Galactic Civil War

He had to have an intercessor along the way.

So when Maul dies, Dooku's already left the Jedi Order, has already become the Count of Serenno, and has already started running the Confederate of Independent Systems, which is the other faction in the Galactic Civil War.

He knows who his next apprentice is and who he's going to go after because Dooku, in this book, Dooku has already talked to Sidious about wanting to know more power, about wanting to have more power in the Force.

This manipulation runs so deep and is so fervent in...

What is what is the point of this? Is this history? Is it? to tell a historically accurate thing that maybe, you know, gets the kicks into the empire, or is it to tell the type of history that will enable for a better piece? And there's, you know, part of the framing of that is to allow the reader to decide what do they think is more important here.

But also one of the things that I've said this to you before, Mark, is I think that the New Republic and the Rebel Alliance's history focuses very much on themselves, that the New Republic and the Rebel Alliance are pretty sure about why it is that they won the Galactic Civil War.

But they've never spent a great deal of time thinking about why the Galactic Empire lost it.

And those two things might not be the same thing.

And Rise and Fall in particular is an attempt to answer that question.

So why is it that the Galactic Empire loses the Galactic Civil War? So, you know, the times when it touches on the Rebel Alliance is in relation to what the Empire is doing.

And then we start to see, like, the military incompetence, the infighting, the purges, the ridiculous funding decisions, the bureaucracy, all of these things that drain away the Empire's ability to wage war.

And then what you see in Star Pilots is reflections from pilots who were there on the front lines, sometimes talking about, like, this made our job really hard.

answering questions and making me look like a psychopath in matches.

But there's an oddity about that I've picked up from a really long history, which is in this case, that when you, which we try to transmit into the book, and some of it sounds very reasonable and some of it sounds very, very odd, that if you take any given day of the Galactic Civil War, someone is surviving the very worst day of their life.

And that is very understandable, you know, a person going through a war has a horrible time makes a lot of sense to us.

The problem is that simultaneously somebody else is having the best day of their life.

Book, book.

Well, the premise of this book is that it is an in-universe memoir/oral history written from the perspective of friend of the podcast, Wedge Antilles, on the legacy of space combat from the Galactic Civil War and the later showdown between the Resistance and the New Order.

Side note, I have no idea what the overall name for this latter military engagement is, and honestly, I-

I don't think there is one.

As one of the more famous pilots of the Rebellion, aviation enthusiasts have previously approached Wedge Antilles with questions about his experiences and memories with a sense of awe.

However, it was not until after the New Order's near victory in 34 ABY and being approached by an aviation enthusiast who was more anxious about the past being forgotten than intrigued by memories of heroism, that Wedge begate- that Wedge began to consider the importance of there being some kind of record of his and others' experiences as pilots.

This conversation with a Resistance member after the fall of the New Order prompts Wedge to examine some data cards sent to him years ago, which contain recordings of pilots' interviews with three interviewers hired by The New Republic to collect content for a potential exhibition of the dynamics of space combat of the Galactic Civil War.

Both Imperial and Rebellion pilots were interviewed for this exhibition, but due to budget cuts, this exhibition never took place.

Their regiments were often spread more thinly than other SpecForce formations.

Their service included some of the most recognizable battlefields of the Galactic Civil War.

Arctic Wilderness Fighters, wearing white uniforms suited to the cold, participated in the Battle of Hoth, while Forest Camouflaged Rangers fought during the Battle of Endor.

A more specialized example was the Nisher Task Force, commanded by Major Fisk Sino, a veteran Wilderness Fighter officer who had survived several campaigns in the Outer Rim.

SpecForce could not always match the enemy in numbers, vehicles, or firepower, but it could bring together soldiers trained to operate in an environment and circumstance where conventional forces might struggle.

Their service was demanding, often dangerous, and frequently conducted far from the attention given to the Alliance's larger military campaigns.

Yet the regiments of the SpecForce contributed to operations throughout the Galactic Civil War, from isolated raids and reconnaissance missions to major engagements, such as the battles of Hoth and Endor.

For the Rebel Alliance, these were the soldiers selected to undertake missions beyond the capabilities of ordinary troops.

She's torn between the oath she swore, her ingrained loyalty to the system she grew up worshiping, and her desperate love for Thane.

So they literally end up fighting on completely opposite sides of a massive galactic civil war.

What makes this narrative engine so powerful is the shift in perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about the ones trapped in the actual grinding machinery of the Galactic Civil War? Because these comics don't just explore the fringes, they do the heavy lifting of filling in the narrative gaps between the actual films.

Let's look at the flagship Marvel Star Wars title that launched in 2015.

Okay.

Aphra's scrambling to not die in the crossfire, and Han just wants to get everyone out alive.

Deodato's artwork for the main event pages is heavy with blacks and flying debris, really emphasizing the crushing physical weight of Vader's presence.

It makes the Galactic Civil War feel incredibly visceral.

It really does.

And I'm gonna...

I love that story, um, answer in terms of, uh, why or why not, but from a Disney s- like, in Lucasfilm standpoint, I'm gonna say no unfortunately, because it sounds like for now they're closing the book on live action series, and I don't think we're gonna see them exploring the Galactic Civil War era or even, uh, 20 BB, BBY up to the Galactic Civil War-

Mm-hmm

...

Um, it's called Star Wars: Star Pilots.

It's a, it's like an oral history of fighter pilots in the Star Wars universe who fought in the Galactic Civil War.

There's tons of stuff in there about war experience, and downtime, and commemoration, and memory, and all the things that tend to make us happy on our lovely podcast.

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