THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM: JAPHY'S DECENT INTO MADNESS AND STAR WARS LEGENDS AND TIMELINE CHANGES TO THAT
Leading Members Executive Council, Alliance to Restore the Republic:
5 BBY-4 BBY: Mon Mothma (Chandrila), Bail Organa (Alderaan), Garm Bel Iblis (Corellia)
4 BBY-0 BBY: Mon Mothma (Chandrila), Bail Organa (Alderaan), Garm Bel Iblis (Corellia), Raddus (Mon Calamari), Jenssar SoBilles (Doros)
0 BBY: Mon Mothma (Chandrila), Garm Bel Iblis (Corellia), Jenssar SoBilles (Doros)
0 BBY-0 ABY: Mon Mothma (Chandrila), Jenssar SoBilles (Doros), Sian Tevv (Sullust), Dorman Beruss (Corellia - Alliance)
Chief of State of the Alliance to Restore the Republic
0 ABY-4 ABY: Mon Mothma (Popular Front for Galactic Democracy)
Chief of State of the New Republic and Chair of the Provisional Council
4 ABY-10 ABY: Mon Mothma (Popular Front for Galactic Democracy --- Independent)
6 ABY: Scattered
8 ABY: Scattered
10 ABY-11 ABY: Borsk Fey’lya (Popular Front for Galactic Democracy --- Federalist)
10 ABY: Ackbar, Ponc Gavirsom, Dorman Bruss (Popular Front for Galactic Democracy --- Autonomist Factions)
11-12 ABY: Mon Mothma (Popular Front for Galactic Democracy --- Independent)
12 ABY-14 ABY: Borsk Fey’lya (Galactic Federalist Front)
12 ABY: Garm Bel Iblis (Alliance for Free Peoples)
14: ABY: Garm Bel Iblis (Alliance for Free Peoples), Ponc Gavrisom (Independent Federalist)
14 ABY: Verrinnefra B'thog Indriummsegh (Reconsturction Association)
14 ABY-15 ABY: Dorman Beruss (Alliance for Free Peoples)
15 ABY-16 ABY: Borsk Fey’lya (Galactic Federalist Front)
16 ABY: Garm Bel Iblis (Alliance of Free Peoples), Sian Tevv (Reconstruction Association)
16 ABY: Leia Organa-Solo (Independent)
16 ABY: Borsk Fey’lya (Galactic Federalist Front)
16 ABY-17 ABY: Pwoe (Galactic Federalist Front)
17 ABY-19 ABY: Ponc Gavrisom (Independent Federalist)
18 ABY: Borsk Fey’lya (Galactic Federalist Front), Kerrithrarr (Alliance for Free Peoples), Sian Tevv (Reconstruction Association)
Clone Wars is a plural term, meaning more than one war. Combine that with the fact one generally names wars after opponents rather then one’s own army, and you’ve hit on the most basic of problems with the singular shadow puppet conflict shown in Episodes II and III. What is far more interesting is the implications of the old Expanded Universe. Plural conflicts, against Clones and the actors pointed to in the films and related sources being old men rather than the middle aged sort that one would expect with a conflict that had ended less then two decades before A New Hope.
What I suspect is that Clone soldiers were on the rise for a few centuries, thrown around as cheap fodder by groups like the Hutts, the Corporate Sector and various cartels, criminal enterprizes and petty statelets in the Outer Rim, growing in power as they went like space faring Condottieri from conflict to conflict. Around ~150 BBY the Clone masters decided they might as well start working for themselves rather then these bidders and started to carve out their own states and their own alliances. A decade or two later ~140-130 BBY they, possibly tapping into something akin to Separatist sentiment, went to war against the Republic. This war proved to be the closest they ever got to winning the whole thing. Pushing coreward from the Rim they used their mass legions to break open system after system. The Republic in chaos, reorganized forces, and called on the Jedi, and with the blood of millions turned back the tide, pushing the Clone Masters back.
Over the next century there would be three or four more wars, each time the armies of the clones doing less and less well, until the last war around ~50-35 BBY. The trend in these wars, besides smaller and smaller gains on the part of the Clones was the decay of their forces and their leadership. The first armies of the First Clone War were crack troops, but the pressures of war meant that new creches of troops were poured out on a faster and faster rate. Not only did training suffer but sanity did as well. In addition many of the Clone Masters were killed in the first war, replaced by well trained and developed clones at first, but by the last war there were legions of mad clones on the march, led by mad clone generals. The Last Great Clone War was a bloodbath of fights to the death out on the rim and suicide raids by clones across the Mid Rim, the Expansion region and all the way into the Core Worlds.
That war ending around ~40-30 BBY saw Palpatine, the great warlord of the Republic install himself as Emperor, and an effort launched on his part to destroy the last of the Jedi, after their orders had been decimated by a century of splits, warfare and the overall darkening of the force by the endless horror of the Clone Wars. Some remained, like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda who fled into hiding, while others like Anakin Skywalker became heroes for turning on the “Pacifistic and Narcissistic Orders” who were leading the Republic to die. Around 20 or 19 BBY a confrontation between Obi-Wan and Skywalker would publically lead to both of their deaths, while Skywalker, now long established as Palpatine’s Sith apprentice Darth Vader became the monster in the suit in reality that he had been acting to be for a while.
Resistance to the Empire was slow to develop. The farce of the Senate kept things going mostly as normal for some time even as the Sith-Fascist dictatorship took hold. But eventually the violence of the system, the enslavement and extermination of whole Non-Human races, the military build up and the closing noose around individual, political and system/sector freedoms was becoming too much. By the time Anakin Skywalker ‘died’ political opposition was already turning to non-violent resistance, which in the face of extreme violence turned towards revolt and military undergrounds.
Five years before the Battle of Yavin many of these resistance organizations had become centralized for whole planets or sectors, and that year a secret meeting in Corellia would see three of the largest groups established the Alliance to Restore the Republic, popularly known as the Rebel Alliance, and with that the Galactic Civil War could be said to have finally begun. Several major defeats, the crackdown that followed galaxy-wide and the a few dramatic moments saw this initially Core World centered alliance to catch fire, and drastically spread. While Mon Mothma became the Orator and face of the revolt, Garm Bel Iblis became the organizer of forces, helping establish the doctrine of Fleets in Being, were rebel spaceships would stay on the move, strike fast, and create a threat to the Empire by merely existing, and lastly the third great leader Bail Organa used Alderaan’s peaceful reputation to cloak himself in legitimacy and become a Gerry Adams like figure in the Senate, using the weight of the revolt to back up his arguments for reform. Bel Iblis’ efforts would helps see Sullest and Mon Calamari freed from Imperial Slavery, expanding the leadership and providing the alliance with two major bases on opposite ends of the Outer Rim to turn into fleet building holdfasts.
Over the next several years the drama would go back and forth until the events of Rogue One. Admiral Raddus, the commander of the Rebel Main Battle Fleet would die at Scarif and a matter of days later the Senate would be abolished, the Tarkin Doctrine put in place and in a demonstration of power, Alderaan would be destroyed by the Death Star. But as darkness fell across the galaxy, hope returned as Luke Skywalker would with a ‘lucky’ shot destroy the space station, killing Tarkin and transforming the war.
Over the next four years there would be chaos, the Rebellion would grow, it would be defeated, the Campaign at Hoth would be a bloodbath, in other regions the Empire was completely pushed out of the Rim. In the Rebel leadership Garm Bel Iblis would break away and vanish for nearly a decade fearing that Mon Mothma, as she assumed more and more power to keep the rebellion going. With his departure, and with the losses of many members of the executive council Mothma was forced to assume a role she didn’t want, becoming not a first among equals but the Chief of Staff of the Alliance.
The victory at Endor needs no explanation here, The Emperor and Vader dead. The complete destruction of the primary mobile force of the Imperial Navy and its leading ship, the Executor and the loss of the Second Death Star. The New Republic would be declared only weeks later, with Mon Mothma becoming its first Chief of State. But Endor was not alone the cause of the collapse of the Empire. The system had been rotting from the inside out.
The immense program of military buildup, the intense efforts to increase colonization in the Outer Rim and to though the use of artificially constructed hyperspace routes, the Deep Core and the Unknown Regions, the efforts to install a sexist and xenophobic in High Culture in a Galaxy were humanity as a whole was only ever a plurality, the growing violence, the cripplingly high tariffs on trade, and waton corruption were already causing the system to break apart. At the same time the Emperor, once a man of agile physicality as well as mind became less and less active in the day to day or even grand scheme running of his galactic spanning regime. Instead it was an ever shifting series of cabals in the court who managed everything from the shipment of food to the planet-wide cities of several core worlds to the various superweapon pet projects to keeping the Moffs in line. The Emperor, wanting to be free to experiment on Byss and in his private quarters in the Palace, left a system that was built entirely around himself in pure chaos. And while competing intelligence-security-terror agencies, his personal agents and his own for dark-side force meditations could keep things going to a bit, the rebellion threw this into chaos and off target. But none of that, even had the boot been able to be kept firmly on the throat of the sentient galaxy wasn’t enough to withstand the collapse of the galactic economy. The break down in law and order saw systems and sectors turn inward, saw piracy and privateering on the rise, and saw the simple economic troubles that had always been caused when the industrialized and urbanized galactic center was cut off or disrupted from trade with the resource rich rim. The bloody attritional year between Hoth and Endor, where the Galaxy really was on fire saw Moff’s defect or rise in revolt and a Grand Admiral attempt to launch a coup which came very close to success. The Empire could not survive for long on any account.
But the victory of the Rebel Alliance did matter, the Birth of the New Republic that followed the Emperor’s death was decisive. There was a force for democracy and equality on the galactic stage at this collapse, something essential as the courtiers in the Imperial Palace and the Grand Admirals, and the Sector commanders, and the senior leadership of the Armed forces all sought to seize the dictatorship and throne for themselves or to carve out Post-Imperial states. Without Mon Mothma the leadership of the Galactic Civil War from that point on would have merely been a collection of blood soaked, xenophobic “Might Makes Right” types. In between all factions were thousands of sectors and planets that sought neutrality and isolation, which while saving trillions from bloodshed also meant that the war would be fought by shoestring forces for years to come and that the galactic economy would continue to stagnate.
In these years Mon Mothma would not face much in the way of organized political opposition as the Republic sought to organize itself, figure out its systems and to defeat the Imperial remnants and win over neutrals. The revolving door of Imperial leadership and the constant shifting of Warlords to either support a new strongman or to break out on their own was not a force which could any longer defeat the Republic as it grew by leaps and bounds but they were a deadly opponent. Short on fleets that would answer it but strong in Stormtroopers the central government of the Empire would turn the push, two years after the Battle of Endor into the Core into the bloodiest days of the Civil War, as troops fought in the perpetual dark of the Coruscanti surface, turned the 5 core worlds and countless moons and minor planets of the Corellian system into a swamp of planet hopping, and forced the fight on a dozen other worlds to be fought to the vibroblade hilt. But in the end, they were defeated. Zsinj, one of the more powerful warlords was the first to break with Coruscant and took the war for a year or more into the outer rim, causing chaos and building internal institutions for his private empire before the shifting sands of Warlord power saw him isolated, and eventually defeated by forces under the command of General Han Solo and Admiral Ackbar.
Five years after the declaration of the New Republic, Thrawn returned from the unknown regions, and nearly turned the whole game around with little more than his own genius, but in the end was assassinated before his strategy to turn turn Republic tactics and the Outer Rim resources against the Republic. Besides a decade of rumor and myth that would follow around the blue-skinned Non Human Grand Admiral the larger legacies of the campaign was the birth of the Smuggler’s Alliance which democratized the semi-legal shipping industry under Tallon Karde, the discovery and destruction of Mount Tantis which would lead to the Caamas Document Crisis a decade later, and the return of Garm Bel Iblis to galactic politics. Additionally divisions in the Popular Front government would take hold as Borsk Fey’lya made his first attempt to increase his political position by trying but failing to unseat Ackbar as commander of the New Republic Defense Force.
By this time Republican politics has coalesced. Hundreds of thousands of political movements were represented in the Republic Senate, but they had turned into two vague camps, those who supported the Popular Front for Galactic Democracy, a catch all that basically boiled down to “Victory over the Empire, Completion of the New Constitution, and support for Mon Mothma” on the other hand were Independents who generally agreed with all of that anyway but didn’t take the government whip --- as it was --- on votes. Neither camp was particularly organized, but inside both there was an actual question developing, about the degree of the limited role of the new Galactic Republic on its various members. Borsk Fey’lya would rise as the most prominent of the centralizing Federalists, while the returned Bel Iblis, with decades of political experience maintained his old position from the old rubber stamp Imperial senate of small government, non-interference
The Galaxy was interested in Fey'lya’s ideas and chose to subscribe to hew newsletter and ten years after the Battle of Yavin, Mon Mothma stepped down as Chief of Staff seeking a position as General Secretary of the Senate only and Fey’lya and his Federalists defeated Bel Iblis and other decentralizers by a decent margin after a complex series of Senate elections and horse trading. It was his poor luck that just as he assumed office though that the Imperial pressures out on the Rim suddenly became a secondary issue as a series of increasingly demented clones of the late Emperor (Known as the Emperor Reborn, though there is little evidence to suggest that they in fact carried within them his original spirit as they would claim) struck out with massive forces from the center of the galaxy in the Deep Core. For all the rumors the Emperor Reborn set out about super weapons and ‘galaxy guns’ what he did have was a powerful, slaved-up fleet led by an insanely large star dreadnaught the Eclipse. And he had secret routes throughout the Deep Core that allowed him to strike anywhere in the Core Worlds out to the Mid Rim. This powerful fleet did push the Republic off Coruscant, and most of the core worlds and pushed them into a vice between himself and the Imperial remnants on the outer rim who smelled blood and pushed back. But in the end, clone madness, terrible logistics, and meglomania on the Imperial side and grit, determination and the force saw the Reborn Emperor’s forces defeated and himself killed by Leia Organa Solo and his sometimes pupil Mara Jade as they sought to rescue her Brother after his capture (Rumors of Luke Skywalker turning to the Dark Side due to truly terrible internal logic being as true as a snubfighter that can blow up Stars or a gun in the deep core that could fire a hyperspace cannon shot anywhere to blow up anything, or the Hutts building a discount Death Star), in little over a year not only was the Republic back on Coruscant but were in a stronger position they they had been with the Emperor Reborn had launched his campaign.
The fall of the core worlds had seen Fey’lya recognize the score and handed control of the Government back to Mon Mothma who ran things for the duration of the crisis, being above the petty political divides that he himself had ridden in on. He would spend that war year as Minister for Economics, trying to keep the war machine going as resources evaporated and stockpiles were lost, a role which he was well suited for. But when it was over he returned to his elected office, and having served very little of the two year term was elected again in 12 ABY at the head of a now organized and independent movement, the Galactic Federalist Front. As pushes into the rim continued this government would continue for two and a half years, securing another majority in 14 ABY before issues of corruption and vote buying came to the fore. The Bothan was ousted after a vote of no confidence that saw the Elomin Verrinnefra B'thog Indriummsegh assume the role. Verrinnefra, a member of a third party, the Reconstruction Alliance which had become a major advocate for decentralized government but was rapidly determined to push for increased galactic trade. Verrinnefra, and the Reconstruction Alliance as a whole would be haunted for years that they were merely puppets to the Smuggler’s Alliance and Karde but never the less remained in power for more then half a year before the failure to pass a Budget saw him resign the office, to be replaced by Dorman Beruss for the Alliance of Free People’s. Beruss’ selection in large part being secured less on her autonomist credentials then on the fact that she had broken with Bel Iblis when he’d left the alliance years before and was thus seen to be more independent of her party leader then most. Half a year later Fey’lya resumed control of the government when an Imperial coalition under an Admiral Daala was able to break though the forward picket lines and launch a grand raid into the Mid Rim along the Corellian trade spine.
Fey’lya’s return to office saw another Federalist victor in the elections of 16 ABY and the defeat of Daala, at the time and for several years after thought to be the last great effort by Imperial Forces. The years after the Reborn Emperor would not be dominated by the Republic perpetually teetering on collapse, the problems were economic by and large, and in trying to convince neutrals to reenter the galactic system. As ever less potent Imperials played God-King in private fiefs and on the Council of Moffs things moved forward. Luke Skywalker over the course of years established around himself a cadre of apprentices as he traveled the galaxy working as a healer and a diplomat. His sister would spend years as the Minister for Diplomacy under every government of the Republic, Han Solo was generally at her side, or serving as a military attache when needed, or working with Lando Calrissian who’s grandiose economic projects were designed to make headlines, gain investors, and inspire just as much as they were meant to secure resources and earn profits. There were no ghosts, and the galactic press, as well as everyone who knew the two didn’t ponder about Luke Skywalker’s love life because everyone except himself knew that there was only going to be one woman in his life, his occasional apprentice Mara Jade.
Little under a year after his most recent victory though Fey’lya was caught in a complicated financial scheme where he had not been the ringleader but was close enough to things and made enough money that he was ousted from power in disgrace. As factions within his own Federalist Front were gaining power and organizing to permanently remove him in the name of their own ambitions he instead used his influence, reached out to Bel Iblis his long term rival and assured that temporary government control would pass to his Diplomatic Minister. Leia Organa-Solo thus found herself unhappily assuming the office of Chief of State. In her brief period of leadership she would oversee a Republic effort to defeat Duskhan League as they sought, using their own vast fleet to commit genocide in their own corner of of the Core Worlds. Not sending her Husband to command the fleet there and be captured and with her brother not on some useless quest to find their mother, she oversaw a swift if costly victory and then promptly, was glad to see Fey’lya at least mostly freed from the crowd of suspicion he was under and turn back the government to him.
The cunning Bothan would not be in the Chief of Staff’s office for five months before he was ousted, this time in a vote of no confidence organized from within his own Federalist movement. Pwoe, the Quarran representative from Mon Calamari had long served as Fey’lya’s Chief of Staff and Minister for Economics was the leader of the thing and was able to assume office for himself for even less time then his chief. Fey’lya was able to manage his ouster but, recognizing that his time in the Chief’s seat was done engineered the ascension a long term rival in the form of Ponc Gavrisom, an Independent Federalist. Though none knew it at the time this would prove to be an immensely important move as Gavrisom would have to weather the Caamas Document Crisis, where a Bothan head of state would have ensured a second Galactic Civil War. It did mean that Fey’lya was not the man to sign the final peace with the Imperial Remnant and end the first Galactic Civil War, but as he assumed a position as a Grand Old Man of the Senate he could at least congratulate himself on having more or less sailed the ship of state though to victory. Admittedly this was after a final attempt at a comeback ended in his first electoral defeat.
Luke Skywalker would in the peace that followed go on to establish a small number of scattered Jedi Academies and marry Mara Jade after the two of them escaped the Hand of Thrawn. Leia Organa-Solo would step down from her nearly two decades as the Alliance and Republic’s chief diplomat to be an Ambassador at Large and train in the force and raise her children. Han Solo would to entertain himself become an active member of various small scale shipper’s unions and spend time with his family as well. And no stupid Aliens with an entirely biological form of technology would ever invade the galaxy. The end.