How did treachery against the Emperor trickle down?

Battlehymn Republic · Post by **Battlehymn Republic** » 2006-08-07 02:16pm

For this thread I’m trying to examine incidents when High Admirals or Admirals of the Imperial Starfleet or other suitably powerful Imperial officials such as Grand Moffs or Moffs rebelled against the Emperor.

My knowledge on this is quite sketchy- until recently, I knew of only Vader’s betrayal and Crix Madine’s defection.

I’ll split this into two categories: Imperials working to overthrow the Emperor without the Rebellion, and those who defected. If anyone knows of a case where there was a high Imp colluding with Rebels secretly but not openly declaring support for the Rebellion, please let me know.

For a coup against the Emperor, we have Admiral Zaarin’s attempt to kidnap him in TIE Fighter, as well as the cabal of moffs in the Star Wars: Betrayal comic led by Grand Moff Trachta in 1 BBY. I’m aware of an attempt by officers on the superlaser platform Tarkin in a Marvel comic to kill Vader as a response to his viciousness towards their subordinates, but they didn’t try anything massive beyond that I think it was a small group.

My question is: while a group in the high hierarchies may want to and willingly act towards rubbing Palpatine out (not just the traitors but also their helpers such as members of the court or whatever), how were they able to get the tens of thousands of the rank and file to go along with it?

As far as I know, even ignoring Palaptine’s Force influence over them and the presence of COMPNOR moles, the forces under the cabal and later the ones under Zaarin were relatively behaved and went along with their plans to certain doom without questioning. I think that’s rather extraordinary, since that means they apparently:

1. Trusted in/ loved their high commanders more than they feared Palpatine’s reprisal,

2. Were able to override their loyalty to and fear of the Emperor and the Empire as it was,

3. Actually believed that whatever sedition they were getting themselves into (they probably didn’t know what was happening exactly, but they knew they were moving against the Emperor) would actually work.

So, anyone care to speculate how that happened? How did hundred of thousands of TIE pilots, stormtroopers, the ISD crewmen, etc. go along with the madness of attempting to fight against the Emperor? And not even in Rebel-style guerrilla warfare, too.

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I don’t know much about Admirals defecting to the Rebellion. I’ve only read of Harkov, who Vader killed soon after he defected. My two question that are:

1. Once again, how does an Imperial officer get his rank and file to join the enemy they’ve been fighting for years? Even if their commander has seen the light, it’s doubtful that a majority of his forces would, as well.

For reference-

As an Admiral, Harkov commanded the Victory-class Star Destroyer Protector and had a small fleet under his command…

…promised that his fleet would defect with him, including two squadrons of the new TIE Avenger starfighters that he acquired during the Sepan assignment

2. Just how would incorporating a ISDs (in the hypothetical scenario that another Admiral or Moff had defected to the Rebellion at some point), TIE fighters, and other Imperial ships into a Rebel fleet work on the battlefield anyway?

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2006-08-07 02:43pm

According to some of the newer comics, the rebels used just about anything they got their hands on, Imperial Class II frigates, Acclamator-class assault ships and old CIS Recusant-class destroyers. Didn't seem to have any problems mixing and matching.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2006-08-07 04:47pm

VT-16 wrote:According to some of the newer comics, the rebels used just about anything they got their hands on, Imperial Class II frigates, Acclamator-class assault ships and old CIS Recusant-class destroyers. Didn't seem to have any problems mixing and matching.

Pics?

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2006-08-07 05:34pm

This is from issue 4 of Rebellion:

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a242/ ... 90cb95.jpg

There's an Acclamator or Class II frigate (probably the Rand Ecliptic) in the lower left corner, four Imperial transports that looks like Munificents with "fins" in the wrong place (captured in the last issue) and one Recusant destroyer with two Mon Cal cruisers. The surrounding ISDs belong to an Imperial fleet coming out of Hyperspace. I hope for better fleet shots in the next issue.

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-08-07 06:06pm

I've always thought it odd that, whenever officers defect, their entire crew goes along with them, apparently with no trouble (eg Lusankya fleet, Zsinj fleet, Teradoc fleet etc). The Invidious made more sense to me, it's crew was mostly pirates and mercenaries to replace the old Imperial crew.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-08-08 05:43am

The question that begs answering is how loyal the Clones are, especially the new templates. We were told they held absolute loyalty to the Emperor and him alone. So how do they defect when they have a assignment of clones aboard? Unless they spaced the clones before they tried anything, though that would be difficult and requires really hard planning.