Who questions Thrawn's evilness?

Matt: I don't have the quote to hand, but IIRC, Pellaeon's POV analysis in the Mithel tractor beam flub scene is that Thrawn has changed the rules...

according to the NR's own records, they were assaulted from the Core

That would be the Essential Chronology, yes? Brough to you by the same people that gave fandom the five-mile Ex in the EGVV? IIRC, Dodona's briefing implies that the Dark Empire fleet out of the Deep Core was something utterly unexpected... and I think it's fair to say that the NR might 'edit' the events leading up to Dark Empire, either for security reasons or straightforward propaganda (got your tauntaun handed to you by Thrawn's fleet even after he's dead? Whoops, blame it on the Clone Palpatine)...

The fact that the "Inner Council" survivors and "former Starfleet commanders" fell to fighting amongst themselves (at least on Cour.) doesn't exactly agree well with the idea that they were all following orders from Byss, and IIRC, Isard's POV when she's back aboard the Lusankya at the end of Isard's Revenge contradicts the Essential Chronology claim that she knew about the Clone Palpatine)... with Thrawn and Isard gone, the surviving commanders started squabbling...

I guess you could say that huge fleets of Dark Empire ships were operating un-noticed by what was left of NRI and by the Imperial leaders themselves... but it makes as much sense to imagine commanders like Pellaeon, Kaine and Rogriss out on the Rim getting on with rolling up the Rebels, and happily letting the ambitious idiots beat each other up on Coruscant...

I guess part of it could be that the routed NR had fallen back to the area around Kashyyyk, Bothawui and Mon Calamari thanks to the campaign that retook Cour. - the squabbling left the Imperials unable to deliver the killer blow, but the Dark Empire fleet did - charging across the battle-plane and attacking Mon Calamari...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Thief: read that carefully. It's not presented as objective, it's presented as subjective analysis... is the context even supposedly NR, like the WEG stuff?

Oh, so if a Briton pointed out that the observed behaviour of the National-Socialists suggested quite strongly that they were incarcerating and systematically liquidating Jews and Slavs due to racial hatred, it'd be subjective analysis and clearly tainted by the inherent bias of a Briton?

Anyway... the scene in The Last Command where Thrawn doesn't have Rukh knife Mithel suggests a rather different underlying attitude - namely, that Thrawn has subtly moved the Empire away from fear - and (whatever the POV of other novellists and RPG geeks) shows what Zahn intended us to see there...

No, not really. The Empire is the same: Thrawn changed. Not the other way 'round.

And as for your offhanded remark about "other novellists and RPG geeks"....

Their writings on the subject are every bit as canonical and binding as Zahn's. And if Zahn failed to explicitly state his intention, his intention is not canonical, and can (and in this case, quite possibly has been) superseded and overruled by their writings.

So what Zahn intended for us to see is totally irrelevant. What we do see is all that matters. And what I see is a bigot who's realised that he can't go around randomly executing people for failures, especially if it isn't their fault in the first place. I don't see social progress, I don't see egalitarianism, or any of the other florid things you seem to want to read into it.

And considering that it is just your interpretation, which is crippled by the fact that the man was a bigot... well, you'll just have to forgive me for not clicking my heels and agreeing.

The Empire expected Starfleet personnell who failed to be executed for it. Think Ozzel.

The Chiss didn't. Think Thrawn.

For starters, Admiral Ozzel was executed by Darth Vader, who is not the Starfleet, and is not representative of standard Imperial doctrine. Need I remind you that Admiral Piett was not summarily executed?

And secondly, yes, Thrawn did execute people who failed. Remember Cris Pieterson?

That's why Thrawn started off having Rukh kill bridge officers; but by the time of Mithel's tractor-beam flub in The Last Command, he'd changed the rules - subtly and slowly, but certainly. And so, he promoted Mithel instead, and the crew of the Chimaera accepted it...

You're begging the question. You're basing all this on a premise ("Thrawn spared Mithel because he was changing the rules") that is at least as questionable as your conclusion ("Therefore, Thrawn's actions were excusable").

What the crew of the Chimaera accepts is totally meaningless. You're trying to make it sound like they'd have mutinied if they'd thought Thrawn was breaking the rules.

The facts of the matter are that one man was executed brutally for his failure, and another promoted. And given the immediate aftermath of the second decision, it comes off much more like propaganda than anything else.

And, aside from begging the question, your premise ("Thrawn was changing the rules") happens to be identical to your conclusion ("Therfore, Thrawn was changing the rules"). That's called circular logic. It's also a fallacy.

Are you sure? I refer you to the same passage in The Last Command. Pellaeon (the POV character) doesn't see what Thrawn does... but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen...

And what, precisely, does this have to do with the fact that Thrawn was not Pellaeon's mentor? Other than being a red herring?

And as to the issue of background... aye, maybe social conditioning doesn't excuse people's actions - but that doesn't excuse others using that lack of an excuse as an excuse to judge them harshly, either. In doing so, aren't you just acting according to your own social conditioning - and t

 

IIRC, Dodona's briefing implies that the Dark Empire fleet out of the Deep Core was something utterly unexpected... and I think it's fair to say that the NR might 'edit' the events leading up to Dark Empire, either for security reasons or straightforward propaganda (got your tauntaun handed to you by Thrawn's fleet even after he's dead? Whoops, blame it on the Clone Palpatine)...

Yes...but this is all complete speculation isn't it? There's also a good chance that it did happen the way they said it did. I also wonder how this makes the New Republkic look any better.

"Oh, yes, we completely ignored the Imperial held core worlds. We had our fleet recapturing the territory Thrawn took while a huge Imperial fleet launched from the deep and raped Coruscant. We couldn't call for reinforcements because our fleet was out of position. All this because we took a chance and assumed the the Deep Core wouldn't have the resources to launch an invasion. Whoops."

The fact that the "Inner Council" survivors and "former Starfleet commanders" fell to fighting amongst themselves (at least on Cour.) doesn't exactly agree well with the idea that they were all following orders from Byss, and IIRC, Isard's POV when she's back aboard the Lusankya at the end of Isard's Revenge contradicts the Essential Chronology claim that she knew about the Clone Palpatine)... with Thrawn and Isard gone, the surviving commanders started squabbling...

I've never come across anything saying that the Emperor's Ruling Circle and the Fleet commanders turned against each other... more like everyone turned against them. If they did turn against each other, that still doesn't mean that one of the two groups didn't know about Pslpatine(if any one of them knew about him, it was probaly the Ruling Circle since it was composed of former Emperor's Advisors). Of course, the "enlightened" group wouldn't move to stop any brewing civil war since it was the Emperor's will.

BTW, where do you get the idea that Isard had any kind of position within the Empire during Isard's Revenge.

 

Thrawn's Justice

Records gathered aboard the Star Destroyer Chimaera demonstrate that Chiss standards differ when a crime or egregious error is committed by a non-Chiss. After a regrettable failure of a bridge crewman aboard his ship, the infamous Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn ordered his Noghri enforcer to kill an incompetent officer. Had the offending party or the intended recipients of the lesson been a fellow Chiss, Thrawn would likely have been less overt.

Note the "likely", and the narrative is distinctly biased against the Chiss. The article talks of Chiss standards, when the only Chiss they have to prove this is Thrawn himself.
Assume the Chiss were to base their idea of human standards from observation of a single human (who, I might add, is exiled). You would still be calling the Chiss xenophobic.

Actions speak louder than words, so to look at the two incidents' facts:

1) Cris Pieterson failed to realize that he had tractored in proton torpedoes, which detonated against the Star Destroyer. Thrawn proceded to investigate the extent of Pieterson's training, and learned that it did not include such a scenario. He then had Pieterson executed

2) A tractor beam operator failed to capture a vessel specifically engineered to prevent the capture of its occupant by tractor beam. Despite his training not covering the same situation, the operator attempted to regain lock. However, the computer locked up as a result of his efforts. Thrawn questioned the operator, then had him promoted.

The difference between the situations, as I see it:
-Pieterson's mistaking the torpedoes caused damage to the Star Destroyer
-Pieterson did not think anything was amiss when the tractor lost then recovered the lock.
-Ultimately, Pieterson fell for a ploy that was made, under stress, in less than five minutes
-In the second incident, the operator did not cause damage to the Chimera.
-When the operator realized what had happened and that his training had not covered the situation, he attempted to solve the problem by thinking onh his own.
-In the end, the operator was not able to counter a tactic that was carefully planned out, probably by a team of experts over the course of a month, specifically to counter exactly what he was trying to do.

There's a great deal of difference between the two, as you can see. In both instances the operator did fail, but Pieterson was outsmarted by a lone fighter pilot. When the entire encounter was done, the Empire lost a bulk freighter and the resources required to repair the Chimera's tractor beam projector(s). Thrawn was not simply being moody, he did have grounds for both the execution and promotion.
There was no reason for that extreme a punishment, but the Chimera crewers likely thought Thrawn was being lenient. Darth Vader would have simply force-choked the operator, no questions asked, in both cases (See: Captain Needa).

 

Thrawn McEwok: and IIRC, Isard's POV when she's back aboard the Lusankya at the end of Isard's Revenge contradicts the Essential Chronology claim that she knew about the Clone Palpatine)...

I remember Isard's Revenge very well (it's one of my fave books), and in the chapter you're referring to, Isard dreams of uniting the warlords (under her leadership, of course ), and thus (re-)forming an Empire "that will make the Emperor proud".

Note that she thinks "that will make the Emperor proud" (verbatim quote), not "that would have made the Emperor proud (if he had lived to see it)". This could imply that she knew he was alive in a new clone body; unless Isard thought of "making the Emperor proud" in a mere metaphorical sense, or thought that he was watching over her from the afterlife.

However, in the weight room scene, she speaks about the Emperor as if he was dead. Of course, there is the possibility that Isard merely did that to give Corran/the NR false information; but she is also portrayed as being quite emotional about the Emperor's death over Endor (her face "hardened" when she said, "And he died for it"), which gives one the impression that she thought that this death was final/permanent. But you never know, maybe she was just good at acting.

So Isard's Revenge doesn't explictly contradict the Essential Chronology's claim that Isard knew that the Clone Emperor lived, but it doesn't strongly support that claim, either.

 

Thief:

Records gathered aboard the Star Destroyer Chimaera demonstrate that Chiss standards differ when a crime or egregious error is committed by a non-Chiss. After a regrettable failure of a bridge crewman aboard his ship, the infamous Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn ordered his Noghri enforcer to kill an incompetent officer. Had the offending party or the intended recipients of the lesson been a fellow Chiss, Thrawn would likely have been less overt.

Okay. Pay close attention: it says "would likely". Does that mean an absolute, 100% guarantee? No. Moreover, there is no hard, factual evidence, because we haven't seen any other Chiss under Thrawn's command.

Lt. Mithel was not a Chiss, was he? And he failed.

But the difference between Lt. Mithel and Cadet Pieterson is that Lt. Mithel showed that he had some brains. That he had initiative. Pieterson didn't. Which was why he got killed.

Under Lord Vader's command, both men would have probably died.

People, we need hard evidence here, not speculation. Otherwise, I can speculate that Thrawn liked to wear his underpants backwards and it'd magically be true.

---

To answer this question, I have to say this: There is no such thing as good and evil, or an absolute definition, at any rate. How you perceive someone as "good" or "evil" largely depends on your PoV and your own standards and opinions.

 

Thrawn's Justice

Records gathered aboard the Star Destroyer Chimaera demonstrate that Chiss standards differ when a crime or egregious error is committed by a non-Chiss. After a regrettable failure of a bridge crewman aboard his ship, the infamous Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn ordered his Noghri enforcer to kill an incompetent officer. Had the offending party or the intended recipients of the lesson been a fellow Chiss, Thrawn would likely have been less overt.

Now i want to know, from whose PoV this bull.... originates. "Records gathered", oh really. Perhaps Thrawn had a book hidden in his closet, title "Proper behaviour for Chiss-renegades when dealing with non-Chiss".

And if this is from a PoV of a biased NR-historian it is likely, that they try to extend the empires assumed bigotry (the Imperial Sourcebook is in clear contrast to that) towards non-humans on the Chiss as well, despite Thrawn being the only member of that species encountered so far. And considering the "likely" in this quote, not even this is for sure.

About the apologetic nature of Thrawn being raised by different standards. Nobody denies, that he is still responsible for the things he did, BUT is he evil, because his deeds are evil by our own standards or because he acted against the set of morales and values he upholds?

The Essential Chronology makes it quite clear, that Pellaeon had learned being a good commander with nobody above him by Daala and Thrawn.

As for the Chiss, they are either isolistic and let the enemy have the first shot or they are expansionistic and have to provoke the "others" to shoot first. In that case i would expect such logical thinker to throw the "let the enemy shot first"-philosophy over board. And i would expect a little more than one homeworld and twenty-eight colonies of them, if they are truly as expansionistic as claimed. The forces of the Hand of Thrawn are another matter, of course.

As for the Chiss being bigot, "Dark Tide" shows, that neither Jag Fel nor the members of his squadron have problems or a racial attitude with members of different species, but rather with the standards they are used to and uphold and which are NOT met by Fey´lya and his advisors.

 

There's... too many of them!



Thief: IIRC, your interpretation, and that of Gamer #5, clashes massively with Pellaeon's POV in T3... anyone got the quote from the Mithel tractor-beam flub scene?

You raise a good point about the Noghri and Leia, though. I'm not convinced there's not more to all that than we know... but if not, I guess Thrawn's analysis is that (a.) C'baoth's support is vital to the Empire; and (b.) the only way to prevent the Noghri from turning into implacable enemies of the Empire is to ensure they never learn that Vader betrayed them. Leia's freedom and not telling the Noghri are necessary gambits...

I never said Thrawn wasn't ruthless... he's a warrior, a strategist above all... but that doesn't make him evil...

As to the argumentum ad hominem, sorry, I was being cheeky... but since I don't think Thrawn or Pellaeon is 'evil', I'm not actually attacking you either... though I do assume there's a quantative difference: you've not destroyed any planets recently, but then, you've not got an ImpStar at your disposal or a terrorist rebellion to fight...

I'm simply pointing out that people think within the box... a lot of what we believe in depends very much on our point of view... the Imps are no more 'evil' than real-world soldiers who carry out orders that they're trained to obey unthinkingly, and which, if they do analyse their actions, they believe are necessary for the greater good... they're human...

Isard's Revenge doesn't suggest that she was involved in the recapture of Coruscant

Hum. In Isard's Revenge, Ysanne Isard is mustering Imperial forces for a massive strike on the New Republic. The next thing we know (Laurie Burns' "Retreat from Coruscant"), the Empire has thrown a massive fleet against Cour. and is kicking the NR out... I'd say it would be a wierd coincidence if there were two simultaneous plans for massive strikes against the NR, and the Director of Imperial Intelligence didn't know about the other one...

The Dark Empire Sourcebook makes clear that the New Republic actually still had warmaking superiority over the Empire immediately after Dark Empire. It was under Operation Shadow Hand that the Empire smashed the Republic into itty bitty pieces.

After Dark Empire? That's after Luke's done his best to squander as many Starfleet resources as possible in as short a time as he can... but at the start of Dark Empire, the Rebel leadership is already skulking around the dark corners of the GFFA in a way that they haven't had to for six years, and the phrase "New Republic" has gone way out of use among the Toms, Dicks and Annakins of the GFFA... and even "after Dark Empire", they can put nothing in the way of Shadow Hand

If they do have the resources, they're squandering them hopelessly...

Matt: What's Dodona's line again? I was under the impression that it went as follows - Imps retake Coruscant; commanders start fighting each other; Dark Empire bursts out of the Core and over-runs stuff.

And the reason the Rebels don't know about the Deep Core is simple - they don't know about the hyperlanes, they don't think there's anything there, or any way in or out...

Devi: thanks for the clarification



Ken,Jello, FTeik - aye, that was pretty much what I was saying, just quicker and clearer...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

Imps retake Coruscant; commanders start fighting each other; Dark Empire bursts out of the Core and over-runs stuff.

Bursts out of the Core and overruns all the Core Worlds. Then it moves on to the mid rim, the Colonies , and so on. The initial assault, according to the EC, only took kery core worlds.

And the reason the Rebels don't know about the Deep Core is simple - they don't know about the hyperlanes, they don't think there's anything there, or any way in or out...

Not true at all. The Rebels knew about the Core and even suspected the Imperial presence there. They knew that the Core had been kept off limits for decades. They even knew a few of the hyper routes leading into the Deep Core. The Mon Calamari cruiser Defiance was able to do a quick recon of Byss according to the Dark Empire audio drama. You don't just map a hyperlane in a few months. Obviously, the Rebels were already in possession information.

So, basically the propaganda the Republic
has released to the public to save face, paints it as a careless government that shirked its duty to its people. The Republic is saying that they totally ignored a region of space that the most dangerous power in the entire history of the galaxy kept off limits for decades. All sorts of nasties could have been hidden there and they left themselves totally vulnerable to them. Also all of this is supposedly propaganda designed to make Thrawn look to be less of a threat than he actually was?

"It wasn't Thrawn's fleet! It was the Core; a Region of space the Empire has kept off limits for decades! We were kinda hoping that they weren't hiding anything there. You know. Maybe they kept people out 'cause they were concerned about the welfare of their citizens."

Okay, well. It doesn't surprise me that the NR is inept when it comes to creating propaganda that makes em look good. They're criminally inept in everything else, why not propaganda as well?

Way to go New Republic! W00t! You rock!

 

anyone got the quote from the Mithel tractor-beam flub scene?

I thought I would include Thrawn's reasoning behind promoting Mithel first and then Pellaeon's POV at the end:

"Thrawn nodded. 'Correct,' he agreed. There isn't anything. Several methods have been suggested over the past few decades for counteracting the covert shroud gambit, none of which has ever been made practical. Yours was one of the more innovative attempts, particulary given how little time you had to come up with it. The fact that it failed does not in any way diminish that.

A look of cautious disbelief was starting to edge into Mithel's face. 'Sir?'

'The Empire needs quick and creative minds, Ensign,'Thrawn said. 'You're hereby promoted to lieutenant...and your first assignemt is to find a way to break a covert shroud. After their success here, the Rebellion may try the gambit again.'" (The Last Command 68-69)
(little interjection, I believe in the TTT sourcebook there is a report by Mithel on his attempts to figure out how to to counter the covert shroud gambit)

Now for Pellaeon's POV after Mithel's promotion:
"'Yes, sir," Pellaeon managed.

And stood there beside the newly minted lieutenant, feeling the stunned awe pervading the bridge as he watched Thrawn leave. Yesterday, the Chimaera's crewhad trusted and respected the Grand Admiral. After today, they would be ready to die for him.

And for the first time in five years, Pellaeon finally knew in the deepest level of his being that the old Empire was gone. The new Empire, with Grand Admiral Thrawn at its head, had been born" (TLC, pg. 69).

Also, before Mithel's promotion and in the same chapter, the Imperial Intelligence officer who failed to capture Luke was only demoted a grade and Pellaeon compares this with Lord Vader's methods of dealing with failure. Later in chaper 12 after an ISD is destroyed by the smugglers Pellaeon seems to question Thrawn's leniance towards Drost, and perhaps Pellaeon was right considering how the defenses were breached during the Bilbringi battle. At least by the time of TLC, to me it seems that Thrawn was being very forgiving when it came to mistakes comitted by people who were under his command and were not Chiss.

 

"Thrawn wasn't evil he just wanted stability"

Some guy in VotF.
If Thrawn was evil, Bin Laden is an angel.

 

Matt: ach... I guess it's like this... the NR propaganda machine (or, in rl, every second EU novellist) insists that behind every Imperial stratagem is an 'evil genius'. Palpatine. Thrawn. Palpatine. Lemeisk. The idea that the Starfleet could simply beat the NR military, because they simply fought better suggests that they could do it again and again...

It's about persuading even the Wedges and Leias of the GFFA - not to mention the Pellaeons and Karrdes - that after Endor, or between T3 and DE, or after DE, all that they were involved in were 'mopping-up operations'...

Also, portraying the Empire as inherrently 'leaderless' after Endor is a way of claiming legitimacy for the NR... and identifying the Empire with the Emperor is also a way of portraying the Galactic Civil War in nice, simple black-and-white strokes - whereas in reality, the Pellaeons and Hestivs of the Starfleet (still less the Biggs Darklighters and Soontir Fels, or even the Colonel Vessereys) weren't exactly political supporters of either Palpatine or Vader... equating the Imperial successes between T3 and DE with Palpatine is a way of portraying them as emphatically disasters for Galactic freedom... when in fact they might have been more... ambiguous...

And IMHO there's still something very odd about how the GFFA at the end of T3 evolved into the GFFA at the start of JA3...

Imperial FC:thanks!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

whereas in reality, the Pellaeons and Hestivs of the Starfleet (still less the Biggs Darklighters and Soontir Fels, or even the Colonel Vessereys) weren't exactly political supporters of either Palpatine or Vader... equating the Imperial successes between T3 and DE with Palpatine is a way of portraying them as emphatically disasters for Galactic freedom... when in fact they might have been more... ambiguous...

And IMHO there's still something very odd about how the GFFA at the end of T3 evolved into the GFFA at the start of JA3...

Imperial FC:thanks!

Uh..what? Then why not say Pellaeon and his ilk launched the attack on Coruscant and the Emperor just picked up where he left off... ya know..make em all look bad? See, it just doesn't work imo. It poor propaganda.Also, who said the the Empire's fleet didn't fight well? The Rebellion has admitted in many in universe documents that the Empire's military is usally top notch. The captains of Star Destroyers are highly regarded in the Rebel alliance sourcebook...


And IMHO there's still something very odd about how the GFFA at the end of T3 evolved into the GFFA at the start of JA3...

Not at all, when a government's capital is blown up... along with a few thousand oif the best ships in the fleet

 

Also, portraying the Empire as inherrently 'leaderless' after Endor is a way of claiming legitimacy for the NR...

I don't think the Rebellion was concerned about that... since, theysent out a pblic document stating in black and white(or wwhatever) that Emperor Palpatine himself was illegitamate. They've made it clear to everyone that hey believe that no one in the Empire is legitamate.

As for Thrawn's mercy with Mithel. We've seen Darth Vader be just as merciful in recent EU stories. Are we to believe that is Imperial propaganda? If so, who's to say that TTT is propaganda by Thrawn supporters. I mean , you could argue because it';s mostly froom NR POV, yet you seem truly enamored with Thrawn. Maybe it's a very diabolical piece of propaganda on their part.