Galactic Empire

The Galactic Empire was the fascist dictatorship and stratocracy that supplanted the Galactic Republic when the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious, known publicly as Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo, proclaimed himself Galactic Emperor. Carrying ideals that traced back to the ancient Sith Empire, the regime ruled through a vast military, the suppression of dissent, and the systematic hunt for the surviving Jedi. Its reign was opposed by the Rebel Alliance and effectively ended at the Battle of Endor.

Rise to power#

In the last decades of the Republic the Senate had grown ineffectual through bureaucracy. Darth Sidious orchestrated the Invasion of Naboo to create a leadership crisis, using it to force a Vote of No Confidence against Chancellor Finis Valorum and to win the chancellorship for himself in the subsequent election. Through the Clone Wars he steadily accumulated emergency powers and amended the Galactic Constitution to pave the way for his ascension. When he triggered Order 66, the clone troopers turned on their Jedi commanders, while Anakin Skywalker, rechristened Darth Vader, destroyed what remained of the Order at its Temple. Palpatine blamed the Jedi for the war, dispatched Vader to wipe out the Separatist leadership on Mustafar, and proclaimed himself Galactic Emperor. Weary of war, much of the population welcomed the new regime.

Consolidation and the hunt for the Jedi#

The Empire allied itself with major criminal factions, including Crimson Dawn and the Hutt Clan, the latter enjoying a special relationship that lasted for decades. To draw out the surviving Jedi and the Force-sensitive young, the Empire charged the Inquisitorius, dark side agents trained by Vader, with tracking them down, and offered rewards for Jedi turned over dead or alive. Over time the Empire rewrote the history of the Jedi, gradually erasing them from memory. The Grand Inquisitor and his fellow Inquisitors pursued survivors such as Kanan Jarrus, while Vader himself hunted Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Expansion and oppression#

The Empire pressed deep into the Outer Rim, ending the independence of countless planetary and sector governments and exploiting their populations. Early resistance was scattered and weak: the Free Ryloth Movement led by Cham Syndulla fought an insurgency, and worlds such as Antar 4 suffered reprisals like the Antar Atrocity. On Aldhani the Empire dammed a sacred river and displaced the local Dhani; on Ferrix it imposed occupation; and on Ghorman it engineered the starvation and eventual massacre of a people to extract resources for its secret weapons program. Behind these efforts lay Project Stardust, the Tarkin Initiative's work to build the Death Star, for which the Empire forced the crystallographer Galen Erso back into service and committed the genocide of the Geonosians to conceal the station's construction.

The growing rebellion#

Separate insurgencies hardened into organized cells. The crew of the Ghost and the Phoenix Cell, linked through the network run by Ahsoka Tano and Senator Bail Organa, harried Imperial forces across the Lothal sector. The Empire answered with the Grand Admiral Thrawn, a tactician who studied his enemies to anticipate them, and with governors such as Arihnda Pryce. The clash on Malachor, the campaigns over Ryloth and Atollon, and the liberation of Lothal marked the war's early phase. When Senator Mon Mothma publicly condemned Palpatine after the Ghorman Massacre and resigned from the Senate, the scattered cells united into the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

The Galactic Civil War#

The Empire tested the Death Star by destroying Jedha City, falsely reported to the Senate as a mining disaster, an act Sidious used to justify dissolving the Imperial Senate permanently and placing the systems directly under the Regional Governors and the military. After the Rebels stole the station's plans at Scarif, Vader pursued them to capture Princess Leia Organa, and the Empire destroyed Alderaan as a demonstration of power. The loss of the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin shook the regime but hardened its resolve; for years afterward Imperial forces under Vader relentlessly pursued the Alliance, driving them from their base on Hoth.

Defeat and collapse#

The Emperor laid a trap at the forest moon of Endor, luring the Rebel fleet to the construction site of a second Death Star whose superlaser was secretly operational. The plan failed: the shield was destroyed, the station was lost, and both the Emperor and Vader died. The Empire fragmented as rival officers fought over the succession and the Grand Vizier Mas Amedda tried to hold it together. The late Emperor's contingency, Operation: Cinder, turned Imperial forces against their own loyal worlds, while Gallius Rax marshaled the remnants for a final stand at the Battle of Jakku. Defeated there, the Empire formally surrendered to the New Republic through the Galactic Concordance. Warlords such as Moff Gideon and Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth clung to power in distant regions, and Imperial loyalists who fled into the Unknown Regions would in time give rise to the First Order.