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After watching the season opener of Star Wars Rebels, and the fate of Minister Tua, I ask, how many named Imperial characters are good? We've seen the competent ones, the ruthless ones, the pettily evil ones. etc. Now, statistically, I'm sure that there were good, nice people in the Empire, but how many of those do we actually see? Any and all examples are welcome, from all forms of canon, both canon and non-canon material.

I don't think a good person could have any idea what the Empire is and willingly serve it. But some basically decent people might have fallen under its control out of fear/coercion (like Lando) or indoctrination. And their are degrees of evil within the Empire. Even men who were utter bastards in some ways might have redeeming qualities.

In the Rebels thread, for example, I remarked on the contrast between the Imperial starship commander in the last episode, who was prepared to throw a subordinate under the bus to protect himself from Vader, with Captain Needa from Empire Strikes Back, who willingly accepted responsibility for a failure despite Vader's tendency to murder officers who failed.

Edits: Tua, from what I've seen, comes across as someone who was rather naive. She seemed to not really realize how bad the Empire was, and when she did she tried to bail. I imagine their were a lot of people like that, many of whom probably ended up in the Rebellion.

Not enough in important positions. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised, if the majority of officials were the same no matter if the galactic state called itself Old Republic, Empire or New Republic. The Rebellion after all consisted on one hand of the depowered former politicians of the OR and the dissatisfied, underrepresented and exploited systems of the Rim (which were in that condition no matter the government).

Points to screenname.

Other than that, maybe Pellaeon or Satini...but in general, to get into a position of power, you had to be ruthless.

Indeed, with the possible exception of Pellaeon, there aren't really any "good" Imperials above the rank of Captain (or equivalent vessel commander), most probably because many of the "good" characters of that rank are introduced so they can defect (for instance, Captain Sair Yonka of the ISD Avarice/Freedom from X Wing: The Bacta War).

Oddly enough, I'd say that Prince-Admiral Krennel (from Isard's Revenge) may qualify, since until Isard came along and started encouraging him, he seemed more concerned with protecting his handful of worlds than attacking anyone else. Indeed, the New Republic had to jutify their assault on the basis of "you killed Sate Pestage and 100+ members of his family" when even Wedge Antilles admitted he would have killed Pestage.

The over one hundred dead family members thing is pretty nasty. What's the context? Where they executed? Assassinated? Unintentionally killed during an attack?

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Oddly enough, I'd say that Prince-Admiral Krennel (from Isard's Revenge) may qualify, since until Isard came along and started encouraging him, he seemed more concerned with protecting his handful of worlds than attacking anyone else. Indeed, the New Republic had to jutify their assault on the basis of "you killed Sate Pestage and 100+ members of his family" when even Wedge Antilles admitted he would have killed Pestage.

Krennel was a brutal dictator though.


There was that one Imperial High Commander before Pellaeon who defected to the NR at Andamar(Sp?) he seemed to be a decent fellow.

Thanas wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Oddly enough, I'd say that Prince-Admiral Krennel (from Isard's Revenge) may qualify, since until Isard came along and started encouraging him, he seemed more concerned with protecting his handful of worlds than attacking anyone else. Indeed, the New Republic had to jutify their assault on the basis of "you killed Sate Pestage and 100+ members of his family" when even Wedge Antilles admitted he would have killed Pestage.

Krennel was a brutal dictator though.

True. But at least he wasn't doing the "i'm going to suicidally attack other warlords or the New Republic or the Empire proper" like, well, Zsinj, and Harrsk, and Terradoc and Isard.

There was that one Imperial High Commander before Pellaeon who defected to the NR at Andamar(Sp?) he seemed to be a decent fellow.

Admiral Teren Rogriss, worked with Wedge and Han in X-Wing Solo Comand to try and take down Zsinj, and was then assigned to take over Adumar before Wedge persuaded him to throw in the towel. Interestingly, he went to work for the Adumari, not the NR.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Indeed, with the possible exception of Pellaeon, there aren't really any "good" Imperials above the rank of Captain (or equivalent vessel commander), most probably because many of the "good" characters of that rank are introduced so they can defect (for instance, Captain Sair Yonka of the ISD Avarice/Freedom from X Wing: The Bacta War).

Oddly enough, I'd say that Prince-Admiral Krennel (from Isard's Revenge) may qualify, since until Isard came along and started encouraging him, he seemed more concerned with protecting his handful of worlds than attacking anyone else. Indeed, the New Republic had to jutify their assault on the basis of "you killed Sate Pestage and 100+ members of his family" when even Wedge Antilles admitted he would have killed Pestage.

Pellaeon was a captain during the "golden age" of the empire from the end of ROTS until the end of ROTJ, I suspect that bulk of the low to mid level imperial officer core (up to naval captain or colonel) were semi-decent people who thought it was not their place to rebel. However we the audience general get to know this level of officers in one of 2 situations a)they want to defect and thus no longer are imperials or b)they're the villain of the story and thus 99.9% of the time are total scum. So we generally don't get to see non-flag officers who are both imperial and decent people.

As for Flag officers I suspect that to get that first "star" you need to be a ruthless and somewhat fanatic or really good at commanding, so admirals or general would be more likely to be "bad".

FTeik wrote:Not enough in important positions. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised, if the majority of officials were the same no matter if the galactic state called itself Old Republic, Empire or New Republic. The Rebellion after all consisted on one hand of the depowered former politicians of the OR

The Rebellion didn't really seem to get the shot in the arm it needed until after the Emperor dissolved the Senate, that's hundreds (to thousands) of political elite now unemployed.

Alderaan and Bail Organa being martyred by the Death Star galvanized commitment to the Rebel cause, the DS being blowed up added hope and gave currency that the Rebel cause was not in vain.

and the dissatisfied, underrepresented and exploited systems of the Rim (which were in that condition no matter the government).

Lothal kind of paints an interesting picture in that respect.

Under the OR the planet was very backwater, essentially neglected. Under the Empire, infrastructure and industrialization poured in (seems laws too, vendors have to be licensed, under the OR not so much.) Difference is that aside from the 'once in a blue moon' solitary Jedi, the Republic never made themselves known. The Empire were in force wherever they levied interest. Easier to cast blame against the legion of 'bucket heads' down the road than a government a hundred parsecs away.

Odd thing I noticed in the Rebels episode "Fighter Flight", The Empire apparently makes repeated offers to buy landowners property before they choose to exercise imminent domain, does cast a shade of gray on the populace of TarkinTown, they weren't so much victims as stubborn to a fault. (doesn't excuse the Empire's heavy handed tactics, but why even bother with a checkbook to begin with?)

I'd like to say that the black stormtrooper dude from Episode 7 is a good guy, but we don't know his story yet.

For the most part, look to Timothy Zahn's work, particularly his later stuff. Two examples are from the Hand of Judgment duology. One was a planetary governor, who was noted as being a decent fellow who was only doing what he was doing under duress. Another one, though pretty minor, was a General who was kind to Mara and kept a predatory official from "taking advantage" of her (although she wasn't drunk at all) and got him promoted to some sort of command position at Coruscant itself. By Palpatine's personal order, interestingly enough: she convinced him to do it because the General was a good man. Apparently even Palpatine was willing to humor Mara's idealism that the Empire was 'good' and Palpatine himself a 'good man'.

Arguably the Hand of Judgment themselves. Even though they were forced to become fugitives, they still served the Empire's ideals and acted as, essentially, independent (if technically illegal) agents of the Empire, righting wrongs and fighting evil. They were eventually recruited by Thrawn himself, though I think they went on to the Empire of the Hand rather than serving under Thrawn in his official Imperial capacity.

Given how many of the Rebels are themselves accomplished Imperials with many years of service to the Emperor under the belt before defecting, this leads me to believe quite a bit. Sure there is the fact that many of them were servants of the Republic and were inherited, but quite a few characters have there desertion from Imperial service pretty close to the OT timeline which means at least 20 years as a cog in the machine if indeed they had Republic era involvement. Not only that but many of the Imperial officers have Republic service and not necessarily at the behest of a certain Senator Palpantine. They joined and served the Republic with the same loyalties and overall sensibilities of some of the most storied Rebels.

This all leads me to believe that the Empire was not a particularly bad place for a good part of its history, rather only recently accelerating its descending into the widespread abuses we tend to associate with it some time later which is suggested by the dissolution of the Senate. The suggested cliff into darkness suggested at the end of EPIII have have actually been a bit too dramatic and the Empire chugged around as a largely relabeled Republic for all intents and purposes for a long time as the Empire formed and slowly implemented itself. Hell, Luke is happy to be off to an Imperial military academy in ANH even after expressing distaste for the Empire. Sure he had few options at the time but given his personality if the Empire was really the equivalent or Space Nazis and the every day citizenry was acutely experiencing such oppression this seems unlikely.

Or if it was really a dystopian murderous police state from the get go one really has to start reexamining the histories of some storied Rebels with an accomplished Imperial background. I am looking at you Crix (not just the one overt abuse in the EU, he had to get to that position before all that).

I wouldn't at all surpriced that thanks to the chaos of the Clone Wars and the corruption that lead to it, the Galactic Empire would seem if not good option at least the best option out of the bad ones for most people.

I'd assume that the Empire would be "decent" at least in minds of most people for the first 10-20 years or so.

Patroklos wrote:Given how many of the Rebels are themselves accomplished Imperials with many years of service to the Emperor under the belt before defecting, this leads me to believe quite a bit. Sure there is the fact that many of them were servants of the Republic and were inherited, but quite a few characters have there desertion from Imperial service pretty close to the OT timeline which means at least 20 years as a cog in the machine if indeed they had Republic era involvement. Not only that but many of the Imperial officers have Republic service and not necessarily at the behest of a certain Senator Palpantine. They joined and served the Republic with the same loyalties and overall sensibilities of some of the most storied Rebels.

This all leads me to believe that the Empire was not a particularly bad place for a good part of its history, rather only recently accelerating its descending into the widespread abuses we tend to associate with it some time later which is suggested by the dissolution of the Senate. The suggested cliff into darkness suggested at the end of EPIII have have actually been a bit too dramatic and the Empire chugged around as a largely relabeled Republic for all intents and purposes for a long time as the Empire formed and slowly implemented itself. Hell, Luke is happy to be off to an Imperial military academy in ANH even after expressing distaste for the Empire. Sure he had few options at the time but given his personality if the Empire was really the equivalent or Space Nazis and the every day citizenry was acutely experiencing such oppression this seems unlikely.

Or if it was really a dystopian murderous police state from the get go one really has to start reexamining the histories of some storied Rebels with an accomplished Imperial background. I am looking at you Crix (not just the one overt abuse in the EU, he had to get to that position before all that).

I think it varied somewhat from place to place. Some Imperial officials and troops were probably not completely bad people trying to do a good job, seeing the evils of the system but feeling unable to do anything about it. This probably covers a lot of those who were serving the Republic and stayed at their posts when the Empire rose. Others may have been heavily indoctrinated and believed that the Empire was benevolent and that any atrocities were anomalies, propaganda, or necessary. The generation that grew up with the Empire was probably often like this. Minister Tua from Rebels strikes me that way. She's fairly young- it might be that she was still a kid, or just barely grown up, when the Empire was formed, and she was probably very young, if she was even alive, when Palpatine first came to power as Supreme Chancellor. Then there'd be the die hard fanatics, then men who would condone anything in the name of the Empire. And you'd have the corrupt bastards who were in it for their own power, profit, or sadism. Men like Tarkin and Vader, the Emperor's top henchmen.

Edit: I also think that how likely you were to be directly involved in atrocities probably depended on your post. Some minor official on a fairly peaceful world might have gone through their life never encountering more than rumours of anything really evil. The higher your rank, the more likely you were to have a lot of blood on your hands.

A thought: Palpatine was a grand master of deception. That's how he ended up being an Emperor in the first place, managing to deceive everyone including the Jedi Order, hiding his true nature right under their noses.

Why would he throw a life's work of something like that the moment he gets power? He wouldn't. He'd continue to do them, on a greater scale, to maintain control of the Empire. He fooled the entire Senate (for the most part) and he's going to continue that. And if the Senate can't see past him, what hope does an average person have? As far as they are concerned, the Empire is the legitimate successor of the Republic. If they have heard of any atrocities, it will be probably be trough the filters Palpatine has set up.

Now here's another thought: by the time Luke grew up, Palpatine was losing control over that. He might have become too old to keep up, the deceptions and amount of lies have grown to such proportions that they took a life of their own, he might have gone insane (more than he was) or with the Death Star he thought he needn't bother anymore (perhaps a combination of all of the above). That's why he dissolved the Senate: he has made a power structure that can do what the Senate did (remember the mention of Governors) and with a completed Death Star he no longer had to do it. He allowed or ordered Aldaraan to be destroyed as the first step of ruling without relying on lies.

Then the Death Star blew up, along with a significant portion of the Empire's oppressing-machine military.

From what I understand the Imperial propaganda machine was fairly large as well, so that was part of the whole deception. Consider the following possible headline-- 'Vicious Rebel attack upon peaceful space installation, millions dead including Grand Moff Tarkin'=Death Star I. That's if it's mentioned at all in the civilian sphere, although there were probably some higher level communications along these lines. Compartmentalization of knowledge is essential in such an authoritarian society.