as well.

To my knowledge, this does line up pretty well with existing canon. Per Wookieepedia, Imperial Intelligence and ISB's rivalry did break out into a straight up war of assassins after Endor, and ISB did eventually dissolve, though no exact dates are given for all that. It also matches the trajectory of overall Imperial politics; COMPNOR matters less and less over time and ends up dissolved, again per Wookieepedia, in 12 ABY. The fact that the Imperial Remnant gradually chills out to the point where it becomes capable of signing a peace with the New Republic - as opposed to just becoming more fanatical and dedicated to war and revenge, as in the new canon - can also be pretty well explained by the death of COMPNOR, which was the ideological heart of the Imperial project. Not what Isard intended when she decided to eliminate her rivals, I'm sure. But she always did have a way of handling Imperial Court intrigue in ways that just happened to hand the Rebels one gift after another on a silver platter.

 

Armand was in Palpatine's Inner Circle. I doubt the Select Committee could do much to stop Armand's appointment to director/chairman over COMPNOR/Select Committee. As for ISB's lack of teeth after Endor, we must assume that since Palpatine, in my opinion, seemed to have favored the ISB over II, that his death and the sudden loss of his patronage threw the organization into free fall, with Ysanne putting the final nails in their coffin.

 

Interesting thoughts. I really do wish we got that Rogue Squadron sourcebook, maybe they did address a lot of this.

Both Isards were portrayed as being fanatically loyal to Palpatine and the New Order, and that Armand made sure Ysanne was raised entirely within the structure of the New Order’s philosophy. Which also kind of contradicts the idea that ISB was established to counterbalance Intelligence, which Palpatine’s advisors saw as politically unreliable. It seems to have been run by some pretty staunch Palpatinists. Additionally, a lot of what we see Intelligence do and how they operate is also very ISB-esque. For example, we see them operate a massive re-education black site in Lusankya, they have political officers assigned to local security agencies (Kirtan Loor), they conduct surveillance among the citizenry and gauge their loyalty to the regime, and they even engage in internal security within the military. Idk, it just seems to me like there was a lot of unnecessary confusion between the two orgs by various authors.

Also, I think ISB was sorely underused. A lot of the WEG material kind of relegates ISB to going after low level criminal activity like smugglers and the like, not really conducting Orwellian-style police state activity. Outside of WEG it’s virtually nonexistent, except for its very appropriate appearance in Allegiance.

 

It's not as big of a contradiction as you might think, the thing about COMPNOR is that not only is it effectively a well organized "state within a state" but also its members make their way into various leadership roles throughout the government, Navy, Military, etc and there are implications that COMPForce was planned to slowly replace the standard military. The army and Intelligence and other institutions that carried over from the Republic often had a culture of rivalry and defiance towards COMPNOR, because COMPNOR is ultimately planned to replace them and their authority and area of operations is getting gradually replaced. Worth noting that while officially part of Intellogence, the Inquisitorius went to sub adult group rallies, and worked directly with the ISB and COMPNOr as per Evasive Action and Dawn of Defiance respectively.

While yes there is plenty of COMPNOR opposition within Intelligence it will never be as clear cut as "everyone in Intelligence opposes COMPNOR",

Worth noting that as far as we see practically every intelligence agent turned against her, whatever the false Kadann had, Cronal, Sixtus, and Kirtan, so the civil war between the ISB and Intelligence still holds... Just the boundaries are not absolute and clear cut which... Is typically how civil wars work.

 

If Armand's head of COMPNOR, it makes sense that his daughter would head the ISB, not II. Simple retcon would be to just coalesce both into the Imperial Intelligence Community, with ISB making up the primary role and II mostly doing things like sending Jahan Cross to spy on the Corporate Sector.

This is more or less why I retcon ISB and II into being the same thing, with the rivalry being internal more than external. I mean, it makes sense. II does mostly what ISB tends to do in recent media, the Isards are people who would fit right at home in the ISB as we see it portrayed. They even wear the same uniforms across media. It just works. Late Legends also has Isard be Director of the ISB.

 

Sorry, life got the best of me, haven’t been on in a few weeks.

I have started to do this myself to give myself less of a headache and to smooth over what I see as not so much “contradictions”, but certainly a misunderstanding of the actual roles or intentions of the two organizations as they were devised back in the Imperial Sourcebook by later authors.

Yes, but that took place long after Isard took over and was later deposed. She ruled from around 4ABY - 6ABY or so.


Additionally, I guess Isard was also responsible for putting down the uprising on Coruscant that we see at the end of RotJ (Special Edition) as per the Mara Jade comics. Again, weird that it was her and not the actual secret police doing that.

 

But if she is the head of COMPNOR, and ISB and II are branches of COMPNOR, as per d-canon, then it makes sense.

 

The discrepancy, IMO, comes from Legends. Also you get a bit of a reconciliation in that Isards flow well as Directors of the ISB, Yularen would be something along the lines of a sub-commander that handles operations, while the Isards handle pretty much the entire thing. The Board of Supervisors we see in Andor can easily be THE Ubiqtorate. I mean, it just fits.

Meanwhile if you want to keep Imperial Intelligence, make it Cronal's domain. Publicly, he serves as a moral custodian in the vein of Canaris, a remnant of the Old Republic. In reality, he serves the Sorcerers of Rhand and the True Sith.

 

It makes much more sense if you do make the Isards the head of both. I think part of my issue is that SO MANY sources make the point of how II and ISB absolutely despise each other and have separate chains of command (Ubiqtorate vs COMPNOR).

If they are all unified under the Isards, great. If not, then it just seems odd that ISB would be ok with the head of their rival agency just taking over the reins of government in what’s basically a coup. Unless Isard purged the ISB command staff, which to my knowledge is not mentioned anywhere. But even then, the fact that the Imperial bureaucracy itself and the machine of state was firmly under COMPNOR influence (as per the Imperial Sourcebook) by this time, then how was she able to maintain control over the administration of the Empire? Surely the COMPNOR bureaucrats and party purists in government would either resign or simply not comply with her leadership, and instead try to countermand her or install one of their own to take over the state.

 

COMPNOR is not just a state apparatus, it is a political party of fanatics with abnormal support from the government, their members likely exist in various forms in various levels of the government and military.

Additionally the whole point of the Ubiqtorate is that no one knows anything about them besides the fact that they seem to have great power and influence and are a BOARD of directors who employed the mysterious "Adjustments" branch(which might include the Inquisitorius and special intelligence) that is assigned jobs beyond the scope of the regular bureaus. The real issue tbh is the insistence on Intelligence only having one director.

There is no real issue with some members of the Ubiqtorate being COMPNOR members(the board's membership is mysterious) or even the Isards and Cronal directing simultaneously. Much like there is no issue with Ardus Kaine being a high ranking COMPNOR founder and a Grand Moff, or Ill-Raz being a COMPNOR member and a Grand admiral.

The ISB board in Andor being the Ubiqtorate doesn't fit any description of them, they seem to be the heads of the Investigations Branch of the ISB.

Additionally if the two agencies are as big of rivals as portrayed in WEG material, then they likely do work together, much like how the navy and army do despite being rivals and often working in tandem. Similarly, an admiral probably has tons of overlapping authorities over the army personnel on his ship, and vice versa. similarly I would suspect that ISB HQs have detachments of intelligence operatives to help with coordination.

An intelligence agent in say Cryptoanalysis gets sent a signal to decode at the behest of the ISB and is expected to report back the findings, etc. The divide was never going to be clean.

Hell in WEG material ISB's Investigations works closely with the military, and in Andor we see the ISB order essentially martial law on a settlement, complete with stormtroopers. Dedra has authority over the military personnel attached to Ferrix despite the ISB and Military being separate branches of government.

 

Interesting tidbits from the Essential Guide to Warfare under Ysanne's war portrait mini-article: it is described that her style of running things was a "departure from her father's policy of subtle and civilized ruthlessness. Ysanne appreciated new-generation Imperial projects such as the Executor and the Tarkin Doctrine in a way that her father never could, and when Armand Isard attempted to overthrow Palpatine, Ysanne unhesitatingly betrayed him..."

It is interesting that the article explicitly says that Armand wanted to usurp the Emperor, as in Interlude at Darkknell it's left ambiguous. Also, Ysanne's embracement of the Tarkin Doctrine and other COMPNOR-friendly ideals seems to have been a primary reason why she got her father's post at such a young age. She, like the Mottis and the Ozzels, were largely promoted due to loyalty to the party.

 

Something interesting that I just found on Isard's Wookiee page was this tidbit in the Behind the Scenes section.

"In an "Ask Me Anything" on Bluesky in 2024 Stackpole was asked if Isard actually died at the end of Isard's Revenge, as there was a passage that could be interpreted as she is actually imprisoned on board of the Lusankya. He said "Well, you know, Lucasfilm hates to kill off characters so..."."

https://bsky.app/profile/michaelastackpole.bsky.social/post/3ld7ncosd632q

Here is the post in question.