Work Text:
Professor Nath Li-Le
Galactic University of Coruscant
Coruscant
New Republic
The Journal of the Galactic Civil War
68 ABY
"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." - Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." - Senator Leia Organa
Introduction:
On 17.06.00 BBY, the Imperial Orbital Battle Station DS-01 ‘Death Star’ dropped out of hyperspace in the Yavin Star System and began a least-time orbit around the system’s primary gas giant in order to bring its superlaser to bear on the Rebel Alliance base on Yavin 4. Fifty-six minutes after its arrival, a force of thirty-two Alliance starfighters began an attack run on the station. The ensuing battle lasted only nineteen minutes, and resulted in the destruction of all but three Alliance fighters. It also resulted in the destruction of the Death Star, and the death of more than 500,000 Imperial personal, in what is widely-regarded as the most one-sided victory in Galactic history.
The rest is history.
Quite literally so—the official dating system we use today, formally adopted by the New Republic Calendar Act of 6 ABY, uses the Battle of Yavin as its point of reference. It is the fulcrum point around which our conception of history revolves. The Battle of Yavin was a shattering blow to Imperial morale, and a tremendous achievement for the nascent Alliance to Restore the Republic. In a single blow, it proved that Palpatine’s war machine was not invulnerable, inspiring countless planets and species to cast off their allegiance to Coruscant and throw their support behind the Rebellion. Or so the traditional narrative goes. And it is true, so far as it goes. The Battle of Yavin was a very impressive military victory, and undoubtedly helped inspire Rebel recruitment in the months and years to come. But it is a mistake to focus on it overmuch.
A more rigorous examination of the events of 0 BBY will show that, while the year is just as pivotal to Galactic history as it usually assumed, the emphasis has often been misplaced. In truth, while the Death Star project did prove to be central to the Galactic Empire’s undoing, the fatal blow came not from DS-01’s destruction at the hands of Luke Skywalker, but from the political implications of the project writ large. It would be going too far to say that the Battle of Yavin was irrelevant, but it would be accurate to say that by the time the Battle Station arrived in the Yavin System, the balance in the Galactic Civil War had already irrevocably shifted, though in ways that would not become apparent for months and years to come.
To understand this, we must turn our attention to the events of the week just immediately prior to the decisive engagement.
The Tarkin Doctrine:
What was the purpose of the Orbital Battle Station DS-01? It’s easy to be dazzled by the statistics—a construction timeline of nineteen years, a cost of 1.5 trillion credits, a diameter of 160 kilometers, a crew of 350,000, a troop transport capability of 800,000, a primary weapon capable of destroying entire planets—and to ignore the fact that all by logic, it was a completely unnecessary project. As of 0 BBY, the Imperial Navy operated 25,000 Victory and Imperial-class Star Destroyers, and well over 150,000 frigates, cruisers, patrol ships, and other escorts. Exact statistics on the Alliance are impossible to find, for obvious reasons, but it is estimated that the various factions associated with the Rebel Alliance as of the Battle of Yavin could field only about 1,000 vessels of all rates. Four years later, by the time of the Battle of Endor, the Alliance Navy could boast only about 10,000 ships scattered across the entire Galaxy. At no point did the Galactic Empire suffer from a lack of firepower. In fact, opposition to the Death Star project was near-universal among the leadership of the Imperial Navy, which saw it as a boondoggle, redirecting desperately-needed resources. In an analysis produced by the Imperial Navy Office of Procurement in 8 BBY, an officer complained bitterly:
“For the price of this proposed Orbital Battle Station, we could construct five hundred new Star Destroyers, or five thousand new patrol ships, or ten thousand planetary garrisons, or twenty-five thousand TIE fighters and bombers, or supply ten sector fleets with sufficient munitions and consumables for a decade. Any of those would be a more useful addition to our efforts to stabilize the Outer Rim and suppress terrorism and banditry than a single Battle Station, no matter how powerful it may prove to be.”
This was undoubtedly correct. But the Admiralty was overruled, time and again. This is because the true purpose of the Death Star project, as a whole, was not military, but political. It was a weapon, yes, but one designed primarily to be wielded against its builders’ foes within the Imperial bureaucracy.
Since the Proclamation of the New Order by Emperor Palpatine in 19 BBY, one of the hallmarks of the rise of Imperial power had been the creation of a massive and centralized Imperial security apparatus. The Old Republic’s Judicial Department was dissolved and replaced by a hydra-headed beast, an array of agencies and departments that monitored and maintained civic order across the Galactic Empire, of which the most notorious were the Imperial Security Bureau, Imperial Intelligence, and the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order. This state-within-a-state proved absolutely essential to Palpatine’s rapid destruction of organized dissent and the consolidation of Imperial authority.
And it was the true primary target of the Death Star, and the Tarkin Doctrine of which it served as the physical manifestation of.
The Tarkin Doctrine was one of the most important policies of the Late Galactic Empire. First formulated by Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin in Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v in 9 BBY, the Doctrine was more (in)famously known as ‘Rule by Fear’, and articulated a policy in which Imperial Order was maintained through the application of overwhelming and disproportionate force by local sector governors—such as himself—who would be granted absolute authority to crush all resistance. The Death Star was meant to be the centerpiece of this strategy, a weapon capable of annihilating entire planets, and held under the Grand Moff’s personal and direct control. What is not always understood, however, is that the Doctrine was not so much aimed at stamping out the Rebel Alliance, which barely existed at the time that Tarkin first presented his ideas to Emperor Palpatine, as it was directed at undermining and disrupting his institutional enemies within the Imperial system and strengthening his own power-base.
The Doctrine amounted to a direct declaration of war against the Imperial Navy and the Imperial security apparatus, both of which depended on centralization and consolidation of authority on Coruscant to function effectively. But for provincial governors like Tarkin, this amounted to an intolerable intrusion into their own spheres of domination. He, and his allies among the Moffs, had little desire to see ISB secure more and more influence over the planets and subjects under his rule, or to see lines of command-and-control established running from Coruscant to his sector capitol. Likewise, the steady growth of the size and power of the Imperial Navy in response to the steady growth of rebel activity could only siphon away power and influence from local sector governments and commands. The Death Star, and the accompanying political program, was designed to countermand these trends, vastly increasing the power of local administrations, and replacing the massive Imperial bureaucracy with a crude and brutal terror that could be exercised by himself. It is no coincidence that Tarkin’s closest ally in support the Project was Darth Vader. As Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader held a unique position in the Imperial hierarchy, one outside the normal chains of command.
But why then did Palpatine support the Doctrine? The Emperor, of course, left no records behind of his thought processes or decisions. But his motivations are not hard to discern. Palpatine may have spent the last twenty years creating the Imperial security apparatus and bureaucracy, but he by no means trusted it. Supporting Tarkin and Vader’s scheme was a way of cutting down to size the military and security institutions that could potentially have challenged his own rule, and redirecting their enemies into internal fighting for influence. It seems likely that, if not for his death at the Battle of Endor four years later, he would in due time have reversed course, strengthening the ISB and Imperial Navy at the expense of the Moffs.
The Dissolution of the Senate:
On 10.06.00 BBY, the Emperor issued an Edict temporarily dissolving the Imperial Senate, using as his justification the arrest of Senator Leia Organa of Alderaan and the Rebel attack on Scarif. A State of Emergency was declared, given the evidence of high-ranking treasonous infiltration of the government, and the normal order of business was suspended for the duration of the crisis. The truth, however, was apparent to those astute to read it in the formal text of the pronouncement.
“To better protect our citizens and our member worlds, the Emperor has superseded and suspended the Imperial Senate for the duration of this emergency. The Moffs and the Grand Moffs will now have direct control over their systems until such time as the danger has passed. We are sure you shall all do everything in your power to assist us during this time of crisis.”
The delegation of direct, unchecked authority over the Sectors to the Moffs and Grand Moffs marked a fundamental shift in the power structure of the Galactic Empire, sweeping away “the last remnants of the Old Republic” in Tarkin’s words, and instituting an almost military-feudal system, in which local Imperial authorities gained almost unlimited power to act in the Emperor’s name.
Much of the scholarship on this era has treated the Dissolution of the Senate as an afterthought, an inevitability with little practical implication. Given that the Imperial Senate had been virtually powerless since the Proclamation of the New Order, this is an understandable mistake to make. But a mistake it remains. Recently-declassified documents have proven that within the upper ranks of the Imperial government, this was a fiercely-debated and contentious decision. Director Ysanne Isard of Imperial Intelligence and Major Partagaz of the Imperial Security Bureau both lobbied against it, but were overruled by Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin’s faction. It will probably surprise no one to learn that their opposition was not principled in nature, but pragmatic: the Imperial Senate served as a key legitimating mechanism for the Galactic Empire, and abolishing it could only serve to undermine the Galaxy’s still-fragile stability.
Senator Padmé Amidala’s perhaps apocryphal epitaph for the Republic, that “liberty died to thunderous applause” may have been an exaggeration, but it had more than a grain of truth to it. Open opposition to Imperial rule from Senators such as Mon Mothma and Garm Bel Iblis was rare, as was active support for the New Order. For most of the old Republican elite, accommodation was the path forward. Most of those who had held power under the Republic—whether that power was political, social, cultural, or economic—found that they were able to maintain that power in the Galactic Empire, and the Senate was one of the primary avenues through which they retained influence. As a corporate body, the Imperial Senate was neutered right from the start, but individual Senators were still granted privileges and rewards that made the seats a prize well worth contesting. More importantly, they had access to the highest levels of Imperial power, allowing Senators and the larger elite superstructures they represented the ability to still influence Imperial policy in regards to their own interests and worlds.
From the perspective of the security apparatus, this served as a stabilizing force, giving the Galaxy’s myriad of local and regional elites a vested interest in maintaining—or at least not actively opposing—the New Order. It provided a wide array of tools for co-opting potential troublemakers, allowing them to be brought right to the heart of the Imperial socio-political-economic system and monitored, controlled, and played off against one another. But for Tarkin and the Moffs, this was a dangerous weakness in the body politic. The Tarkin Doctrine depended on local governors having direct and absolute control over their sectors, and allowing planetary leadership classes, many of which predated the existence of the Empire by hundreds or thousands of years, a direct line of access to Coruscant and the Emperor, could simply not be allowed. For Vader, any rival institution for Palpatine’s ear was automatically seen as a threat. And for the Emperor himself, the continued existence of any “remnant of the Old Republic” that could challenge him was simply an intolerable affront.
With the completion of DS-01, Tarkin and Palpatine were able to move forward, and dissolve the Senate permanently. The implications of that high-handed move would be serious, and would be felt across the Galaxy. But they would pale in comparison to what came next.
The Destruction of Alderaan:
It is likely that Palpatine had envisioned the eventual abolition of the Senate from the very beginning of the New Order. The Destruction of Alderaan, contrarily, was carried out on the spur of the moment, based on a whim of Grand Moff Tarkin. It is not even certain whether he requested permission from the Emperor beforehand—though it seems unlikely that even he would have carried out such a drastic step without approval.
On 07.06.00 BBY, Senator Leia Organa of Alderaan’s consular transport Tantive IV was intercepted by the Star Destroyer HIMS Devastator above Tatooine while attempted to smuggle the stolen Death Star schematics out of Imperial hands. Organa was the highest-ranked member of the Alliance captured by Imperial authorities thus far, and her guilt strongly implicated her father, Viceroy Bail Organa’s as well. However, even under torture, she refused to divulge either the location of the hidden Alliance headquarters or the names of other leaders. It seems that Grand Moff Tarkin had been seeking an excuse to use the Death Star’s superweapon against an inhabited planet, and Organa’s defiance provided the justification.
On 13.06.00 BBY, the Death Star dropped out of hyperspace in the Alderaan system. Ignoring all hails from System Traffic Control or the Royal Government, it fired its superlaser at full strength for the first time, rupturing the planet’s core, and killing two billion Imperial citizens in a single instant.
Alderaan was a Core System, tightly linked into the networks of trade and communication that bound together the heart of the Galactic Empire. It was impossible to hide the atrocity, even if Tarkin had wished to, but initial reports were confused beyond belief. Nearby ships and systems reported massive energy discharges and interrupted HoloNet calls, but initially underestimated the scale of the catastrophe. Admiral Xhosa, stationed in the Fedalle system, announced a Search & Rescue effort, but was swiftly countermanded by Fleet Central Command. It was nearby nineteen hours before the Imperial Bureau of Information issued a statement acknowledging the planet’s destruction and blaming it on a Rebel attack. However, seven hours after that, Grand Moff Tarkin issued his own communique, formally taking credit for Alderaan’s destruction and indicting their leadership for harboring terrorists and spies.
It is nearly impossible to overstate the impact this had on Galactic society and public opinion. True, the Empire had killed billions of people over the previous two decades of rule, but the vast majority of Imperial victims had been criminals, aliens, radicals, the desperate and the destitute—in short, those who could be safely ignored by the traditional elite classes. Alderaan was Core World, one of the leading lights of Galactic society and culture, and one of the original founders of the Galactic Republic in 25,053 BBY. The planetary government had never been known for its loyalty to the New Order, but Bail Organa had maintained a strict public neutrality, and had scrupulously obeyed Imperial laws and regulations, as well as upholding the pacifist policies adopted by the Alderaanian Parliament after the Clone Wars. Its destruction, and the extrajudicial execution of its entire planetary population, sent a shockwave of terror and rage rippling across the Empire. For its part, the Imperial government had been unable to prepare for the crisis, as nobody had known it was coming, and the chaos crippled any hope of an effective response. In his testimony after the Liberation of Coruscant, Deputy Director Rax Chanwar of the Imperial Bureau of Information stated:
“Burning stars, of course it was a disaster! I mean—a whole planet, right? Just blown up, just like that. And they didn’t tell us! We come into work one day and we have to just turn around and start churning out HoloNet videos about why blowing up kriffin’ Alderaan was all right and proper, what did they think was gonna happen? Nobody believed us, and most of us didn’t believe us either. What a mess. I don’t think we ever really recovered from that. Buncha guys retired and I didn’t blame ‘em. Hard to get real invested in writing up copy about land reclamation projects in the Outer Rim after seeing something like that, ya know?”
Tarkin believed that by holding entire planets collectively responsible for the actions of their leaders would terrify people into obedience. By raising the price of rebellion, he would make it too prohibitive to afford. But the numbers tell a different story. The Imperial Security Bureau’s statistics for the twelve months prior to the destruction of Alderaan listed a total of ninety-five terrorist incidents of a Class III or above, meaning that they merited attention from a senior ISB supervisor. Their statistics for the twelve months after the Battle of Yavin include a total of three hundred and forty-eight Class III or above incidents.
At least two Admirals and a Moff committed suicide, in actions that were found by ISB Internal Affairs investigations to be linked to the Alderaan atrocity. Records of the Imperial Army and Navy indicate that 18,754 personnel—primarily, though not exclusively, Alderaanian—defected or attempted to defect in the following months. Though seemingly insignificant when compared to the uncountable millions of Imperial soldiers and sailors, the influx of trained military personnel proved a godsend for a Rebel Alliance desperate for experienced military leadership. Among the defectors would be numbered several key future Alliance commanders, including Captain Tycho Celchu of Rogue Squadron and General Carlist Rieekan, who successfully oversaw the evacuation of Echo Base during the Battle of Hoth.
On some planets, Tarkin’s predictions proved true. On Yabol Opa, anti-Imperial members of the Planetary Assembly were lynched by a terror-stricken mob that included members of the Cabinet Council, and the Alderaanian expatriate quarter of Kuat City was burned and looted by Imperial citizens eager to prove their loyalty. But on Corellia, Duro, Ord Mantell, Commenor, Empress Teta, Cyrillia, Fondor, Saleucami, Byblos, New Apsolon, Fedalle, Obroa-skai, and even Coruscant, massive demonstrations and riots erupted, despite the draconian penalties for such disobedience mandated by the Imperial Emergency Act and the Public Order Resentencing Directive. At a time when all Imperial resources were desperately needed to crush the newly-invigorated Rebel Alliance, four corps of the Imperial Army and three Stormtrooper legions had to be diverted to public security measures in the Core in order to restore order. Three months after the attack, in a confidential memo to the Imperial Security Bureau Board of Directors, Supervisor Gel Davor wrote:
“Tarkin’s crude blundering has done more to destabilize the Core and the Colonies than everything the so-called Rebel Alliance has managed combined. We will require the dispatch of considerable resources if we are to repair the damage caused by the Alderaan incident and restore order to the populace, and it will take several years before normalcy has been achieved, no matter how heroic our efforts.”
But worse was yet to come.
The Galaxy Shakes:
Two weeks after the Battle of Yavin, as the Alliance leadership cadre scrambled to flee in the face of vengefully-pursuing Imperial forces, they received a surprising message. Transmitted through multiple intermediaries, it was from Borsk Fey'lya, a powerful and influential member of the Bothan Council, offering his support to the Rebel Alliance. Secret negotiations commenced, and it wasn’t long before Fey’lya slipped away from Kothlis with his followers and openly declared his allegiance to the Alliance. With him came the vast majority of Clans Alya and Ojia, as well as access to the Bothan banking system and intelligence networks. It was a much-needed boost for the embattled Alliance, and it was not the only one.
A number of Mon Calamari had served with the Rebel Alliance since its founding, most notably Lieutenant-Admiral Raddus, leader of the Nystullum Liberation Council, who was killed shortly before the Battle of Yavin, but the majority of the species’ leadership had held to a policy of neutrality. Despite the brutality and exploitation of the Imperial occupation of Dac, the Mon Calamari elite had mostly attempted cooperation and collaboration in the face of the overwhelming firepower that the Imperial garrison could bring to bear. The events of this year changed that. On 22.08.00 BBY, the Mon Calamari Senate met in secret secession and voted to endorse open rebellion against the Empire—the first legitimate planetary government to join the Rebel Alliance. By the end of 1 ABY, two Imperial army groups were tied down in the Mon Calamari system, trying and failing to maintain control. Even more importantly, workers in the Mon Calamari Shipyards were able to smuggle hundreds of Star Cruisers into Alliance hands. Converted into warships, they became the backbone of the Alliance Fleet, and Mon Calamari officers became the backbone of the Alliance Navy. It was this fleet, led by the famed Fleet Admiral Gial Ackbar, that would defeat the Empire at the Battle of Endor four years later.
Other signals of support were less dramatic, if no less important. Several of the Great Houses of Chandrila, which had politically and socially excommunicated Senator Mon Mothma after her conviction in absentia for treason in 2 BBY quietly reopened channels of communication, offering information and loans. The government of Sullust began allowing Rebel ships to use their planet as a rally point and staging point. On Thyferra, which held a near-monopoly on bacta production, the ruling cartel of Xucphra and Zaltin began covertly selling their lifegiving products to the Alliance. Slowly but surely, the Rebel Alliance found itself shifting from a loose movement of terrorists and radicals to a broad-based coalition with membership and support from dozens—and soon hundreds—of planetary governments and leaders.
The implicit social contract of the New Order was simple: absolute obedience in return for absolute security. The Empire demanded unconditional allegiance from its citizens, but in return promised an end to the chaos and corruption of the Old Republic. Laws were to be followed without question, but they would be upheld equally upon all citizens. Taxes were heavy, but they funded the Fleet that crushed piracy, slave-trading, and warlordism across the Outer Rim. Power was concentrated in the hands of a few, but they were free to make decisions swiftly and without compromise. To a certain extent, this had always been a creation of mere propaganda, but it was the basis upon which Imperial rule justified itself to the trillions and trillions of sentients who lived under its sway. The Tarkin Doctrine destroyed any pretense of it in less than a week.
By dissolving the Senate and devolving total power to the Moffs, Palpatine sent a clear message to local elites and planetary leaders that they were irrelevant and powerless. Without access to Coruscant and the Imperial Court, the traditional Republican elites who had mostly accommodated themselves to the Empire now found their influence vastly curtailed. By destroying Alderaan, Tarkin told them that even loyalty wasn’t enough to save them. The Grand Moff believed that terror would compel obedience, but by declaring such a sweeping policy of collective responsibility, he virtually guaranteed that local rulers would fall afoul of it, pushing them into open rebellion whether they wanted to or not.
The Galactic Empire maintained a force of hundreds of millions of soldiers, sailors, and stormtroopers, and employed billions of bureaucrats and officials, but in a galaxy with millions of inhabited planets, it would always be dependent on the consent and cooperation of the governed to function. As Tarkin himself saw, and outlined in Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v, no Fleet or security apparatus was large enough to police every star system. But his efforts to find another way of maintaining that tacit consent backfired spectacularly. Perhaps if the Tarkin Doctrine had been applied more systemically, it would have been more effective, but the Death Star’s destruction (and the Grand Moff’s death) mere days after the destruction of Alderaan undermined any effect it might have had. For many, word of the two events arrived simultaneously, sending not a message of terror, but one of hope.
Tarkin’s death threw his court faction into chaos, but it could not and did not undue his influence on Imperial policy. The years of 1-3 ABY were marked by a massive Imperial response to the unexpected success of the Rebel Alliance, but it remained unfocused and uncoordinated. Darth Vader took personal command of an Imperial task force, superseding the Naval chain of command and operational procedures. He would win a series of flashy victories, most famously at the Battle of Derra IV and the Battle of Hoth, leading to an Imperial Procession of Triumph on Coruscant in early 4 ABY, but even as the Alliance suffered defeat after defeat, their strength quietly grew on hundreds of planets. The lack of imagination inherent in Imperial policy at the time was marked by Palpatine’s primary response to the debacle, however, which was simply to order the construction of another Death Star.
Even if the Empire had triumphed at the Battle of Yavin, however, it seems unlikely that it would have been enough to stem the tide of rebellion. Other rebel groups existed besides the Alliance, such as Saw Gerrera’s Partisans and Garm Bel Iblis’s Independent Army, and resistance to Imperial rule was already widespread. Destruction of the Alliance’s leadership cadre and headquarters would undoubtedly have delayed any successful rebellion, perhaps by many years, but by destroying the unspoken compromises that underlaid the New Order, Tarkin had all but guaranteed that it would come.
Conclusion:
The Battle of Yavin was an incredibly important point in Galactic history, but it is a mistake to treat it as the sole turning point between “liberty and tyranny”, as popular opinion often does. By ignoring the context of the Death Star Campaign, we fail to understand the socio-political mechanics of how the Galactic Empire functioned, and how it ceased to do so. It is easy to place the blame of a few singularly evil men, and to give credit to a hero like Luke Skywalker, but the reality was far more complicated.
The Alliance to Restore the Republic depended not just on the heroism of fighter pilots like Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, or even the leadership of Mon Mothma and Leia Organa, but on the support and collaboration—open and otherwise—of millions of anonymous individuals across the Galaxy, who provided the munitions, credits, fuel, information, and supplies needed to wage a successful pan-Galactic war of liberation. For many of these individuals, this was not a matter of principle. The Great Houses of Chandrila had accommodated themselves to the Empire with ease, and would do so again. The Bacta Cartel earned a high profit on their illegal transactions with the Rebels. But without their aid, the heroes who led the Alliance to victory at the Battle of Endor and beyond would never have been able to take the field.
Without the failed implementation of the Tarkin Doctrine, that wide-based support would have been slow to materialize. The Rebel Alliance would have remained a movement of radicals and freedom fighters, and the Empire’s tyranny would have lasted years or decades longer. But in truth, the Tarkin Doctrine—or something analogous to it—was predictable. Palpatine justified the imposition of the New Order by contrasting it to the inefficiency, corruption, and sclerosis of the Old Republic. Today, as we grapple with the infinite complexities and compromises of a democratic society stretching across millions of inhabited planets and hundreds of thousands of light-years, nostalgia for a simpler time and a single, strong leader, is tempting. But the events of 0 BBY shows the fallacy of that fantasy.
Even at the height of its power, the Galactic Empire was not the singular will of an autocratic system, but a tangled mess of competing fiefdoms, squabbling over power and influence. ISB spent as much time arguing with COMPNOR as it did combating rebel activities, Moffs fought over jurisdictional boundaries with each other and the Imperial Navy, and the Imperial Bureau of Standards and the Imperial Finance Bureau maintained a dispute over tax-collecting authority that lasted from 17 BBY until the Liberation of Coruscant in 6 ABY. Palpatine deliberately shaped the Imperial government so that no arm of it would be able to challenge him, and the result was a system that was as least as dysfunctional as the Republic that preceded it. In this environment, it was all but inevitable that the fragile concessions that upheld the Empire would be torn apart, victim of a system that prided power above all else, and was incapable of introspection or compromise.
There is an old saying on Corellia: “If all you have is a vibrohammer, everything looks like a nail.” Palpatine built a system of government entirely on paranoia and power, and so inexorably, it came to believe that those were the only tools that existed. The Tarkin Doctrine attempted to substitute terror for politics, and billions of sentients paid the price. But in the end, the Empire itself was its most consequential victim.
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