Talk:Galactic Empire

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Contents 1 Notes 1.1 Images 2 Deleted Content 3 New Edits by Trojan 4 Flag 5 Issues 6 Structure of Imperial Government

Notes

Images

• Note: for the bottom of the imperial civil war sub-section, I'd like to place a screenshot of the scene when mittermeyer/ruenthal's fleets descend on Odin (where Hilde watches from a window and says that... just awesome line). Easily one of my favorite scenes from the show. Canary 05:23, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Disclaimer: Completely agree with everything in the above statement, but it has no relevance to my question also dealing with images. As I was posting to the talk page on the New Galactic Empire article about its image I thought I would check this article too. Is there a readily available image of the Goldenbaum's flag (the black flag with the double headed eagle) to put up? Strayor 07:54, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Deleted Content

• When Rudolf von Goldenbaum created the aristocracy, he 'gifted' his new nobles new names — German names. This, coupled with his genocides of the genetically impure, have led many fans to think of the Galactic Empire as 'space Germans', or some sort of evolved form of NAZI fascism. This is a misconception. Though common Imperial names are Germanic in origin, there is nothing to suggest that the Empire favoured any one ethnicity over another. The fact that the Imperial citizens who fled the Empire to found the Alliance began adopting names of all origins for themselves and their families supports this. (From Appendices-->Background Information).

I was just about to ask about this when I read the above. Not concerned about the space Nazi thing, that's simply ridiculous, but about racism between the Empire and New Empire. I understand that nothing is explicitly said about ethnicity and racism other than Rudolf's choice to give the 'all white' new nobility germanic names at the empire's founding. However, my issue is with the fact, at least in my memory, that no ethnicities other than caucasians are ever seen residing anywhere within the Empire. Of course I realize that non-caucasian peoples must have lived on within the Empire for generations, at least until Heinessen led the exodus, but I find it very strange that not a single person of color is ever seen once as an Imperial citizen, other than possibly in some of the grizzly images resulting from the Inferior Genes Exclusion Act. The amount various ethnicities that are shown within the Alliance, even when limiting it to only civilians, would seem to indicate that the animators and author were well aware of the undercurrent of racism that could be implied from the series. I just think that they would have shown an Imperial peasant or two of African or Asian descent if they wanted to show that the Empire was not only caucasian. When Machungo was visiting the Empire with Julian, well after Reinhard's reforms had taken full effect and he had taken the throne, the Imperials seem to be completely indifferent to his presence. I believe that this is their attempt to show that the Imperials are not racist in the slightest, at least not anymore, but I just don't see how the citizens of the Alliance are so ethnically diverse while the citizens of the Empire, commoners specifically, are so uniformly caucasian without some form of racial prejudice in the Empire's past which would have pushed all other ethnicities into situations and circumstances that would have them completely vacate and flee to the Alliance. I also understand that the argument of "just because I didn't see it, it means it's not there" is not usual, but I do think it warrants some discussion due to the seemingly understanding author and animator who so consistently kept up the varied ethnicities within the Alliance, yet completely omitted any hint of other ethnicities within the Empire other than at it's foundation. I'd love more info on this if someone ever came across anything pertaining to this. Thanks. Strayor 07:08, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Remember that much of Imperial society we see is on the planet Odin, which as capital and showpiece of the Empire would conform to Rudolf's Germanic biases. While yes, on the frontier agricultural planets, we see apparent Caucasian peasants, but this does not mean there are no non-Caucasians in the Empire. There obviously had to have been if the Alliance gained sufficient immigrants after the Battle of Dagon. The other alternative of all non-Caucasians being reduced to Arle Heinessen's group is too far fetched to believe. Rather I think non-Caucasians and those that refused to conform to the Empire's enforced Germanic culture would have been consigned to the marginal planets to scrape a hard living. Really at its heart, LOGH is not a tale about racial dynamics, not really. If you stripped off the Germanic names, the stories of the Empire could easily have been placed in Imperial China. Indeed many of the palace and harem politics are inspired by Imperial Chinese dynastic politics. Iracundus 10:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thats speculation, ultimately. I could easily say that the Galactic Empire is less culturally diverse than the Alliance as well, and visually it seems to give that idea. But, that, too, is unknown. FPA Forever

160,000 people, the number at the founding of the Alliance, of which only a portion are non-Caucasian, would be too small to have such a wide range of diversity as seen both initially at the Battle of Dagon, and subsequently later. Throughout the series we see a range of non-Caucasian characters in the Alliance, and there are far too many to explain as purely due to descent from the original Alliance founders. 160,000 people divided into families, and then existing for a bit over a century would result either in blended ethnicity or only a tiny number of pure ethnic background families. That is before consideration also of the health and genetic consequences of what would amount to a population bottleneck effect, or founder effect. The only other source that could explain the wide range of backgrounds seen in the Alliance at the frequencies they are shown to appear would have to be via the exodus from the Empire following Dagon. Iracundus 12:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Still, I think the Free Planets Alliance is racially and perhaps culturally more varied. The fact that the show goes to great lengths to show many different races and many different names, while the Galactic Empire characters, including lower rung characters, were white and had german names, all seem to point in that direction. FPA Forever

Iracundus, I don't see how what I said is all that much different from what you are suggesting. We only disagree about small details it seems. As I stated, I am well aware that there must have been numerous ethnicities within the Empire, and I should have clarified that I meant "at least" literally, and that that particular point is the absolute proof that ethnicities had to be in the Empire "at least" to that time. I thought the Battle of Dagon and following Imperial refugee flood to be common knowledge, and I too believe that the vast majority of diverse ethnic groups made their way to the Alliance in those years, but I still think that if sufficient numbers were to remain in the Empire we would have seen a few, because as I said, the animators and writers were very aware of this issue and purposefully did not show them as Imperial citizens. I also think there were a few remnants here and there, and am well aware racism is not a major theme and that much of the workings of the Imperial Government are nothing but a representation of Imperial China with Prussian themes thrown on top, but I think that we should include a paragraph on this topic in the main article, as we cannot ignore this obvious issue that, if not existing in the recent history of the Empire, would certainly have been a major issue in its past. I guess I'm asking permission to write it. I'll be good. Plus you always edit what I write to have it be accurate and make it read well anyway so I don't think it could do too much damage. Strayor 14:31, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

So do I have a green light to write something about race and ethnicity in this article? Strayor 13:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In SL: 'The Hero of El Facil' we see the Empire's policy, which is basically exile for captured populations to frontier planets. So even in recent times, it seems the Empire had plans to resettle captured diverse Alliance populations. Go ahead and write and it can always be reviewed and edited. I still chalk it up mainly to "theme" of the Empire being Prussian and the Alliance being more generic modern science fiction society, with any non-Germanic Imperial residents in such marginal roles in society that they are off camera so to speak, and nowhere near the halls of power and government which is often where the camera focus is in the Empire. Iracundus 13:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you completely, except for one thing, which I will omit from the edit as it is speculation, but while the vast majority of scenes within the Empire are on Odin or other places of power, we still are, in the first season, given the chance to view Imperial peasants. Granted, the peasants on these worlds were close to the Iserlohn Corridor which would mean that they would be devoid of P.O.W. camps and exiled former Alliance civilians, but if sufficient numbers of ethnically diverse Imperial commoners remained, then why not show a single one? As I have said, everyone involved with putting this story to screen was very aware of the issues of race, and while I appreciate the view that the Alliance is shown to be ethnically diverse because of it resembling modern-day societies, while the Empire is shown to be Prussian, and by consequence "white", I believe that those are not the only reasons. I too think that there were a few enclaves within the Empire by the time of Reinhard's ascension, but I think that "racist" policies were in place within the Empire, at least to the Battle of Dagon, to drive away the vast majority of non-caucasian ethnic groups to the Alliance, where as you stated, the amount of diversity within the Alliance was too great to be simply a result of Heinessen's exodus. For the diversity we see at the Battle of Dagon within the Alliance forces, I offer you this explanation. Seeing as though only a 140,000 people made it to Heinessen, the planet, and we could assume a large number of them were rendered infertile due to either age or the side effects of such an unorthodox and unsafe journey, then there would have likely been some form of gene mapping plan to ensure the continuation of the various ethnic groups as the numbers for some groups would have likely been in the hundreds, if not dozens. I'm no geneticist but if I only had that many people to work with to try and keep an ethnicity in existence and keep it from "mixing" away its existence, then I would have strict guidelines to follow, and I believe the Alliance did the same thing. This would account for the seemingly unproportionately high number of varied races within the Alliance, as well as explain how the initial small number of different ethnicities were protected from mixing whilst simultaneously ballooning into the proportions we see by the time of the Battle of Dagon. Strayor 13:50, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

New Edits by Trojan

Can anyone else confirm what Trojan is saying about Mückenberger being biracial or the so-called "black imperial admiral"? It may be in the novels or something but this would certainly be news to me. Even if it is genuine, it still needs to be edited but I don't want to edit incorrect information only to have it all be removed later on. I think I'll leave this one till we hear back from Iracundus or someone else who can confirm or refute these new edits. I would like to handle this quickly as these are some of our major articles. Thanks. Strayor 04:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry for speaking in circles. I'm going to go ahead and remove the edits for now and rewrite them myself if they prove to be true, but for now we should play it safe. I'll admit that I'm curious to see how this ends up though. Strayor 04:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Flag

Is there a good image of the Goldenbaum crest that we could add to the article? —Goldenbaum Loyalist 03:39, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

There are surprisingly few clear face-on shots in the anime of the Goldenbaum crest on its official black background, without any embellishments or other alterations. There is a flag-raising ceremony in Dreams of the Morning, Songs of the Night Chapter II but that is also an oblique shot. Iracundus 05:49, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Issues

I noticed some issues on this page. Cleaned up some of the trivial stuff (spelling, capitalisation, punctuation), but there's more work needed than just that.

There are missing citations in a lot of places — one that stood out to me immediately is the thing about their currency in the introduction, but there are other facts throughout that are kind of just assumed to be true. I know it can be tedious to dig up citations for basic information about an omnipresent entity in the series but i think that's what we should be doing. Also, i think that if we state background information as factual (x is a reference to y), we should provide a citation for that too — if we can't, but it seems too probable to remove, we can at least reword it (x may be a reference to y).

The sections on Imperial society in particular need some heavy clean-up — they're missing citations, they repeat themselves in some cases, and the stuff about ethnic policies especially seems like pure speculation. I didn't remove it (just fixed some wording), but i think it probably should be removed, or at the very least moved to the appendices.

PS: Be careful with tense and perspective. The 'in-universe' parts of the article should be in past tense, and we should avoid wording that acknowledges the fictional nature of the series or the way it's presented in real-world media (e.g., references to what is 'seen'). See Policy:Perspective

PPS: See also Wikipedia's Words to watch

PPPS: The above applies to a lot of our articles, tbh, but especially the longer ones

 ♥ kine @ 10:54, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Structure of Imperial Government

K, so I've added a list of ministries/bureaus/whatever a couple of times now in different ways. I think this is good information that I'm trying to add while I'm reading the books. But instead of being hacked into something reasonable, it just gets reverted. Don't really see why Cerise 19:41, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Because as it stands, the list is non-exhaustive, so it is not very useful. Glacierfairy 02:04, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Meanwhile, I'm editing the Eighth Battle of Iserlohn which has a literal "..." in it. Removing content doesn't improve it. Editing it does. Cerise 00:49, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Very well. If you say so. Glacierfairy 01:15, 31 August 2022 (UTC)