With the Jedi defeated and scattered, President Palpatine wasted no time shoring up his position, amalgamating several offices within the head of state—the supreme leader's seat of power on Coruscant funnelled incredible legal power into the person of the Emperor.

Yet the military machine which he had built in parallel to his rise, and which had grown to unfathomable size during the Clone Wars, would not stand idly by and become the mere tool Palpatine hoped it would be. It was in fact the New Order Corporation which was the effective power behind the symbolic throne which Coruscant had come to represent; and it was the one element of the new regime which Palpatine had not absolutely secured for himself. Several Grand Admirals and influential Generals in the Imperial military—none more so than the ambitious Grand Admiral Galen Veich—saw to it that the President became pushed ever further away from the public arena, and under near endless pressure and threats, Palpatine had no choice but to bow to these forces, and physically retreated from public life. Despite this, the shift toward empire had become unstoppable, and so the matter of titular authority still remained.

When Palpatine was finally and formally declared Emperor on Coruscant to the adulation of vast crowds throughout the Core Worlds, it had become ironic that, behind the scenes, he had lost control of almost all the power he had gathered to himself. In his moment of symbolic triumph, Palpatine had been defeated. The day of his coronation as Emperor was to be one of the last times he would influence policy or have a hand in its creation.

Soon, the once-dictatorial head of state became little more than a puppet. The true power of the Galactic Empire was wielded by a complex network of military commanders and planetary governors. The Senate had been reduced to a largely irrelevant chamber of debate; in theory still a mechanism for dissent but in practice a mouthpiece for Imperial propaganda, broadcast across the entire HoloNet.

The Galactic Empire saw immediately that, as the Republic before them, they would need the services of new guardians to ensure the security of the New Order. And so, the Sith soon became the enforcers and enactors of Imperial will, just as the Jedi had overseen the rigid justice of the Republic before it.

When Palpatine died less than a decade after the end of the Clone Wars, a sudden and furious clamour began, to install the next Emperor, and many feared it would lead to a new Clone War, or worse. Palpatine himself had several offspring, but none of the powerful vested interests who had aided and abetted the Senator’s rise to supreme control had ever assumed the imperial “throne” would ever become hereditary. So among themselves, they began to bicker.

Several notable Grand Moffs, prominent governors, and military officials all moved to claim their right to succeed Palpatine as Emperor. A brutal escalation of fleet battles, political manoeuvres and even assassinations followed, before individual military officers recognised that no matter their power and influence, the combined forces of their rivals and enemies would never allow imperial power to be held by someone who might be capable of actually wielding it.

After several tense weeks of negotiation, the Senate declared Namu Tyrasta, Governor of Malastaire, the next head of state. Yet even Tyrasta was dead within a month, a victim of having attempted to return true power to the Imperial seat of power in the face of those who stood most to lose: the colossal Imperial Navy and its constituent appendages, not least the corporate interests who supported it.

The next Emperor was, perhaps fittingly, a timid figure, a lowly governor of an insignificant colony not far from Alderaan, an easily manipulated man who appeased the Imperial warlords and their Sith enforcers. Unlike his predecessor, Emperor Adaru ruled timidly for several decades, appearing rarely and only to announce major reforms, public events and holidays, and to reassure the public of the ongoing primacy and benevolence of the New Order.

Peace had returned, at last, to the galaxy.