Saga Without Emperor Palpatine, is the Galactic Empire inherently evil?

Hello! This is my first post to these forums, and I'm looking for the insight from a lot of people that know their Star Wars. For the record, I'm looking at this based on the new post-Disney canon, not necessarily the EU.

I often ask myself what I would do if I were in a certain era of Star Wars - if I would side with the CIS or the Galactic Republic, the Rebels or the Empire, etc. While I firmly believe I would be with the Rebellion overthrowing Emperor Palpatine, I don't know necessarily if I'd be all for the Empire being effectively dissolved and dismantled and the Imperial Remnant effectively shut out of the New Republic's Senate stuff. (They weren't officially, but they weren't allowed to do much of anything which caused them to eventually break off from the New Republic and start the First Order later on.)

My thinking is this. What if Emperor Palpatine had not been in power in the first place or what if another leader from the Rebellion stepped in after he was killed and just started running things from where the Emperor left off? The Emperor ran things very much like a Sith: he allowed his officers and other officials to do corrupt things, and the Empire would just keep an eye on things and hold it over their heads so that they could keep everyone within the Empire under control: through fear of blackmail or worse. He also would take what he wanted from a planet, whether that planet wanted to comply or not. If they chose not to comply, usually he'd send someone in (usually Darth Vader) to go in, kill the leader, and put someone in charge who would go along with the Empire.

Take all of these things that the Empire did and replace them with say, the Jedi Council. Mon Mothma as the Empress. They would probably approach things VERY differently and the galaxy would've been a very different place. Granted both of these people / groups generally didn't have a problem with democracy or the Senate, but IF they did put themselves in charge... what then? We would have had self-governance of planets so no Separatist crisis, no secession of the Imperial Remnant (and thus, no First Order and no Starkiller base), and the Jedi Council and Mon Mothma would probably have an approach of trying to appease everyone... whether or not they'd be good at it? That's why I'm here. Trying to piece together what could have worked best for the galaxy.

So, in the end, without Emperor Palpatine... was the Empire something that absolutely needed to be destroyed because that system of government was just oppressive and evil at its core? Or would it have worked if there had been a more moral leader or set of leaders (such as the Jedi Council) at its helm? And finally, would it have been better going into the post-OT to have an Empire with a different leader than the New Republic? We already know what happened there. Please feel free to share your thoughts! I'm definitely curious what the community thinks.

 

If it's still an Empire, it's still bad by definition, regardless of whether the emperor in question was 'benevolent' or not.

There would be no freedom to choose the leader, he would have absolute power.

 

Naboo had an elected monarch, Warhammer had an elected Emperor - what matters is less the ruler's title, but how they come to power and how easily they can be removed.

That said, when your Emperor is just a President with a fancier title, it makes the term "Empire" less accurate.

"Self governance of planets" and the term "Empire" don't really go together - what makes an Empire deserve the term, is that their isn't much in the way of self-governance, and what there is, is subject to the centralised authority.

A galaxy full of planets with no higher authority than "planetary ruler" can't really be called an Empire at all, or even a Republic. Even the Old Republic passed decrees that overrode individual planetary law, that the planets were expected to abide by - like abolishing slavery. Only places outside (or very close to the edge of) the Republic's borders, like Tatooine, were able to openly disobey those decrees.

 

No Jedi Council worth being called a Jedi Council would accept a long-term ruling/leadership position over the people of the galaxy. That isn't their place, goes against their way of life and everything they believe in, and is a path to the Dark Side.

(And telling yourself "oh, but they could rule the galaxy safely and benevolently if they're Just Good People" is completely missing the point and is a mindset that would actively make things worse. "I could MAKE the galaxy a better place if I were in charge of it and I'll only do good things and everything will be perfect and everyone will be happy" is how Anakin Skywalker started out. Force-sensitives are not just regular people who can lift things with their brain, there are serious psychological consequences and side effects of having that power. And even normal people can start out with that mindset and end up horrible - being a Force-sensitive just amplifies the intensity and difficulty, making it more likely you'll go insane, not less. Jedi are servants, not rulers.)

Also yes the Empire would still be evil if some random Imperial officer or whoever stepped up and took over. Fascism doesn't require the presence of wizards to be a bad thing.

EDIT: I mean yes, sure, if Mon Mothma took over and overhauled the Empire from the ground up and got rid of all the fascist policies and individuals in the system it could potentially become something better, but at that point it's effectively not even the Empire anymore - it's a new government whether it keeps the name or not - and the whole question becomes something of a pointless exercise.

Or maybe I'm just really, really tired of the endless stream of "hey guys what if...the Empire...is actually cool and good?" posts and threads in every forum for SW discussion on the internet.

 

There's a continuum between "totalitarian authority" and "no authority" - the question is, where might a post-Palpatine Empire end up, that would not be too close to one end or the other.

At what point does the term "Empire" become a misnomer - and how much democracy does it need to eliminate the tyranny problem?

 

The Galactic Empire in Star Wars is inherently evil, yes, as its ideology is fascist, needlessly violent, and cruel. It's also openly prejudiced and inherently fosters inequality.

Even without Palpatine, there's Tarkin, the Death Stars, the oppressive military, COMPNOR, ISB, etc.

The way the system has been set up is inherently evil. If everyone does their jobs the way they are supposed to, both the methods and results are evil.

An/the empire runs on force and coercion. The Jedi and Mon Mothma wouldn't want to use force or coercion. So how can they govern? The only way is to change it from an Empire to something else.

I'd go as far as to say the Imperial system is so corrupt that it would corrupt anyone who tried to run it. Even if it didn't, the Imperial system is so completely inadequate to the moral needs of people like the Jedi and Mon Mothma that they wouldn't even be able to govern effectively in the Imperial system, they'd be constantly held back by the lack of proper institutions. The Imperial systems of government, law, economy, education, media, police, military, etc would just be counterproductive. Everything would need to be completely overhauled and turned on its head, and what would be left over wouldn't be an/the Empire at all.

 

Whether if the leader is a good person or bad, I still do not support totalitarian government. Even in Monarchy, you sometimes had good kings and sometimes insane ones but still the people had zero power. Your destiny depended on the whim of more powerful people. No thanks.

 

It's the best because evil always wins because good is dumb.

 

The Empire is evil based on those who run the government. Palpatine found many like minded individuals who served under him and they carried out his will. The Empire's military structure is still filled with those same servants after the deaths of Sidious, Vader and Tarkin. That's why the war went on for one more year, before ending after the Battle of Jakku.

 

Which is probably why Mon Mothma, while having the same "emergency powers" as late-Clone Wars Palpatine (in order to run the Rebellion properly) gave them up the moment a peace treaty was struck with Coruscant in Aftermath: Empire's End - as well as significantly reducing the power of the Republic Starfleet (when compared to the Imperial Starfleet) in favour of each world having its own police fleet.

She wanted to ensure that it would be impossible for the Republic to use its fleet to coerce in the same fashion as the Empire - it could only police, when it came to things like interstellar piracy that crossed multiple sectors.

 

The Empire was a cult of personality revolving around Palpatine. Palpatine created the Empire to enforce his will and the Empire died with him. Any entity that call itself the Empire after Palpatine's death was nostalgic for Palpatine.

 

Thanks for all the insightful answers. I had asked this same topic on GameFAQs and, while most agreed the Empire was evil, it was more heavily weighted towards people thinking that the Empire was more "neutral" than inherently evil. It's interesting that a board more focused on Star Wars would weigh heavily towards "inherently evil".

Iron_lord Good point on the "self-governance" bit. I always thought it was good that the planets were given more individual authority under the Empire (at a glance) but you're right - the "power" that they are given is more of a thing of appeasement. To make those in power feel like they have an actual say so that they won't necessarily rise up against the Emperor, but yeah... if anyone questioned what the Emperor ordered at all they were crushed. Every. Single. Time. Without this control, though, the Empire would be less an "Empire" and more just the planets all doing their own things, so... very good point. Very insightful. =)

@CD-867-5309 and theraphos I figured more or less that if the Jedi Council were in charge it would work like the Galactic Republic Jedi Temple. There would be individuals (planets) that would come to the Jedi Council seeking advice to settle a dispute or a grievance, and the Jedi would settle it, kind of like the "impartial body" that they were. Not sure what type of government that would be called, but I assume the vetting process for the Jedi would be the same, though it would be more likely to be corrupted (like the Galactic Republic's Senate) with more authority over the galaxy. This is where I started to wonder "Would the Jedi Council / Mon Mothma / etc. be corrupted by the Empire, or would they make the Empire a tool for good for the galaxy?" I think it leads back to Iron_lord 's post, though, that without any real "control" it would be ineffective, so they would have to change in order to make the whole "Empire" thing work, which would corrupt all of them from within.

All in all, very good reading from everyone here. Thank you very much. =)

 

I would describe it as less "interesting" and more indicative of the kind of predominantly young/male/edgy contrarian demographic* I've consistently seen dominate any discussion space in the echo chamber of GameFAQs. You will find a broader range of people and opinions here.

That form of government is called being a diplomat, which the Jedi already were. Again, as public servants, not rulers.

(*And before somebody gets a bug up their rear, I do mean the specific combination of all three of those things at once.)

 

theraphos
Yeah, I figured people here would also be much more familiar with the lore and would have likely had some of these thoughts / discussions before, so it would be more constructive. Definitely glad I looked into this site. =)

 

Also, as you're new, I'll just add real quick that it's not necessary to tag people by name who are already participating in the thread. It just doubles the amount of notifications we get, since there's also a generic "that thread you're watching has new posts" notif that you're subscribed to automatically after replying.

I think tagging is mainly used to get someone's attention in a thread they hadn't shown up in yet.

 

Thank you very much! Hopefully I'll get used to the system here soon. ^-^

 

Yeah, no worries about that. It took me a while to get used to all the features myself, and I'd already used a couple of different forums before that were based on similar systems.

 

In my opinion, it is too difficult to separate the Galactic Empire and Emperor Palpatine. Emperor Palpatine built the empire for himself alone and never intended for it to outlive him. Everything about the Galactic Empire was either directly or indirectly monitored and shaped by the Emperor, and so almost every aspect of the Galactic Empire would have been different with a different leader. In other words, in the Star Wars universe, I don't think you could build an Empire on par with Emperor Palpatine's without being an evil Sith Lord or worse.

 

well the way it's betrayed in SW, then yes, even without Palpatine the empire is bad. As somebody else mentioned you still have death stars, the Tarkins etc.


Are Empires or authoritarian (notice I did not say totalitarianism) systems an evil idea in theory? no, not at all. Read Plato and other political theory books by respectable political scientists.

 

Thanks for bringing up the distinction, Dandelo. Read up a bit on it and the Galactic Empire definitely sounds more Authoritarian than Totalitarian. Especially how the Emperor has Stormtroopers all over the place and let's the planets rule themselves and do what they want... to a point. I think though that if the planets (ALL of them) had been 100% compliant things would have still been lousy. The Emperor just kept escalating his military power and presence, and then he kept his military officers under control by digging up dirt on them and the threat of public exposure (or worse) kept them in check. So the Emperor kept his officers in check who kept his populace in check.

The thing I think ultimately makes the whole situation so bad is the fact that the Empire essentially allowed the officers to do terrible things since it allowed blackmail to be a viable method of control, and the officers in power were all terrible as a result. There seemed to be very few "good" officers because good people wouldn't do some of the things that the Empire wanted (which is why many Imperial Cadets joined the Rebellion) and they didn't do anything wrong so they couldn't be controlled through blackmail either.

I guess in the end that probably is what makes it totally "evil". The Empire wouldn't have been effective without it's strong grip on the galaxy, and with good people as the majority within that government it would have fallen apart because the officers wouldn't have oppressed the populace and the officers couldn't have been kept in check. So once a planet asked "Why do you have to listen to YOU, Emperor? We're not happy with you." then things would have to go down a dark path or the Empire would lose support and fall...

Almost honestly reminds me of the situation with the Separatists leaving the Galactic Republic because they were unhappy with their treatment and their shortcomings within the Senate. That's probably what would've happened with a "Good" Empire... Some planets would've been unhappy and then there would have been secession and possibly civil war. So yeah. Definitely agree with the notion that, in the realm of Star Wars, a "good Empire" just simply can't exist.

Loving the input. Seriously good stuff to think about.

 

In the very first opening crawl, Princess Leia was fleeing from the "EVIL EMPIRE." Also, Alderaan happened without any input from Palpatine. So, I'm going to have to voter for the Empire being inherently evil.

ETA: That's not to say that every single being in the Empire is automatically evil. I've always thought Captain Needa was a good officer and a great man who chose his allegiance poorly. But the system of the Empire rewards evil and punishes goodness.

 

With Luke, Leia or Padme or Mothma or Kenobi in charge things, including basic policies, would be a lot better but the Imperial army (and moffs) seemed pretty brutal in ways that the top ruler probably wouldn't be able to do much to contain.

I would expect Leia, Kenobi or Mothma and most other moral leaders would be humble enough to know that deliberation from diverse representatives generally gives better outcomes than one person with a few advisers.