Lit The Evil Empire, or, rather, a commentary on what Legends did to the Empire

I completely agree. The 2000's were the apogee of the grim n' gritty "deconstruction" craze that really got popularized by Watchmen in the 80's. Unfortunately people don't get that, when you take something apart and don't know how to put it back together, you make a mess.

The Legacy comics were the height of that grim 'n gritty approach in Star Wars. Cade Skywalker was a drug addict and a criminal, a far cry from the idealistic farmboy Luke. The One Sith are the embodiment of 2000's edge lord drama. Everyone is mean, bitter, and unhappy. For all its controversy, Legacy was alright IMO. Although it was a terrible place to end the Legends timeline on. See my first post in this thread as to why I feel that way.

Legacy of the Force is grim n' gritty without a point.

I feel that, in addition to this grim and gritty nihilistic POV there was a decline in critical thinking and literacy when it came to understanding film and print.

For instance, there were so many "How bad is the Empire really? We don't see them do that many bad things in the movies" articles up through even to today that I can't help but scratch my head. Did people not see the same movies I did?

In the OT films alone, the Empire:
1. Murders members of a diplomatic escort
2. Takes one of their own Senators prisoner and tortures her. It doesn't matter if they know she's a Rebel. The characters make it clear that her capture is going to raise trouble in the Senate. They know what they're doing is legally dubious at best. They also plan to execute her without a trial.
3. Dissolves the legislature so that the regional governors can rule as mini dictators in the Emperor's name
4. Blow up a peaceful planet despite the Princess begging for mercy
5. Brutally execute at least two civilians (Beru and Owen) without trial or warrant
6. Murder a whole bunch of Jawas.
7. Summarily execute their own officers and commit physical violence against said officers without court martial
8. Torture Han Solo
9. Conquer an independent territory (Cloud City) in an unprovoked act of aggression despite said territory's leader offering to cooperate
10. Build another weapon of mass destruction with plans to use it.
11. The Leader of said Empire is willing to slowly torture a prisoner (Luke) to death in a cruel and inhumane method of punishment. Yes, Luke's a rebel. But mistreatment of POW's is a crime.

And then of course there were the stupid people who got it in their head that Luke was somehow as bad as the Empire for blowing up the Death Star, forgetting
1. The Death Star blew up a pacifist planet, which later sources revealed had a population of 2 billion people
2. The Death Star was a military installation staffed by military personnel and is thus a military target.
3. The Death Star was going to be used again and again as many times as the Empire felt necessary
Clerks put it best. Any civilian contractor with two brain cells would have checked out the politics behind what was going on. If they were stupid enough or greedy enough to stay on board, that's strictly their own look out.

Canon has actually shown Imperial officers acting as thought he destruction of the Death Star was morally worse than the destruction of Alderaan, and they've unilaterally been portrayed as delusional psychos.

 

I think the difference between comparing the Empire to Russia and its many different incarnations over the years, is that the concept of the Galactic Empire and its many many symbols came by a generation or two ago, and its tenants were founded TO THE CORE on humaocentrism, oppression, and all sorts of different bigotries.

Russia is a culture commonly found in a specific region founded upon thousands of years of ever evolving and interwoven cultural movements.

The Empire more resembles the Confederacy, or the multiple fascist states that arose and fell within a generation around the 40s. Unlike those states however, the Empire was allowed to continue due to a treaty the NR signed that treated them as an equal sovereign power when they were not. Despite every founding document of the Rebellion stating their belief that the Empire was immoral, illegitimate, and must be opposed

 

A good portion of Ciena's arc in Lost Stars is dedicated to picking apart this argument, and it's a big part of why I love that book so much. Ciena wholeheartedly believes that destroying the Death Star was a comparable evil to destroying Alderaan, not helped by the fact that her best friend, who is probably about as close to a legitimately Good Imperial as you can get, blew up with it, and her initial breakup with Thane is due to falling out over this. The rationalization she eventually comes to is that the DS was a deterrent, intended to only be used once to head off even greater loss of life from a prolonged conventional war. Therefore, it is the Rebels' fault for continuing to wage said prolonged conventional war rather than taking the hint. She coasts on this belief for the next couple years.

Then she sees they built a second one.

 

The Roman Empire engaged in conquest and war from the subjugation of Latinum, Yet the empire of 1453, 600 AD and 120 AD, and the Republic of 200 BC and 50 BC were very different polities. Same with Russia or the Ottomans really. Britain in 1900 and Britain in 2000, or germany in 1871 and Germany in 2010. The Empire ends at least 4-5 generations removed from Palpatine. Which is more than enough time for radical changes in the dispositions and policies of the state(take the Roman Republic of 50 BC and the same state in 110 AD). If anything-legends shows how states can behave very differently over the course of long periods of time-generations upon generations.

By the time of the Gavrisom-Pellaeon treaty, the empire was a rump state-a remnant in the vein of say the later Byzantine empire or any other rump state-that is a fraction of what it used to be, under very different leadership that one could make a treaty with. It was nearly 40 years out from Palpatine's inauguration and Palpatine had already been dead for nearly a decade since his last resurrection-crucially the personnel of the empire in 19 ABY was vastly different than 4 ABY or even 12 ABY.

A state's longevity is ultimately a matter of historical contingency-not some sort of inherent moral valuation.

My overall point being-the Empire in Legends is a realistic portrayal of a state's evolution over time. Its borders grow and shrink, people in charge end up dying, and are replaced, new people take over, it interacts with other states, and thus it had become something very different.

I would also reemphasize that Legends' pessimism regarding the stability and resilience of democratic institutions is if anything nearly prophetic. The power of personalities, the stresses of war, the push and pull of different often irreconcilable interests, the ease in which politicians can be bribed, manipulated or simply intimidated, all shown from Fey'la to the GA's memorable collapse in Legacy-just how vulnerable democracy is. How easily it can be overturned or rendered hollow and empty.

 

I mean yes, in general, I also prefer entertainment made during the 2000s than most things in the 2010s (early 2010s, I'll make an exception). I'm not hiding that, either. But I also don't find it as bleak as people are saying here.

But generally, I liked it when it wasn't hammered into my head as to why I should hate something. I would not say it really changed the portrayal of the Empire, much. In the OT, sure, it does all those atrocities, but its done by people who are relatively normal, not frothing at the mouth crazy psychopaths. That's just generally how it goes. The Empire's an organization, and those will do good and bad things. From a certain perspective, the evil will outweigh the good, and vice versa from another.

That's not going to change my mind no matter how many Huxes and reposts of Imperial atrocities you throw at me lol.

 

Legends if it has a meta plot is ultimately about the Skysolos, and really the eternal dance between stability and change, chaos and peace, light and darkness. Its very taoistic in that way-Stazi's point in the guide to warfare is basically a concession that war is eternal because sapient life will always struggle, there will always be conflict-but you can acquit yourself with personal virtue and integrity.

I'd say the old EU had a more fatalistic outlook-ultimately everyone is going to be what they are, and all you can do is play the part fate has allotted to you. Even as governments rise and fall, and fortunes change, rebels become dynasts, and the descendants of heroes flee their obligations.

Governments are ultimately reflections of the hearts and minds of the people that make them up-and if you want good government, you need good people. I think that's the final message the old EU leaves us with.

Regardless...Sinre is correct, the current age(the 2020s) is a very different time than the 2000s and nineties. So, I suspect Legends' legacy will be colored by criticism regarding the way it handled the empire. I do admit I am curious how people will engage with the old Eu in a decade or even five years-assuming anyone still does.

 

Yes, there is a difference between Rome and the Galactic Empire. The Galactic Empire and all its symbols were created as symbols of their belief in the supremacy of humans. It was a cultural movement created in a single generation.

COMPNOR is not so subtly the nazi party complete with youth rallies. If someone fought "for the empire" for decades on end, retreating to a small corner of the galaxy while doing so, what values are they actually fighting for? Certainly not their homeworld, or for the concept of peace.

Russia existed for thousands of years, people called themselves russian for thousands of years, they called themselves that because they lived on the land of Russia. Being Russian is not synonymous with some ideological movement or some beliefs. Its synonymous with growing up on or being related to people who lived in Russia.

Same goes for romans. They are romans because they grew up near or around Rome or were descended from people who did, or grew up in the Roman Empire. "Roman" is not an ideology, its an ancestry and its a culture.

The Galactic Empire is a reactionary movement of radicalized bigotry. Its a cultural movement that existed for a generation. Pellaeon and the rest of his ilk are no longer even fighting for their families or homeworlds or anything like that, they are fighting for the "New Order" Ideology.

Even Jagged Fel with his "New Order with a New Face" push.

Even Pellaeon.

You know what a reformed Nazi Germany is called? Germany

A reformed Nazi Japan is called Japan

A reformed Nazi Italy is called Italy

A reformed Galactic Empire is called the Galactic Republic.

Yes over time symbols and such can change meaning. Maybe a thousand years from now the swastika will be a symbol of peace like it once was and its relatively recent meaning is complwtely forgotten, loat to the sands of time. Maybe language drift will make the words we are arguing mean completely different things.

However, what ideas and beliefs was the empire fighting for up to and including the Gavrisom Treaty and beyond? What do the symbols they push and carry around mean to them? If someone carries around a confederate flag and talk about how they would fight for it, am I not allowed to make assumptions about the ideology they know that flag represents?

 

You yourself concede that symbols and meanings change. Personnel changes, and times change. Morality even changes.

Like I said, states are ultimately just expressions of people. The symbols and ideological dressing are what a given set of people accord meaning to at a given time. In 10,000 years will anyone have the same emotions at a US flag? The hammer and sickle?

As far as states are concerned I am not an essentialist. I don’t believe states have some sort of inherent moral character, identity, or essence that anyone who wears their colors must be party too. Jagged Fel is not Palpatine, and an imperial soldier circa 128 ABY is not a COMPNOR officer.

Point being, symbols and states are ultimately transitory and their meanings change with time and the changing of generations. As you yourself acknowledge.

What the Roman Empire meant to a legionary in the days of Trajan and what it meant in 1204 were very very different. Different religious and political justifications, different ideas about how the sovereign was seen as legitimate, etc… the difference is ultimately again-time.

(Also Roman absolutely was an ideology, it was such a powerful ideology that Greek speaking people in Greece still identified with it to some degree into the 20th century).

Ideologies change as well-what people mean by “communism” or “liberalism” in 1900 or 1870 and what they mean by these terms today are often very different. Ideas are not static and the meanings and values people associate or attribute to them are also not eternal or unchanging.

 

You are deliberately ignoring the main point so let me repeat.

The Empire was an extremist ideology formed not a generation ago at most. Most people living in the Empire remeber and know and fought for the old ideologies of the New Order or were complacent with it. They clearly continue to support it or at the very least arent horrified by them as they continue using the symbols of the Empire.

The "Fel Empire" is more or less a fanterm, you want to know what its called inuniverse? Its called the Empire.

Every single one of the moffs is a raging racist using "alien lover" like a slur in HoT. Pellaeon, a man who lived for longer than the existence of the Empire, professes his agreement with New Order ideology.

Symbols and ideology changes over time, these symbols and this ideology didnt change at all. Its being upheld and spearheaded by imperialists who lived during the empire whose conception of the Empire and its ideology is thqt of the Empire itself.

 

It’s late, I’m tired and I have no interest in a charged discussion at this hour. I also don’t have any interest in repeating myself or further elaborations.

So I am withdrawing from this discussion.

 

And yet, New Orderism is not fascism. It certainly has aspects of it, but it is its own thing. I would argue that the New Order has more aspects of the Soviet Union in it, particularly the late stage Brezhnev era, than it does with Nazi Germany when applied to in practice. I don't need to justify any defense of it, because I'm not defending space Nazism. Because it isn't that in any shape or form other than some aesthetic form.

Why would the Imperials be horrified at those symbols? The Empire didn't go down as Nazi Germany did, seen as the ultimate evil in the world, it more of collapsed to in-fighting and gradually losing ground to the New Republic. Palpatine is more of a Bonapartist figure, or at worse, a Stalin, than a Hitler.

And nations are shaped by ideologies. Modern France is a direct descendant of the French Revolution. Everything about it is directly, and intrinsically tied to the French Revolution. Culture, language, everything. It was specifically the Revolutionaries that forced a sort of Parisian accent on the rest of the country, and removed autonomy that was held from a lot of provinces. Most things you know about France date back to the French Revolution.

The United States? The American Revolution started out as an appeal to the King of Britain. They did not aim to form a new country on the get-go, they just wanted to be able to be represented in the Houses of Parliament, and actually appealed to the King in opposition to the British government. Yet the United States as a culture was shaped throughout the American Revolutionary War, which took up the ideals of liberal philosophers at the time, and used it to bring in its form of government.

I mean, you can call me a Nazi and a Trump supporter all you like. I'm not going to stop enjoying the Empire and considering their Legends representation a good thing.

 

The New Order is in fact Space Fascism.

In Evasive Axtion we see alien workers specifically getting targetted and sent to Byss under promise of work while having their belongings disintegrated because they are not expected to return.

Kernels and Husks, the short story from the ROTJ FACPOV, starts out with the advisors debating the "alien problem", with the only reql debate being the practicality of such.

Greejaytus being a genocidal racist is q consistent charwcter trait, wonder why they made him one of the founders of COMPNOR? What could they possibly have meant by this?

COMPNOR is consistently, in all depictions, depicted as being the Nazi Party down to having a hitler youth division, preaching humanocentrism, having a department dedicated to scouring the media and art. COMPNOR has a department of redesign sent to planets that were valuable but whose state refused the tenents of the New Order.

Really gotta wonder what they meant by this, direct tie-ins to ROTS even.




In fact what did Lucas mean by this, his artistic vision is forever a mystery

The preemptive defensiveness about being called a Nazi and a Trump supporter is honestly more eyebrow raising than your opinion on a fictional media.

 

Chipping back in, because apparently these debates never end.

I definitely prefer the legends’ aesthetics with regards to the empire, and the portrayal of its evolution through time.

That said…I do think the eventual consensus will be that legends was unduly conciliatory to the empire. What I find more interesting than re litigating “is the empire fascist” is how that will affect people’s engagement with the old EU in the future.

And how more broadly this may impact the old EU’s legacy.

 

I mean Fascism is an ideology that's more than just aesthetics. So is Nazism for that matter. It is an actual ideology, and I already stated that the Empire shares some inspiration from it, I quite literally never denied it, but I deny that it is a direct and obvious copy and paste.

And none of these are exclusive to the Nazi Party. The Soviet Union is a more direct parallel to all of these, even modern China to an extent.

No idea:



A lot of totalitarian ideologies mirror each other. But they are not the same. Same way you can't just call the USA and Spain the same countries just because they have a liberal democracy.

Canon has been taking in back a lot of things from Legends, so a more reasonable Empire that people can be fans of is definitely in the cards. If it sells well (and it will), then there's going to be someone who can sell it.

The introduction of Pellaeon and the Shadow Council offers a Disneyverse take on Imperial Warlords and a future Pellaeonic Imperial Remnant.

 

I seriously doubt Disney will have any imperial remnant equivalent. If it does, it will be treated as uniformly antagonistic in any post TROS material.

Given Andor and other shows, I think Disney definitely intends the empire be seen as evil full stop.

 

There's no overarching goal of a particular show. Andor is very different in tone from what Filoni wants to do, for example, which itself is different from Tales of the Empire. Andor in of itself might have the Empire as clear-cut villains, but it quite openly shows that they're still human, and you can see it in Dedra, Syril, etc. Meanwhile they finally revealed what was Saw Gerrera's deal, and its just that he huffs rhydonium.

 

I don’t follow Disney SW close enough to comment on specifics, I am only going off the general gist.

I feel the entire debate about “how the empire should be portrayed” ultimately comes down to audience preference. Do you want clear cut moral narratives and parables? Or do you want space opera political factionalism in which authorial judgements are not so definitive or insistent?

Ultimately it comes down to what the writers and audiences are looking for. What a given moment or period in time reflects and thus what expectations people have of their media.

At the current time people don’t want “moral greyness”-they want good guys to be whatever their flaws, undeniably good and on the right side, and for bad guys, whatever elements may be sympathetic to be definitely in the wrong. Didactic storytelling is very much in vogue at the moment. That’s not just the case in SW but pop culture in general at the present time.

 

Honestly, cutting out any moral or political considerations. Yet another imperial faction would be fairly boring. Not only did the EU do it, and have them be the central defining superpower, but so did yet another trilogy, and so is the flagship tv show of the franchise.

We dont need remnants of a remnant of a remnant of a centuries irrelevant regime fighting the Reconstituted Galactic Free Republic of Liberated Systems.

 

Eh…Disney sees SW as a nostalgia driven property. We are likely to get empire vs rebels reduxes I think until SW fades away completely.

I don’t like this, but I do think Disney’s assessment that most audiences want to re live the OT is largely correct.

 

Regarding that - it seems to me that the biggest difference between the Empire in Legends and NU Canon is not some political details, but the topic of family. After all, Fel dynasty started with Soontir, who was not only a honorable warrior, but a good family man as well, and his many children inherited the idea of the Empire being civilization's shield against barbarity and horrors. While also Wedge being his brother-in-law eventually became a symbol of the Empire (even though with Chiss' influence) and New Republic's cooperation, when Jagged arrived to help his uncle to fight the Vong.

While in NU Canon Imperial families are often dysfunctional (with Huxes being the most demonstrative), and the First Order is build upon the idea of taking children away from their families to make them perfect servants of the regime. Dedra and Syril both have a rough upbringing, and their genuine attempt to build a relationship ended badly, with no future for both of them.

 

I don't mean they'd bring in a First Order Remnant (although, I'm certain they'll be around too), I mean they'll bring in Pellaeon's Remnant from Legends and just have the First Order temporarily take it over. If anything, Andor has been very much the basis of such a move, considering they acknowledged Tarkin's Ghorman Massacre, and just in the same way they show greyness in the Rebellion, I find it likely something that takes after Andor might do greyness in the Empire. As I said, I don't think Andor is the gold standard moving forward though. Filoni's got his own plans, but he is just as likely to do so.

We're moving back towards the 2000s, and I'm here for it. Also One Canon, I guess, that's still on the cards. Which is interesting because a year ago I counted out Legends as a done deal, but things like Andor and Ahsoka have brought back in the idea.

I actually don't think there was a conscious choice to make the Empire actually cartoonishly evil, barring Chuck Wendig's Aftermath which set the tone for much of what came after. JJ Abrams was certainly not considering Force Awakens as a 'take that' to imagined fascism. He just wanted to rehash the OT. There was no actual political message behind the Sequel Trilogy, and I find that to be among its flaws, actually. I don't dispute that the PT and OT had politics in it, it was actually a central point.

But there's a difference. Back then, Lucas did not subscribe to a term that I will steal, that is Californian Binarism, the idea that everyone is 100% evil and when they are evil, every action, every relation to them is evil, or alternatively someone is 100% good, and they are all, genuinely, complete saints. If anything, storytelling suffers from this more than any political messaging. Which, like, even if I disagree with someone politically, I would not portray their stand-in as complete evil monsters. Lucas hated the Nixonian Gangsters, but he didn't turn them into eldritch abominations, they were just guys in a board room considering how to go about their plans. Not different from what we see in Andor, really.

 

There is a difference between there being "greyness in the empire" and creating an "empire but good".

There is no interest by any author to do the latter. Canon Pellaeon is currently participating in a plot to destabilize the galaxy working side by side with founders of the First Order, in the aftermath of hideous atrocities being committed by imperials on entire planets that caused anyone with a decent set of morals to leave.

The people left in the Empire are the most fanatically devoted ones desperately dreaming of a resurgence. The First Order is essentially what Pellaeon is dreaming about here.

 

Way too early to tell, at this point. It may be that not all Imperials knew what was down with Operation Cinder. We'll see how they go about it in 2026.

 

Re: Legacy comics

For all its faults, the comics do a few things that I like, such as Cade's eventual recovery, with many mis-steps and relapses along the way. He isn't going to simply "get better".

Where it gets very smart is with the Jedi supporting Vong atonement and the Sith and Empire exploiting that to gain power, tapping into a vengeful galaxy. Then, the readers decide Emperor Fel is, by way of being in opposition to Krayt, a good guy. But the story takes a different tack, Fel is not presented as this. It all culminates in him being willing to kill the galaxy with Omega Red because it's all about killing Krayt. (Who is on a kill everyone to see who resurrects kick mixed with Sidious-style superweaponry.)

Emperor Fel was SW' Homelander