Why the Empire wasn't always Evil (...and even turned GOOD) | Star Wars Legends

[Music] hey guys this is eckhart's letter hello and welcome to another quick star wars legends lore video and i recently got to thinking was the empire ever truly not evil i mean there are a lot of books set during the galactic civil war era and sometimes if you forget what you've seen in other places it almost seems like you know life under the empire might not be too bad then of course we're usually brought back to reality by some sort of massacre of an innocent population or slavery or cruelty or whatever else let's be honest the empire by design was rotten to its core it was essentially emperor sidious in governmental form not nice lots of corruption lots of violence lots of cruelty and ultimately a system designed to benefit very few people at the top and in reality ultimately only sidious himself that being said after endor palpatine wasn't around nearly as much he got thrown down a reactor shaft and in star wars legends at least he took a little vacation came back after a few years then was permanently destroyed after endor and palpatine's presumptive death the empire took many different forms and it's very hard to track a distinct lineage for the empire just because of how it fractured and the different warlord empires that sprung up however even with that variety it's pretty easy to say that most of these empires were still pretty evil the early warlord eras saw barbarians like zinge basically trying to create their own mini empires which were not much better than what palpatine had set up or sometimes were even worse under the pentastar alignment for example the xenophobic elements of the empire were brought out and even further expanded after the warlord era and especially the death of thrawn who perhaps represented the best chance for a good empire of this time we get another period of darkness the return of emperor palpatine the dark empire crisis and operation shadowhand unsurprisingly the dark empire was not an especially righteous organization palpatine pretty much turned up the evil to eleven he ruled more directly through the dark side things were not very fun for the galaxy and basically his plan was to dominate every living being in the universe through the use of extreme power and super weapons the death of palpatine returned the galaxy to a state of chaos warlords once again emerged but they were unified under dala as she created a new imperial remnant doll herself was not very cash money she was still striking out against the republic or the new republic for the defeat the empire had suffered during the war even before unifying the remnant dala after emerging from the ma installation ruthlessly attacked undefended and non-strategically important planets and the remnant itself continued to aggressively attack the new republic eventually suffering many defeats dalla would leave the empire and command of the remnant and thus the vast majority of imperial forces would fall to admiral gallade pellion who i would actually call a good man not only by imperial standards but just by standards period pellion like thrawn in the star wars expanded universe sort of got a more sympathetic treatment as the timeline went on he definitely wasn't presented very positively within the original thrawn trilogy however later works especially the thrawn duology and afterwards he like thrawn would be described as an individual who favored law and order and served the empire because it seemed like the best organization to accomplish those goals and because it was perhaps the only organization which could bring stability and safety to the galaxy by 19 years after the battle of yavin pelyon realized that the empire that he had idolized never really existed the galactic empire under palpatine's command always was evil it wasn't about law and order it was about cruelty what's more palyon was a pragmatist he moved imperial forces out from the deep core where they had been hiding in the last imperial redoubts and brought them to the outer rim in this area of space pelyon would set up a new government and what's more he would formally end the war against the new republic signing the paleon gamer sim treaty pillion's actions before during and after this treaty showed that the empire could be at least not overtly evil peleon went to great length to try to foster peace with the new republic there were several opportunities where without his patience or his wisdom war would have escalated because of outside forces and when the treaty was actually signed the two sides made a good faith effort to cooperate and to work together within the galaxy this is something that i think a purely evil imperial never could have done unless they were working some other angle however one thing that would always hold back the empire was the council of moths although palliant was supreme commander of the imperial remnant the council of moths held a lot of power and was made up partially of imperial hardliners still palyon even in the early days of the imperial remnant managed to abolish slavery work against xenophobia and eventually the empire would even become a democratic institution although that's not something that we'd see until fate of the jedi it's really this point where i would say the empire just straight up is not evil they've got some well really unpleasant or unsavory aspects there are still major structural issues within their government and sometimes elements of the imperial remnant could be cruel but palyon certainly put them on the right direction during the yuuzhan vong war the empire and the new republic fought side by side against the extragalactic invaders and they would even join together within a singular government known as the galactic federation of free alliances mostly just called the galactic alliance from euron thinks it a little bit more complicated because although the empire is technically part of the ga they still function somewhat independently and there's still some sovereignty there and the ga and the imperial remnant too would be a little bit more gray than either the empire or the alliance had been in past years former imperials like natasi dalla became crucial parts of the galactic alliance and especially after pelyon's death it's hard to describe the empire itself as really good or bad they did a lot of both and the same is true by 130 years after the battle of yavin when we talk about the fel empire which is a direct descendant of the imperial remnant and specifically jag fell and jaina solo the latter who was definitely a good person in the former who i think most of the time when it counted was also good although really into order insecurity like most imperials but that's outside of the scope for today's video and that's all i wanted to talk about today i hope you guys enjoyed this video on you know when the empire was evil and when they stopped being evil this of course has all just been my opinion hope you guys enjoyed this video and make sure you let me know your thoughts down in the comment section let me know if you've got anything you'd like me to cover in a future video until then though guys be safe have a good one and may the force be with you [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: EckhartsLadder

Views: 100,501

Rating: 4.9743862 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, star wars egends, was the empire evil, star wars legends, star wars legends empire, empire evil, empire did nothing wrong, eckhartsladder, star wars legends lore, star wars lore, eckharts ladder star wars lore

Id: qfpsup30Vfs

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020