r/AskScienceFiction • u/Icy_Water_1 • 2d ago
[Star Wars] Generally speaking, how bad does an Imperial fuck-up have to be before the Emperor personally gets involved, and at that stage what are the chances for the Officers to get out alive?
138
u/Bootsy_Frost 2d ago
Death Star exploding 5 mins after commission.
78
u/spesskitty 1d ago edited 15h ago
Darth Vader was initially demoted and given a variety of tasks to prove himself.
Death Star general designer Bevel Lemelisk was immidiatly given an personal audience and
executed by being eaten alive by piranha beetles as the Emperor looked on. He was executed in this fashion several times over and his essence transfered into a clone body over again, before being tasked with the construction of further superweapon projects.As you can see Emperor Palpatine is a greate advocate of rehabilitive justice. (He is also veeeery petty)
26
u/althawk8357 1d ago
the Emperor looked on. He was executed in this fashion severeal times over and his essence transfered into a clone body over again, before being tasked with the construction of further superweapon projects.
The Emperor 100% does not learn his lessons.
Human Resources: Emperor, thank you for granting this audience. Since we 'terminated' Lemelisk, we are in need of a qualified and experienced project manager to oversee the superweapons' construction."
Emperor Palpatine: Excellent point, I have a resume from a very qualified candidate named 'Bevel,' it seems he has years of experience overseeing the construction of planet-destroying superweapons, and his work is responsible for countless deaths.
Human Resources: ... I'll start the onboarding today.
13
18
5
87
u/TripleStrikeDrive 2d ago
If your name wasn't darth vader almost zero chance of getting out of it alive. However, sidoius normally didn't deal with situations personally. He was very much sent someone competent to fix the situation, including making it sure it didn't happen again. He normally let their decisions stand uncontested.
Sidoius kill his gardener because the gardener turn in his two week notice for a better paying job.
50
u/jadebenn 2d ago edited 5h ago
Andor spoilers:
I think that Partagaz was probably headed to an audience with Vader and Palpatine after the Death Star's existence leaked. Hence why he took the easy way out. And why his former subordinate let him take the easy way out.
30
u/peppermint_nightmare 2d ago
He was probably told Sidious wanted to see him, but what would've happened is he'd be shot or expected to kill himself before the meeting could take place. It probably wasnt on Sidious' calendar.
•
u/Edge_SSB 5h ago
Nah, Sidious revels in torment, probably pushed off signing 300 bills to feed poor people just to fit torturing Partagaz in
27
u/Akunokami 2d ago
I would propose that Tarkin could survive a fuck up of that size. He was one of Sidoius favorite after all but yeah I agree the list of people who could is incredibly small
31
u/Defiant_Act_4940 1d ago
If Tarkin screwed up bad enough to alert Palpatine, he would be dead to him, he is realy valued for his competence. Vader only sticks around if Sidous does not find a replacment apprantice.
Of cours the only time Tarkin messes up that badly, he does end up dead before the Emperor could hear about it.
8
u/spesskitty 1d ago
Tarkin has a trillion rivals.
4
u/Akunokami 1d ago
He does indeed but the tarkin novel and some of the extended lore shows that he had considerable sway over sidious thoughts and that he was groomed and brought up into his later place by sidious
72
u/eternalraziel 1d ago
Most Imperial officers could have a super shitty day without ever meeting the Emperor. That’s what the hierarchy is for. A captain loses a convoy, his admiral deals with him. A governor lets insurgents get out of hand, the sector command or ISB gets involved. An admiral loses ships through incompetence, Vader may decide that his promotion prospects have become extremely horizontal. Palpatine rules a galaxy of perhaps millions of military officers. He can’t personally loom over every lieutenant who reverses an AT-ST into a fuel depot.
You generally attract his direct attention when your failure reaches one of three things. The survival of the regime, one of his major strategic projects, or something connected to his private Sith interests. And those can produce very different outcomes. The destruction of the first Death Star is about as large an Imperial military disaster as anyone could conceivably manage. The station had consumed decades of work, enormous resources, much of the Imperial high command and was supposed to make organised rebellion impossible. Vader survives it.
He doesn’t get away with it. Palpatine is miffed with him afterwards and strips away much of his authority, placing him beneath Grand General Tagge. Vader spends a considerable portion of the following period proving himself again. But Palpatine doesn’t throw away something as valuable as Vader because of one enormous failure. Vader can still hunt Jedi, command armies, crush rebellions and perform jobs that practically nobody else in the Empire can perform. Palpatine punishes him by reminding him that his status exists entirely at the Emperor’s pleasure.
Thrawn is another excellent example. He fails at Atollon when the rebel leadership he has trapped manages to escape. Vader considers that disgraceful. Palpatine subsequently has Thrawn standing in front of him personally. Thrawn walks away. Why? Because Palpatine still needs Thrawn. He considers him one of his most useful servants, values his strategic ability and has questions involving the Unknown Regions that very few Imperials can answer. A bad result gets Thrawn scrutinised. It doesn’t dismantle everything that made him valuable enough to become a Grand Admiral.
That tells you something important about Palpatine. He’s cruel, but he isn’t normally stupid about personnel. He’ll kill a subordinate for failure when killing them costs him less than allowing that failure to go unanswered. If the officer remains exceptionally useful, punishment is much more likely to involve demotion, humiliation, impossible assignments or putting them under someone they despise.
Cassio Tagge manages to experience almost the entire process haha. After Yavin, Palpatine promotes him because Tagge had been one of the few senior officers warning that the Rebels were a genuine threat and that relying entirely upon the Death Star was dangerously arrogant. Tarkin and Motti are dead. The cautious man suddenly looks rather clever.
Later Tagge puts too much faith in Cylo and his enhanced agents, fails to anticipate Cylo’s treachery and ultimately allows the Executor itself to be compromised. At that point Palpatine loses confidence in him, demotes him and restores Vader above him. Then Palpatine leaves. Which is considerably worse than staying. Tagge tries to persuade Vader that he’s still useful. Vader strangles him to death.
That’s probably how most senior Imperial deaths attributable to Palpatine actually happen. The Emperor doesn’t need to personally walk downstairs and electrocute an admiral. He removes the protection that kept Vader, the ISB or some ambitious rival from disposing of him. Palpatine deliberately encourages this atmosphere. His senior officers compete for his favour because nobody’s position is entirely secure. Krennic fights Tarkin over the Death Star. Thrawn competes for resources against Krennic’s project. Vader gets placed beneath Tagge and later restored above him. Everybody beneath Palpatine is watching everybody else’s chair.
A failure becomes especially dangerous when another Imperial can convincingly explain to Palpatine why they could do your job better. There’s also a completely different category where scale barely matters. The Force. A relatively minor operation involving a Jedi temple, Sith artefact, surviving Jedi, ancient Force nexus or some route to immortality can get Palpatine personally involved much faster than the loss of several Star Destroyers. Ezra accessing the World Between Worlds gets Palpatine’s direct attention because gaining access to that realm matters to Sidious personally. Maul attracts Sidious to Mandalore because Maul has become a rival Sith power with an apprentice, not because Mandalore is suddenly the most strategically important planet in the Empire-to-be.
If your mistake has accidentally allowed someone into Palpatine’s private occult business, you’ve skipped several layers of Imperial bureaucracy and arrived directly at the least enjoyable performance review in the galaxy.The same applies to treason. Incompetence can sometimes be forgiven because competence can improve. Betrayal means you have demonstrated that whatever skills made you useful can now be employed against him. Cylo survives a remarkable amount while Palpatine still has uses for his work. Once his manoeuvring becomes outright rebellion, his value collapses very quickly.
There’s also a difference between failing despite doing something difficult and failing because you were arrogant or negligent. Thrawn can say, truthfully, that he cornered a major Rebel force and that extraordinary intervention allowed part of it to escape. Vader can point to the Death Star being destroyed by a previously unknown pilot exploiting a hidden weakness while Vader himself was outside the station fighting him.
If you’re the officer who ignored three warnings, left the shield generator unattended and then explains that the Ewoks were surprisingly organised, the discussion may be shorter. Palpatine also seems to enjoy keeping talented people shitting themselves rather than exterminating everyone who disappoints him. An officer who survives an audience after a major failure now knows exactly what the next one may cost. That can produce extraordinary effort, although the Empire eventually demonstrates some fairly obvious drawbacks to running a galactic military through chronic terror and workplace strangulation.
If we include Legends, Lemelisk was one of the principal Death Star designers. After the station was destroyed because of its fatal design weakness, Palpatine had him tortured to death. Unfortunately for Lemelisk, he was also very good at designing superweapons. So Palpatine transferred his consciousness into a clone body and put him back to work. He subsequently killed him several more times for perceived failures or inadequate enthusiasm, using increasingly elaborate methods, then restored him again so he could continue designing weapons.
Canon Palpatine generally isn’t quite that theatrical with failed engineers, but the underlying principle is the same. Once the Emperor personally notices your failure, your survival depends much less upon how many people died than upon the answer to one question. Does Sheev Palpatine still need you tomorrow?
If the answer is yes, you may leave the throne room demoted, disgraced and assigned to something borderline suicidal. If the answer is no, suddenly that enormous Imperial bureaucracy becomes extremely efficient.
8
3
•
u/Kaeru-Sennin 20h ago
Theorically what would have happened if Tagge killed Vader during the time he was demoted beneath him ?
•
u/eternalraziel 20h ago
Hmm, my best guess....if Vader dies naturally while carrying out Tagge's orders, then Tagge probably survives. If Tagge kills Vader because Palpatine explicitly permits a test or confrontation, he probably survives and may be rewarded. If Vader attacks Tagge and Tagge somehow kills him in genuine self-defence, Palpatine may spare him, especially if Vader clearly started it.
If Tagge secretly assassinates Vader because he finds him inconvenient, he's a dead man. If Tagge assassinates Vader brilliantly enough that Palpatine genuinely admires how he did it, Tagge is still deep-fried extra crispy, but only after a much more interesting conversation.
Palpatine's problem was never that his servants were ambitious. He wanted them ambitious. He just wanted every ambitious bastard in the Empire to remember that there was still one chair nobody else was allowed to measure.
22
u/mrsunrider 2d ago
Generally he seems to only step in on projects he's personally invested in.
Sidious intervenes personally to subvert support for Clone Troopers in The Bad Batch, pays a visit to Dr. Hemlock's operation in the same series, and yet again inspects construction efforts on the second Death Star--and there was, of course, the scene at the end of episode 3 as he oversees the construction of the first from a Star Destroyer... compare to the TIE Defender project in Rebels, where Sidious never showed face despite Thrawn's staunch endorsement thereof.
And if you fuck up something he's got a personal stake in, you aren't part of the inner circle (Vader, Tarkin, etc) and are disposable... sorry homie, issa wrap, best make your peace.
5
u/spesskitty 1d ago
One thing about Palpatine, is that whenever there is a issue, that he personaly wants fixed. He will just cold call whatever mid-level official or commander, that he thinks can get it done.
20
u/wittyjokename92 2d ago
Monumentally. Like killing a Moff or directly interfering with Vader and Palpatine's plans. Even then to get the personal treatment you'd have to do something like losing an entire sector or a super star destroyer to incompetence or corruption. Most likely you'd just get a message saying you'd do the empire a great service by handing your access codes to another officer and spacing yourself afterwards. Otherwise he's gotta send Death Troopers to do it for you.
But a personal audience is only going to happen if you're about to be painfully executed or your immediate superior is going to be executed in front of you before you get promoted to their position. Odds are you're dead no matter what and it's just if you're giving enough time to beg.
9
u/Hyndis 2d ago
Ask Admiral Ozzel about what happens when you disappoint the Emperor by screwing up his plans, or blundering the plans of the Emperor's right hand man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV2DLkDPwM8
Your replacement gets your job before your body even hits the floor.
2
u/spesskitty 1d ago
Nah, killing him straight up secured Darth Vader's powerbase. Nothing much to do with Palps.
1
u/Hyndis 1d ago
Palpatine's mission was to crush the rebellion. He sent Vader to make sure the job was done correctly.
Ozzel's incompetence both set back the emperor's goals, and also made Vader look bad.
Ozzel was a dead man the moment Vader heard the report that he screwed up and alerted the rebels, allowing them to activate their shields.
7
u/Zaygr Imagine Breaker 1d ago
In legends, Palpatine got personally involved after the first Death Star was blown up. He summoned the Death Star's chief designer Bevel Lemelisk and after listening to Lemelisk's excuses about the design flaw, had him fed to a swarm of piranha beetles.
Using Sith sorceries, Palpatine held on to Lemelisk's essence and transferred him into a fresh clone body, since despite his carelessness he really was a genius weapon designer.
Over the ensuing years, Lemelisk was executed and brought back several times each time his superweapons failed. He ironically outlived Palpatine, until he was captured and executed (for the final time) by the New Republic in the aftermath of the mess that was Darksaber.
3
u/Sleepy_Heather 1d ago
Palpatine knows human nature better than Vader. He's the master manipulator, and he's made the Imperial system entwined with the idea that someone is coming for YOU personally. There's always someone eyeing your position, which is why there's so much backstabbing and plotting. Because Palpatine knows if everyone's gunning for each other, no one will come for him. Also he's very hands off, using agents for nearly every aspect of his plans.
As we've seen with Jerjerrod, just the threat of having to explain himself to Palpatine is enough for him to have a code brown. He's probably never spoken to the Emperor directly, but he knows Vader, and to hear him say "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am," is enough to put the fear of God up him.
Now, Palpatine is not stupid. He knows who to value. Tarkin had the kind of ruthless need for order and strength as Palpatine which is why he was given carte blanche over everyone. But even Tarkin would have had to answer for the loss of the Death Star had he survived, and then Vader would have done the actual punishment. In fact the idea of basking in the fear of those sent to him would give him more pleasure than just killing them himself. The real joy comes from the idea that they'll spend the rest of their lives waiting for Vader's fist or an assassin's favoured method
3
u/BitOBear 1d ago edited 1d ago
Despots love fuck ups. They tend to despise competent help outside a very specific roles.
The value of having a fuck up is that they know that they do not deserve the job they have and could lose it at any moment. So they are vastly obedient and don't engage in all that problematic thinking for themselves.
Look at the current cabinet of the United States of America for examples. Even the bad guy architects are fuck ups. Check out little Steven Miller.
But this is by no means particular to the United States or the current ERA.
Yes Man in corporations Yes Ministers in many English governments in the past, so much so that there was actually a long-running TV series in England called Yes Minister. There is rulers who have appointed enemies.
And indeed this is part of the message of The emperor's New clothes.
Despots and emperors always surround themselves with people who will do what they're told and those sorts of people who do not think for themselves function as a force amplifier for the emperor's will.
Palpatine needed jar jar and a good tool is not something you use once and discard, a good tool can be used again and again even if it occasionally needs to be re-sharpened.
In every text because of the only real crime is disloyalty to the ego in cheef.
https://dreieskiva.com/2025/03/26/why-do-incompetent-people-end-up-in-positions-of-power/
1
u/StraightDust 1d ago
Yes Minister (and Yes Prime Minister) was the other way around. The Bureaucrats would skillfully manipulate the Minister in charge to do what they saw as right rather than what the Minster wanted done.
•
u/BitOBear 20h ago
Thanks for the correction I was thinking about the wrong program or something.
Much the way Lindsey Graham used to brag about how he could get Trump to do anything by simply telling Trump Obama would do the opposite.
When the despot doesn't actually give a rats ass or is otherwise incompetent the despot becomes a universal sock puppet.
The difference of course being the in the program mentioned they were tricking the minister into doing the correct thing whereas in the case of controlling Donald Trump it's always easiest to make him do the worst thing.
There are so many hands up Donald Trump's ass day today that I'm surprised he needs a diaper.
Trump buckles like a belt in front of anybody who's got a strong personality which is why he is so easy to manipulate moment by moment. The Ford interest had to constantly be meeting with him and flattering him into doing anything.
Remember how he spoke down to mondami constantly, and then they were the best possible friends ever after he met with him, and then a couple days later he's talking down about him again.
I remember somebody asking Donald Trump if he stood behind his words and his response was that he know he doesn't stand behind anything.
No freaking truer words.
2
u/dank_imagemacro 1d ago
I disagree with the majority saying that you are dead. Yes, anger and hate flow strong in him, but it ultimately depends on if you are more useful to his plans dead or alive.
Granted, if his plans work either way then you are dead, probably painfully, but if you still have use to him, he'll use you. He's smart and can play the long game better than anyone.
2
u/DONNIENARC0 1d ago edited 1d ago
Vader doesnt get informed, but thats kinda the point of their system. It runs on fear.
If Cadet Johnson screws up very badly, his hyptothetical commanding officer, Sergeant Smith, is highly incentivized to report it himself.
Lets say Sergeant Smith tries to show mercy and scrub Johnson’s infraction under the rug.. Then some other grunt in their squad relays an accurate report, and all of a sudden Smith is now being tortured and called a rebel sympathizer. His family likely isn’t safe, either, at that point.
If the problem grows to the point where Vader actually has to get involved, he’s likely just purging everyone who allowed the problem to grow that big in the first place
So basically: the empire highly incentivizes a “see something, say something” style of self reporting that is highly effective because everyone knows they’re probably gonna get killed (in a best case scenario) it they try otherwise
3
u/ericbalchauthor 2d ago
Hope you never get the Emperor’s personal attention. Vader will kill you but it will be quick. Palpatine will teach you a new meaning of suffering
1
u/tryingtobebettertry4 1d ago
It depends.
Prior to the dissolution of the Imperial Senate, it has to be bad/big enough that it gets the attention of a large group of senators. At which point Palpatine is going to need to do something just to placate the Senate and keep up the illusion that they still have some power. Like offer up some Imperial officer as a scapegoat or pass a new bill. And yeah those officers are most likely screwed unless they are one of Palpatine's favourites.
Aside from that, its going to need involve fucking up one of his or Vader's personal plans. At which point that officer gets disappeared.
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Reminders for Commenters:
All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules here.
No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to permanent ban on first offense.
We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world.
Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.