What are the Separatist Fighting for Anyway?

Television, Movies Games and Books Star Wars
#1

When first introduced in the prequels, I thought that they were presented as a group of capitalist who felt repressed by the Republic’s economic policies. But now that they’re being better defined in the Clone Wars series they’re actions have been nothing short of repressive and genocidal.

Even if their leadership has complete control over their separate cultures, after their own populations learn or figure out what they’ve been up I can’t see how they remain in power. Much less that voluntary get new planets onto their side. Forget the fortunes that they’re spending building and maintaining the driod army which in turn are ruining the planetary economies they supposedly hope to exploit some day.

Honestly, is the Republic really THAT bad?!

#2

That is a good question… I don’t really know exactly. I was going to say to separate from the Galactic Republic, but that was all a front. Hmm.

#3

It has a alot to do with Treaties. In the EU book Approaching Storm they talk alot about it. Mostly it started with the Trade Federation and their capitalistic ideas then moved on from there with their various treaties etc. It starts with the Trade Fedearation wanting out that means those with treaties have to ask out and so on…

#4

As I understand it (and granted, I’m a HUGE EU fan so that’s where much of my stuff comes from), the vast majority of individual planets who align themselves with the Seps are people who feel marginalized by the immense bureaucracy that the Republic had become at that point. The reason that the Trade Federation etc. are all we see is that they’re funding the whole thing and it’s easier to transport droids from world to world than it is half-trained local militias. Their whole “Join us or you don’t get food” tactic was also pretty successful for the worlds on the fence about the whole thing. The Republic Commando books, Shatterpoint, and Dark Rendezvous all touch on this pretty well, as do a lot of the comics in the Star Wars: Republic line (the trades are listed as “Star Wars: Clone Wars”, but it’s the same thing.)

And then it turns out that the whole thing is basically just Palpatine taking “Divide and Conquer” to an all new career high, playing people against each other and playing the system like nobody’s business. Another reason I love the prequels: I can now fully appreciate Palpatine’s machinations, whereas when I grew up he was just the wrinkly guy making suggestive comments to Luke :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

Still, I can’t see how the Separatist could hold any form of support among their “allies” much less their own people. The economic drain from mounting multiple planetary blockades alone would probably be more than enough to cause unrest. And unless the general galactic culture is non-existent, even a yellow journalist level rag would tell people how they were running their campaign causing more problems.

What I’m saying is even with Palpatine pulling the strings from both ends things in the Republic couldn’t possibly be as bad as to allow something like the Separatist to operate for very long.

Gorge Lucas is not a very good long term story teller.