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The New Republic is one of the biggest parts of Star Wars‘ universe after the climax of Return of the Jedi. It’s a state of power in the galaxy that defines three decades of Star Wars chronology before it’s upended in the sequel trilogy, and it touches on so many of the contemporary franchise’s parts, from upcoming movies to shows like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian. Its broader rise and fall speaks to the cycle of conflict that Star Wars has, in ways good and bad, come to be defined by. And yet, the New Republic itself, beyond those broad strokes, remains lightly explored and even more lightly defined.
That has, over the years, very slowly changed. After an initial wave of tie-in stories to flesh out the “Journey to The Force Awakens” in 2015—a journey that climaxes with the New Republic’s own explosive end in that movie—the broader strokes of the New Republic’s rule, beyond its very early days, have remained relatively untouched. But now, Star Wars has grown into an even broader media empire. Ahsoka and The Mandalorian alike have played in the shadows of the New Republic’s struggles to address the threat that will one day undo it. Now Marvel’s comics, between the recent Battle of Jakku comics miniseries and the upcoming relaunch of the main ongoing Star Wars series, are exploring those crucial early years that saw the New Republic coalesce in the face of the victory at Endor. So now, at the very least, we have a somewhat better picture of what the rebirth of the Republic looked like.
A New Hope, and the Empire Strikes Back
It would take the best part of a year after the battle of Endor to formally establish the New Republic on Chandrila, the Republic’s newest capital and the site of the reconstituted Galactic Senate. But it existed almost immediately after the Rebellion’s decisive victory, as Alliance forces and operatives capitalized on the disarray brought about by the Emperor’s death to petition worlds across the Galactic Core and Inner Rim to support the fledgling reformation effort.
Although the Rebellion’s momentum was defined as much by Imperial disorganization as it was military might, the first months after Endor saw multiple attempts to stymie word of the Rebels’ victory at Endor. Posthumously Palpatine sent messages to various Imperial commanders to enact Operation Cinder, an interstellar campaign targeting multiple worlds with climate-disruption lasers, regardless of their purported fealty to either the Empire or the Rebellion, in an attempt to divide the focus of the latter and turn public sentiment against the Rebellion. The Anoat sector, a vital Outer Rim territory for fuel production due to worlds like Bespin, was locked down by its Imperial overseer Governer Adelhard, heavily blockading travel in and out of the sector and forcefully crushing any signs of dissent or even acknowledgement of the Emperor’s death, denying the Rebellion access to a vital series of worlds in the process.
Even Coruscant itself, the former capital of the Republic and now the Empire’s primary seat of power, would’ve proved a symbolic asset for the nascent New Republic to hold, but the world spent months locked in a bitter civil war, as Imperial forces rallied under Palpatine’s former Grand Vizier, Mas Amedda, to try and crush the pockets of pro-Rebellion sentiment that had surged on the world upon news of Palpatine’s passing. In order to combat the misinformation and gain galactic leverage as Palpatine’s death became accepted—whether through Rebel propaganda or the chaos of the Empire’s dysfunction as various Moffs and military officials sought to publicly succeed him as Emperor—almost a year after the battle of Endor, the New Republic was made official, electing Alliance leader Mon Mothma as its first (and, at the stressing of Mothma herself, provisional) chancellor to send a message to the galaxy that a new era of order was upon it.
The Outer Rim Front
The formal establishment of the New Republic did little to dramatically change the state of power in the galaxy, at first. Battle lines were redrawn, as the New Republic focused on liberating worlds in the Core and Inner Rim, while the various splinter fleets and remnant powers of the Empire consolidated forces in the Outer Rim, already emboldened by Adelhard’s “Iron Blockade” locking down Anoat. What saved the New Republic from being swept out of the Core was, in many ways, less about the strength of the organization itself, and more about the lack of a unified front from the Imperial Remnant providing a singular force to coalesce around.
That almost changed on the planet Akiva. The formation of the Imperial Future Council by Admiral Rae Sloane, alongside a coterie of other Imperial Naval officers and former advisors to the Emperor, was meant to establish a path forward to transition from Palpatine’s rule to a new figurehead for the Empire. It established the Outer Rim planet as a potential new hub for the Empire to plan long-term strategies in its battle against the New Republic. However, a combination of internal sabotage—in which Imperial admiral Gallius Rax leaked key information to the New Republic military to undermine his potential opponents—and the fomenting of uprising on the world saw the IFC almost completely eradicated through death or capture, save for Sloane. Akiva would become the first world in the Outer Rim to formally join the New Republic, shattering the Empire’s broader grip on the region.
The victory—alongside the development of a rare New Republic military program before Mon Mothma platformed a policy of demilitarization, the Starhawk Project, which used captured Imperial capital ships as the base for a new class of dreadnaught—saw momentum once again turn in the New Republic’s favor. After the liberation of Kashyyyk, robbing the Empire of the slave forces it had built out of its occupation of the Wookiees, and almost as crucially Kuat, the home of Kuat Drive Yards’ shipyards, more and more Outer Rim worlds began rising up and seceding to the New Republic.
The successful liberation of Kuat, denying the Empire a key asset in ship production, saw the New Republic Senate approve a path to peace talks between Mon Mothma and now Grand Admiral Rae Sloane. But the talks, coinciding with a celebration for Alliance prisoners liberated as part of the rebellion on Kashyyyk, were thrown into disarray. Forced into violent rages by hidden biochip implants, the liberated prisoners feted on Chandrila turned on gathered Republic leaders, claiming the lives of several officials in the process. The peace talks were called off, and the attacks caused the tides to turn on the New Republic once more. Broadcast all over the holonet, the attack on Chandrila caused a wave of panic—worlds petitioning for senatorial representation and Republic membership backed out, while others sought to relocate the Senate away from the world. Other systems proposed the resurgence of independent alliances, rather than a singular unified government that could be threatened by repeat attacks. In a single afternoon, victory in the Galactic Civil War had been snatched away—and replaced with a New Republic on the edge of being broken apart entirely.
The Road to Jakku
The public relations nightmare that followed the attempted assassinations on Chandrila beset the New Republic with myriad challenges. Internally within the Senate, Mon Mothma found her leadership challenged by rivals seeking to push back on her goals of decentralization and eventual disarmament, while various independent galactic powers, born from mercantile trade, piracy, and other separatist factions, forming their own governmental systems. To guarantee the safety of the Senate, plans were made to move sentatorial duties away from Chandrila, and to new facilities on the Mid Rim world of Nakadia, which would become the first of a rotating series of capitals and senatorial hubs for the Republic.
But while the New Republic looked within, so did the Empire. Emboldened by the chaos sown on Chandrila, a new Imperial ruling council rose up under the command of Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax, a rival to Sloane who he thought was killed in the crossfire while she was on Chandrila. Rax, operating on secret contingencies from Palpatine designed to completely destroy the Imperial Remnant while a new order was developed in secret, mustered the remaining Imperial military might to his homeworld, Jakku, seeking to draw the New Republic into an extended pitched battle in the Inner Rim that would culminate in the destruction of the planet, effectively crippling the New Republic and remnant Imperial forces alike.
Although New Republic agents discovered the massing of Imperial assets over Jakku, direct military intervention was stymied by the Republic senate, with votes to approve military action defeated and delayed by the process of the Senate’s transferral to Nakadia. After it was discovered that several senators who had voted against action had been coerced by crime syndicates seeking the extension of the Galactic Civil War (and with it, the growth of an illicit arms trade), military action was finally approved.
Imperial forces and the New Republic Defense Fleet engaged on and over Jakku just over a year to the day of the Battle of Endor in what was, initially, the Empire’s battle to lose. Rax tightened the Imperial Navy around his flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Ravager, creating a defensive grid that the New Republic’s forces struggled to penetrate, drawing both fleets together as part of his plans to catch them in the crossfire of Jakku’s destruction. It wasn’t until a sacrificial assault on the Ravager itself by the Starhawk Concord—the first of the class of capital ship to be constructed under the program a few months prior—pulling it into a descent to the planet’s surface with its tractor beam arrays that the tide turned in the Republic’s favor. As the world below was ravaged with debris from falling ships from both sides—with many Star Destroyers scuttled so they could avoid capture by New Republic boarding teams—the New Republic eventually routed the scattered Imperial Forces.
Peace and Rehabilitation
Defeat at Jakku, as well as the death of Rax—killed by Sloane before he could enact his contingency to detonate Jakku’s core—saw the beleaguered Mas Amedda sue for a ceasefire after escaping his confines in the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. Meeting with Mon Mothma, Leia Organa, and other officials on Chandrila, the Galactic Civil War came to an end with the signing of the Galactic Concordance, a treaty that included articles for the Empire’s total surrender to the New Republic. Coruscant was formally given over to the New Republic and any Imperial claim on the world relinquished, and the Empire was given dedicated space within the core and inner sectors that it was strictly enforced to remain in, while the dissolution of the Imperial Academy system effectively put a limit on the recruitment and development of new armed forces. To further stall attempts at a resurgence by the formal Remnant, the Concordance further stipulated that interstellar corporations were prohibited from working with the Empire under penalty of extensive reparations.
Although fighting would continue to rage among Imperial holdouts on Jakku for months following the signing of the Concordance, the terms of the treaty also put the New Republic itself on a path towards demobilizing much of its own defense forces. The introduction of a new Military Disarmament Act in the Republic Senate would finally strip the office of the Chancellor of many of the emergency executive powers granted to it during the outbreak of the Clone War, as well as drastically reduce the scope of the New Republic military in favor of funneling support to local system defense forces. Alongside the demilitarization process, the New Republic also began amnesty programs to recruit former Imperial officers and citizens for rehabilitation into Republic society—even as it maintained strict punishment of any Imperial forces attempting to act in defiance of the Concordance.
It is in this brief period of peace that the New Republic and formal Imperial Remnant remains for several decades, although no doubt in upcoming material like Marvel’s Star Wars relaunch, or in the crisis that the New Republic faces with Grand Admiral Thrawn in Ahsoka and Dave Filoni’s upcoming film, we’ll get to see more insight into these early days. And of course, there’s always the threat in the shadows we know is to come years after: while the formal Empire still remained a factor after the conclusion of the war, multiple remnant factions still pursued a chance to overthrow the New Republic’s hard-earned peace… including those forces that fled into the edges of known space and beyond to start building up plans for Palpatine’s return.
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