What if Thrawn Joined the Rebel Alliance? | Star Wars Legends

on today's Star Wars legends lore video we'll be imagining a universe where thron had joined the rebellion [Music] mithran roto commonly referred to as Thrawn is one of the most beloved expanded universe characters and for good reason thron as written by Timothy Zahn is intelligent he's frightening and most importantly he's interesting thanks to him the thron trilogy successfully kicked off the post Return of the Jedi Star Wars Expanded Universe in those stories thron who impressively rose to the rank of Grand Admiral within the empire despite being a Blueskin to alien attempts to defeat the New Republic and restore the Empire's rule within the galaxy although technically his faction was only one of many faced by the New Republic after the Empire's collapse besides for the reborn Emperor he was probably the greatest threat to the new government this brings us to the topic of today's video what if Thorin had joined the rebellion we'll be looking at this from two perspectives and the first we'll look at what if Thorin had deserted the Empire and joined the rebellion sometime after the Battle of Yavin then at the end we'll very briefly look at what if Thorin had joined the rebels instead of the Empire it should be noted that this entire video will be focused on the legends version of Mithra Nero doe so I won't be making references to Star Wars rebels or the new throne novel most of what I'm talking about in this video does come from the thron trilogy but I will make other references to throne as he appears in the hand of Thor on duology and in the outbound flight let's get started with our first question what if thron defected from the empire about two years after the Battle of Yavin before becoming Grand Admiral I think a useful way to gauge the Ron's effectiveness is to look at the similarities between his campaign against the New Republic and the rebel alliances campaign against the Galactic Empire in both of these scenarios a very small fighting force was trying to overthrow a much larger government when throne attacked the New Republic he had at most a dozen or two ships in most cases he had his single Star Destroyer and several other escort ships his numbers were inflated to a degree with their location in capture of the katana fleet however that doesn't take away from the fact that for most of the campaign thron was chronically under armed that didn't stop him from nearly taking down the New Republic and he may have actually done the job had he not been betrayed by his no great bodyguard rook during the campaign a throng showed that he was almost unnaturally skilled in the areas of resource management ship acquisition hit-and-run tactics and general strategy he was such a threat that many years after his death just the rumor of his return was enough to almost the New Republic from the inside the point which I'm getting at here is that the tactics used by throng during his campaign against the New Republic were very very similar to those used by the Rebel Alliance against the Empire not only that but several of the actions that he took on his own accord would have actually benefited the rebels for example his use of Jedi battle meditation in the way that he spread out New Republic forces by hitting multiple targets at the same time the Galactic Empire was at times spread even more thin than the New Republic due to the general inflexibility of their Navy techniques like hitting multiple occasions at the same time crippling shipyards then leaving would have been extremely successful against the Empire his plan of not only securing a portion of the black fleet but also training clones to man the ships was also genius and would have benefited the Rebel Alliance I think it's also worth noting that thron would likely thrive within the Alliance Navy the rebels focused on small quick ships rather than massive dreadnaughts in the new throne book the character lambaste the Empire for focusing so much energy on massive projects although technically the quote is from Canon I think it very much matches the thoughts of his legends counterpart the good thing about the rebel fleet is that while they do have many of these small ships they also have the heavy hitters the Mon Calamari cruisers which thron could have used in certain situations I think he would have been very careful not to waste them I think Thorin would have done two main things to bolster the rebels within the galaxy the first is he would have likely tried to subjugate planets like he does to the New Republic in Star Wars legends the ultimate goal of this would have been gaining more ships and allies he would have used blockades and other methods all specifically based on the intricacies of the culture that he was facing off against secondly and I think that this is very interesting I think thron would have tried to make use of Clone Wars era separatist ships Duran spends half of his campaign against the New Republic trying to get a working clone army when facing off against the Empire I think thron instead would have focused on acquiring not only separatist ships but also battle droids and battle droid factories the good thing about Confederate droids is that they can not only fight on the battlefield but also man ships I think that this would have been exceptionally valuable to the Rebel Alliance in the rebellion comics we see that the Alliance was already using Providence class cruisers and we also know that on one occasion they attacked the Death Star using a lucre Hulk class battleship I think that thron would continue what the Alliance was doing but do an even better job thrones knowledge gained through his years of the empire would surely help in this regard the Empire would have likely been aware of the location of any separatist factories and Thrawn as a relatively high-ranking member of the military probably would have had access to some of that information this brings me to my next point thrones greatest asset in my opinion is his ability to understand other cultures and factions and to make strategy based off that knowledge during the trilogy myth Ron nerado is not only several steps ahead of the New Republic in the heroes at all times but he's able to attack planets based solely of knowledge he gains from understanding their art and their customs by the time of his defection within this timeline Iran would have been immersed in the Empire for over 20 years as a master tactician Thrawn would create effective strategies after spending hours or at most days studying the art in the history of certain peoples with us again 20 plus years I'm confident that by the time he left thron would have an absolutely 100% foolproof plan for taking down the government we know based on the type of person that he is that he would have spent much of his idle time thinking up exact plans to do so this is true because we know that in both legends and canon Sirhan was worried not only about protecting the Empire although that is more of us focus in legends but also about preparing for the Yuuzhan Vong or as the chests call them the far outsiders I think his understanding of culture however also has a secondary benefit aliens made up a large portion of the Rebel Alliance the Mon Calamari especially were crucial to the rebellions war efforts on that note we know that Mon Calamari cruisers made up a majority of the rebels large capital ships Mon Calamari cruisers take their design heavily from the Mon Cala Marie's home world of DAC or calamari well the MC line of ships was heavily modified so it could be effectively used by humans and other alien types it still nonetheless was a product of the Mon Calamari environment I can't think of anyone better poised to understand the calamari then someone like throng those I think are the main ways that throng would benefit the Alliance in their fight against the Empire I'll summarize them all in just a minute but before I do I want to look at in each drawbacks that the Alliance would face due to throngs departure from the Empire the most obvious one is that Palpatine would take the alliance as a more serious threat I believe he always doubted the alliance and in particular the Alliance's military which led to the rebels successfully defeating the Empire at the Battle of Endor I don't think that he would be as foolhardy if he knew that thron was on their side it's hard to speculate just how different his approach would have been but we do know that despite underestimate the alliance he was still putting a lot of effort into exterminating them I think the second thing that the Alliance would run into is that throne is a bit more militant than some of their current leaders although Thrawn is a bit more compact within Canon in Star Wars legends we do see him take some fairly aggressive moves in order to establish military domination he put civilians at risk far more than he does in cannon we see that not only during the Thrawn Trilogy but also during the outbound flight and on another occasion he rather coldly executes the subordinates who failed him I think both of those things and in particular a willingness to put innocent lives behind victory would it fly with the Rebel Alliance however a throne is above all a pragmatist I really believe that he could adapt to the rules of the Alliance and work successfully within their structure I mean thron managed to despite being an alien rise to become a Grand Admiral within the Empire if anyone knows how to act and behave a certain way it's him all in all had thron defected from the Empire I believe that the rebellion would have managed to take down the Empire more securely and with less reliance on luck than they did anyway I do think that there's a possibility that it may have taken more time Iran is very patient I don't think that he ever would have authorized their rebels attack on the Death Star - because logically they should have been defeated by the Empire I think he would have spent more time whittling away at the Empire's forces building up the Alliance military and just generally making sure that victory was guaranteed under the second question what if thron joined the Rebel Alliance instead of joining the Empire now there are some issues with time Iran joined the Empire when they were just starting up so the Alliance wasn't really around in its full capacity at that point let's just assume that he joins the Alliance very early on and remains with the chess ascendancy until a later point to me really not much changes in this scenario thron was already gifted militarily by the time he joined the Empire it's not like he needed that Imperial training he spent a lot of time within the chess ascendancy honing his skills although I do think he wasn't the same tactician that he was later on there's also that loss of that inside knowledge of the empire that comes with spending 20 years than the organization but on the other hand the emperor wouldn't be aware of his skills so he wouldn't have to take the rebels more seriously off the bat and the rebellion could strike at the Empire before it was fully militarized under this scenario I think that the rebels actually managed to take the Empire down a little bit quicker all in all in both scenarios I give the win to the rebels throne is just too useful during the trilogy he's portrayed basically as a god he's unstoppable he predicts every move of the New Republic and had it not been for his assassination by rook he may have successfully toppled the New Republic to summarize I think he is successful because his fight against the New Republic showed us that he has several of the techniques down which the rebels used against the Empire I think he would work well with the rebel Navy and with the aliens within the Rebel Alliance and his knowledge of the workings of the empire and the Navy would be invaluable to other things I'd like to very very quickly mention is that thana has likely already analyzed the weaknesses of the Rebel Alliance so in leading the Empire he can make an immediate change in the Alliance structure and in their tactics second we see in the firaon trilogy that the Admiral is very very good at stirring difficulties in dissent within an organization he rather subtly causes a rift between Bork failure the other boffins the rest of the council and Admiral Ackbar the Empire is extremely bloated with thousands if not millions of officials who are already quite corrupt I think that they would be a ripe target for those kind of machinations that is however just my opinion what do you think how much of a difference withdrawn have made in the Galactic Civil War let me know down in the comments if you guys enjoyed this video make sure to give it a like and if you'd like to support the channel in the future consider becoming a patron you can go to patreon.com/scishow karts ladder joining the discord discord GG slush at karts ladder or following me on Twitter thanks so much guys next time may the force be with you [Music]

Channel: EckhartsLadder

Views: 384,077

Keywords: What if thrawn joined rebels, what if thrawn joined rebellion, rebel alliance, star wars legends lore, star wars, theory, star wars lore, star wars theory, star wars legends, legends lore, star wars what if, grand admiral thrawn, thrawn, thrawn rebels, expanded universe, thrawn trilogy, eckhartsladder, eckharts ladder, star wars explained, lore, rebels, galactic empire, what if, empire, alliance, legends, chiss, galactic civil war., grand admiral, star wars thrawn, Mitth'raw'nuruodo

Id: HMR9Pin9aBE

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2018