Vader's role in the empire
May. 3rd, 2018 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIn fiction, when you see people reporting to the top person in a hierarchy, it's easy for the specifics to be really concealed. Like, their personal assistant, their bodyguard, their political advisers, and other senior members of government may all report to the president/prime minister/etc. But it's easy to just see B telling A what happened and A telling B what to do. But all those roles are quite different.
Think about what Trump's done too much, of putting people he *personally* trusts into key roles in government, basically bypassing those differences. Which means often, people less good at their jobs, but more willing to use their power to defend their 'boss' :(
People remember Vader so well because he's an amazing villain. But it can be confusing the relationship he has with Tarkin (or other, mostly unshown, senior functionaries in the empire).
My personal headcanon, which I think fits well even though it's not officially described, is that at the start of A New Hope, Vader is the emperor's personal hatchet-person. Like, the president's political adviser, or chaplain, or something -- no-one dares disobey him because he's the emperor's personal representative, sniffing for disloyalty, etc. But doesn't have any official senior role in the government -- lots of the usual military and government people are quite suspicious of the force thing, or even think it's mystical nonsense, tolerated only because the Emperor is their boss and they have to.
Whereas Tarkin is a senior administrator, the ruler of a big sector of the galaxy, trusted by the emperor to do normal day-to-day ruling.
And for that matter (this comes if you accept the prequels, but it fits the original trilogy quite well), if you realise the emperor might not entiiiiirely trust Vader, it makes sense that he uses Vader on anyone he wants to, but doesn't *want* Vader to have broad power or support throughout the empire (that's how you get coups!)
Tarkin can't do what Vader does -- the ruler of one sector can't show up all over the galaxy and demand accounting from random local functionaries who don't report to him, but Vader can. But Vader can't do what Tarkin can -- ruling a big chunk of the galaxy is HARD, it's lots of administration and complicated decisions, and Vader doesn't have the experience, doesn't have the trust of the subordinates. You can't rule COMPLETELY through terror, you can suppress people, but you can't get senior military staff to act effectively.
Hence, Vader is more terrifying, but temporarily under Tarkin's thumb in the original film.
But as the series goes on, the political situation gradually shifts. Dissatisfaction and unstability grows, the tenability of ruling competently wanes, the emperor is (likely) more reclusive and distrusted even by his senior subordinates. And out of necessity he begins to place more trust in his direct representatives, i.e. Vader, and less in his nominal political representatives. So now, Vader is expected to oversee basically everything he's involved with, at the expense of retaining political continuity, in order to ensure the emperor retains ultimate control over everything.
And by the end, things are crumbling as Vader and the Emperor are presiding over an increasingly tottery empire, even if there's a long way to go before it breaks (if the rebellion hadn't interceded directly).
Think about what Trump's done too much, of putting people he *personally* trusts into key roles in government, basically bypassing those differences. Which means often, people less good at their jobs, but more willing to use their power to defend their 'boss' :(
People remember Vader so well because he's an amazing villain. But it can be confusing the relationship he has with Tarkin (or other, mostly unshown, senior functionaries in the empire).
My personal headcanon, which I think fits well even though it's not officially described, is that at the start of A New Hope, Vader is the emperor's personal hatchet-person. Like, the president's political adviser, or chaplain, or something -- no-one dares disobey him because he's the emperor's personal representative, sniffing for disloyalty, etc. But doesn't have any official senior role in the government -- lots of the usual military and government people are quite suspicious of the force thing, or even think it's mystical nonsense, tolerated only because the Emperor is their boss and they have to.
Whereas Tarkin is a senior administrator, the ruler of a big sector of the galaxy, trusted by the emperor to do normal day-to-day ruling.
And for that matter (this comes if you accept the prequels, but it fits the original trilogy quite well), if you realise the emperor might not entiiiiirely trust Vader, it makes sense that he uses Vader on anyone he wants to, but doesn't *want* Vader to have broad power or support throughout the empire (that's how you get coups!)
Tarkin can't do what Vader does -- the ruler of one sector can't show up all over the galaxy and demand accounting from random local functionaries who don't report to him, but Vader can. But Vader can't do what Tarkin can -- ruling a big chunk of the galaxy is HARD, it's lots of administration and complicated decisions, and Vader doesn't have the experience, doesn't have the trust of the subordinates. You can't rule COMPLETELY through terror, you can suppress people, but you can't get senior military staff to act effectively.
Hence, Vader is more terrifying, but temporarily under Tarkin's thumb in the original film.
But as the series goes on, the political situation gradually shifts. Dissatisfaction and unstability grows, the tenability of ruling competently wanes, the emperor is (likely) more reclusive and distrusted even by his senior subordinates. And out of necessity he begins to place more trust in his direct representatives, i.e. Vader, and less in his nominal political representatives. So now, Vader is expected to oversee basically everything he's involved with, at the expense of retaining political continuity, in order to ensure the emperor retains ultimate control over everything.
And by the end, things are crumbling as Vader and the Emperor are presiding over an increasingly tottery empire, even if there's a long way to go before it breaks (if the rebellion hadn't interceded directly).
no subject
Date: 2018-05-04 07:57 am (UTC)I also like https://sith-shame-shack.tumblr.com/post/166477265387/man-one-characterization-of-vader-that-i-love-but which interprets how Vader must be externally perceived. (I think the context I saw it in was a someone comparing it to Dominic Seneschal, who fits the same description pretty well.)
no subject
Date: 2018-05-04 02:27 pm (UTC)The other possibility is that the Emperor deliberately fosters cutthroat competition between his lieutenants and who follows whose orders is a fluid question of who has obtained more power at any given moment. So Vader answers to Tarkin because Tarkin has some specific power over Vader- blackmail material, control over a project Vader wants accomplished (i.e. the Death Star), etc...
The fact that Vader employs such a system himself in TESB with his own lieutenants supports this thesis.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-04 05:14 pm (UTC)Hence, I don't think the political situation shifts gradually, but immediately; Tarkin's death (and the loss of the Death Star) creates a huge power void. An interesting question is whether the Emperor approves of Vader stepping into it, or if Vader simply _does_ step into it and the Emperor tolerates it, or if the civilian side of the Empire is simply flailing about, or if there's a new Grand Moff - since ESB has even less mention of what the rest of the Empire is up to, it's hard to tell.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-07 04:00 pm (UTC)