Star Wars' newest book release, Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear, the first book of a new Reign of the Empire trilogy. This book is phenomenal and remarkably prescient. Featuring the pillars of the Rebellion (Mon Mothma, Bail Organa and Saw Gerrera) before there even is a Rebellion, we see intimately what those first days of the Empire looked like, especially politically. It's a fascinating character study on these three characters, and a scarily relevant look at how fascism takes hold of not just a government or military, but public opinion.
While we of course know where things end up, and that Saw's alliance with Bail and Mon will end up fractured, but I am still very excited to see it all happen in the rest of the trilogy. Seeing the beginnings of these relationships and the seeds of Rebellion- where they fail, where they succeed, and where they try to learn what they should do next- it's all fascinating. Watching these characters take their first steps into a new galaxy and how they must change for the times- for better and for worse- is something really special, and the medium of literature allows us to truly get in their heads and know every conflicting thought and every rumble of emotion.
This is definitely a book I'd recommend to any Star Wars reader, and especially lovers of shows like Andor or books like Bloodline. If you want to read Reign of the Empire, pick up a copy and check it out for yourself!
Spoilers ahead for Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed.
Mon Mothma's chapters in the book were easily among some of my favorites. Sort of like in Andor, we get to see the very human side of her, behind not just the closed doors of her home but the ones of her mind. We learn more about the history of her relationship with Perrin (who actually doesn't suck quite as much as he does in Andor), and her struggles with anxiety and the medication she takes.
But we also see her strengths. We get to see her skills as a master negotiator and socialite really shine in this book. Her main arc is trying to get a bill passed, one that would reverse the emergency powers Palpatine was granted in Attack of the Clones. And boy, is it hard. She has to deal with threats from the new administration (including an arrest where she's locked in a closet for almost an entire day, unable to sit and even left to soil herself before being interrogated) as well as the greed and complacency of her fellow senators. She has to deftly weave through the give-and-take of politics, making additions to the bill so that this person will vote for it, trying to talk someone into voting for it so that their allies will vote for it. It's no easy feat, one that requires her to bend the truth and compromise her own morals- but her focus is on the goal- a return to democracy, and stripping Palpatine of his power.
Now the rest of Star Wars media makes it obvious this doesn't work, and even though her bill passes, Palpatine vetoes the parts that weaken his control, and Mas Amedda shows Mothma the Imperial prisons they're building as a thinly-veiled threat. Mon Mothma has lived her whole life believing in democracy and the will of the people, and had found that while democractic systems can be difficult and slow to work with, once the bill is passed, it works, and things change. This time, that moment where Mas Amedda tells her that Palpatine will simply not cede power and the Senate is powerless- is when she realizes that this fight is not one she can win in the Senate Hall. At the end of the book, she is beginning to prepare herself for a revolution, and she knows it will be more difficult than anything she's done. But she still plans to help from within the Senate chamber- trying to cut funding for an Imperial project here, stall them there, distract them somewhere else. We know by Andor season 1 she is beginning to put some serious funding into revolutionary activities and working the Coruscant socialite crowd to do so, and by Rebels season 3 she is fleeing Coruscant and strategizing on the Rebellion's military base. I am very excited for the rest of this trilogy (and Andor season 2) to see what pushes her to that point and gets her to grow some confidence outside of her comfort zone of politics, and realize despite her own squeamishness that getting your hands dirty is what is needed now.
While Mon Mothma's chapters were my favorites, Bail Organa's were a close second. Bail is still mourning the loss of the Jedi. Not just the Jedi he knew and was friends, but what their loss means for the Jedi. What does it mean for the galaxy, that a beacon of light and hope and showing the best of what people could be, has been destroyed? What does it mean that the new administration of the government he's served his whole life can perform a genocide so quickly, and that they offer only scraps of proof to "justify" it? Bail's consistent grief over the loss of the Jedi Order really weighs on the entire book, and as sad as it was, it was really special to see the impact they had on the galaxy, even if just one person, as someone who loves the Jedi Order myself. Bail really grapples with it, and he's in a bad way, making rash decisions that drive a wedge between himself and his wife when baby Leia is still so young. He is determined to find proof to exonerate the Jedi, to prove that the "evidence" Palpatine's administration offered of secret, murderous plots in the Council meetings is false. He realizes that one such meeting did not make Yoda talk correctly, but that's not enough, and he sets out to get proof that the Jedi Council seal could have been faked.
And Bail Organa goes through it on that quest. A lack of support from everyone around him (even Mon Mothma, while she believes him, doesn't think exonerating the Jedi will help), threats from Imperial Security, being held hostage by Saw Gerrera's band and barely escaping, being betrayed by someone he thought was helping- he does find his proof though, that there was a means to easily replicate the Jedi seal on the data. But ultimately, the hardest realization of all for him- is that it doesn't matter. While the truth does matter, right now exonerating the Jedi will do little to help. While there are mourners like him in places like Jedha, the propaganda has worked and public opinion turned against the Jedi. In fact, public opinion is a big problem- they're loving Palpatine's regime! So far, all he's done is put an end to The Clone Wars, and while the tightening grip of security is threatening to some, others feel like he's protecting them and providing stability the Republic never good, even when politicians like Bail or Mon point out how dangerous and wrong this is as a fascist takeover. Again- prescient.
Not just to our current times, but to the future of the galaxy far, far away as well. We know that many of the hurdles the New Republic faces after the Empire's fall come from public opinion as well. While Bail didn't live to see it, the leaders of the New Republic held firm on making sure that they could never become the Empire again. A noble goal, but when you don't hold absolute control, keep a strong centralized military, or threaten people into doing things your way, things can be a bit chaotic, as people are chaotic, and there were many people in the galaxy who, while not Imperial patriots, saw stormtrooper patrols in the streets as a way to ward off crime and keep things stable. They saw the rebels as terrorists interrupting the peace the Empire provided (even if that peace came at a grave cost for other people). And how can someone like Mon Mothma or Bail Organa, who believe in democracy, reconcile that with the fact that there are a lot of people who support fascist ideals? Both at the beginning and end of the Empire, it's a challenge that our characters face.
Bail is repeatedly described in this book- by both himself and others- as an uncompromising ideologue. He hates the give-and-take of politics, and is firm in his beliefs and hates anything that doesn't measure up to his own morality. But we start to see him grow in this book. As much as he doesn't like it, he swallows his pride and endorses Mon's bill, doing the parts of a political career he hates for the greater good. And when it doesn't work, he realizes like Mon that this is not a fight that can be won on the debate stand- even if that takes sacrifices of many things, including his own integrity. He knows he will have to get his hands dirty- the question going forward through the rest of the trilogy is exactly how. Because the fact of it is he is much more useful spending credits or giving a speech than wielding a blaster, and like Mon, he has to figure out where he fits into the coming revolution to be the most helpful.
Then of course, our third pillar of the Rebellion is Saw Gerrera. Now unlike Bail or Mon, chapters featuring Saw are not from his own perspective, meaning we don't really get into his head like we do with Bail or Mon. I hope we get to see things from his perspective in the trilogy's future installments, but as a writing choice I do enjoy it. Unlike Bail and Mon, Saw is notoriously paranoid and guarded, so from a meta perspective of course he isn't going to let us readers know what he's thinking! Instead, chapters about Saw are largely from the perspective of the people working with him on his small team. And in this book, he is a strong leader who inspires nearly-unquestioning loyalty from his team, invoking the name of Onderon and following Steela's footsteps.
This Saw is much closer to the one we saw in The Bad Batch than who he is by Rebels or Rogue One. While underlying mistrust of everyone and righteous anger is there, he's nowhere near as paranoid or allowing of "making a scene" as he is later. He's much more cautious, making his team keep Bail Organa alive when they have him prisoner because he knows his value. At the end of the book, he meets in secret with Bail and Mon to begin to figure out how to begin this revolution. He's very insistent on building military power and how the warfront is where things happen, despite Bail and Mon both being uncertain about starting another war and the death toll that it requires from the galaxy. He's generally pretty dismissive of Bail and Mon's ideas to also resist on the peaceful side of things, convinced that war is the only way. We know of course he isn't wrong, that war is what topples the Empire, but we also know that the work Bail and Mon do is instrumental to building the resources to be able to fight that war without being crushed.
But in this conversation, we do see the real reason that Saw's rebellion is not the one that brings the Empire down- because he lacks vision for the future of the galaxy. He's focused on the fight and on his world, both of which are important, but what a post-Imperial galaxy looks like isn't his concern. It seems like a weakness, but it shows why we need all three of these characters to plant the seeds of the Rebellion, why one can't start it alone (even though only one will see it through). We need Saw to be the one willing to push (even if he eventually will sometimes take it too far), we need Mon to work the compromises, the funding and the politics of it all, and we need Bail's shining, perfect idealism as a beacon for what the galaxy can be. They're all important, and no one is necessarily more right than the other in a general sense.
We know that eventually Saw's relationship with Bail and Mon fractures, and his rebellion splits off as he grows more paranoid, leading to a sense of mistrust among his own ranks and he eventually begins to lose sight of the galaxy in favor of his own anger, leading to things like trying to finish off the genocide of the Geonosians himself in Star Wars Rebels. I cannot wait for the rest of the trilogy to really dive into that transformation of his charaacter, and see what may happen to push his character to the limits, and become the more broken man we first saw again in Rogue One.
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