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Talk about rolling with it
You ever fuck up so bad you overthrow a Chinese emperor?
I know what the Han Dynasty is, I swear, but I’m so used to seeing Star Wars content on my dash that until I hit “Qin Dynasty” I literally thought this was a Star Wars novel about the one time Han Solo took a job for the Empire and I was thinking 1) this is definitely something Han Solo would do and 2) I need to find the title of that novel so I can read it.
Oh. OH. (I am on mobile, apologies for the formatting and lack of readmore. But this story DEMANDED TELLING)
A brief account of the Glorious Ascension of Emperor Solo:
- It was a job, and the Empire was paying.
- Did he like using the Falcon for prisoner transport? No.
- Did he like his continued existance, which he was NOT AT ALL sure would continue if he turned down the offer. Quite a bit, actually.
- Still, how hard could it be, bunch of drugged and restrained people from one place to another?
- One day, Han Solo would learn not to ask that question.
- What do you mean my motivator stopped working?
- At least we’re near a spaceport.
- What do you mean the skinny little one woke up?
- At least he’s still restrained. I’ll just drug him again.
- WHY AM I UNDOING HIS RESTRAINTS?
- Aaaand, he’s gone.
- Kriffing *magic powers* kriffing *old religions* I am going to DIE.
- Oh, inspection time…yes…of course…we still have all the prisoners? Why wouldn’t we?
- Aaaand, now the inspection officer is dead.
- I don’t need you laughing at me. Wait, why are you awake enough to laugh at me?
- Oh, because you’re a Wookie. Damn it didn’t they drug anyone properly?
- Yes I do see you are not restrained anym-
- STOP CRUSHING MY WINDPIPE
- Look, I enjoy being alive. I will die if I show up without the skinny little mindflayer. Maybe we can work something out.
- Set everyone free? Sure. Already on it. And then me and my ship will just go…hide in the outer rim for all etern-
- You want my ship. My life or my ship….
- I AM THINKING ABOUT IT.
- Alright, fine, I’ll go with you. Oh no, I am definitely invited along, none of you lot know how to treat my girl right.
- Stop laughing. What’s your name, anyway?
- Okay, Chewie, we need a plan. You have a plan?
- Oh you were a General. I just…set a General free…no big. Nooooo big everything is fine.
- thisplanhadbetterworkoriamgoingtodieslowlyandpublicly
- Take over port control and contact the Rebellion. Yes, of course, all for it.
- goingtodiegoingtodie
- Hey, this is actually going pretty smoothly. Oops.
- Yes this is…give me his I.D.! Commander Ravisk, we are undergoing an emergency drill and I just need…everyone to evacuate, please. Thank you. Have a nice day. Long live the Emperor.
- That worked pretty well if I do say so myself…is that a Star Destroyer?
- Kriff.
- Yes, of course, Admiral Pohlash, I’d be happy to board and discuss the nature of the emergency.
- I hate this collar, it’s too tight. You sure we can’t just leave? I can outrun a Star Destroyer.
- Okay, fine, I can’t get everyone on board, warm the ship up, launch, and then outrun a Star Destroyer with all its cannons pointed at me.
- Yes I am Commander Ravisk, this is my manservant Jimminy.
- I really don’t care if you don’t like the name, sell the bit
- Hello Admiral. Oh. We’ve met before…um…facial surgery is the new big fad?
- Yeah, that was always a longshot.
- A dead Admiral, not like this day can get any worse.
- One day, Han would learn.
- Quick, lets get out of here…what do you mean we are no longer over the same planet?
- WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE’VE BEEN SUMMONED BY A MOFF?
- Ah, yes, of course, good job…anticipating orders…Ensign. Admiral out.
- This collar is even worse.
- Yes, good point, it’s a nice cape.
- Hello Moff…
- Yeah, I really shouldn’t be surprised by this point.
- Sure, whatever, this is Moff Ispsiallion, I’m pleased to announce the celebration of the Emperor’s Half-Birthday! Everyone gets a day off.
- Maybe we can get out of here.
- What do you mean we can access the Imperial palace?
- Why would we want to access the Imperial palace??
- I’m am *not* going to depose the Emp…
- Yes, yes, big fan of breathing.
- Even with Moff clearence codes we couldn’t just walk in there.
- What if we…no, bad plan.
- Really, it’s a bad plan, General. I’m sure you can think of a better one.
- Well…we don’t need to walk in there, do we? We’ve got a Star Destroyer. We just need an excuse to get it close enough…
- What do you mean GOOD PLAN?
- ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT IS NOT A GOOD PLAN.
- They did what to your planet?
- Okay, I’m seeing the benefits of this plan.
- We’re going to die. You know that, right buddy?
- Yeah, sure, worthy cause. Never thought I’d get one of those.
A Little Later:
- Wow, bright eyes, no, I’m not Moff Ispsiallion. Was my youthful good looks or my regicide that tipped you off? I’m Han Solo, and I just killed the Emp-
- Why are you kneeling?
- EMPEROR SOLO!?
- What do you mean forty percent of the fleet has sworn allegiance to me?
- Orders?
- Um…I’m going to defer to Grand Moff Chewbacca over here. He’s in charge of your ships, got that?
- Good…good. I’m just going to go into this little room and lock the door.
- *muffled screaming*
*STANDING OVATION*
(You can always count on Star Wars fandom to really take something and run with it.)
Oh good god(s), what would the Rebellion’s response to this be? What would Vader’s response be?!
This is beautiful and wonderful, and long life to Emperor Solo! Long may he reign! (You know for a fact that Chewie has to sit on him to keep him from scampering. This – might occur multiple times.
…I also have the mental image of Han Solo trying to get an urgent message over to Lando ASAP – partly because Lando is one of the slickest, most slippery people he knows. If anyone can figure a way out of this, it’s Lando.
Lando does not figure a way out.
Lando shows up at Coruscant (formerly Imperial Center, because Han can’t look at anything with the terms ‘Imperial’ ‘Empire’, or ‘Emperor’ these days without feeling a vein throb) SPECIFICALLY to point and laugh.
Han get revenge by making Lando Grand Vizer. So there.
Nah, but see, the thing is, Lando has a streak of respectability. Not the “I want people to think I’m Nice and the Right Sort of Person” sort of respectability, but the “I want to do a good job, protect my people, and figure out how to use my skills to make things better for us” sort of genuine moral courage. He may be a con artist at heart, but consider how much he loved Cloud City and its people, how much he used those skills (or tried to) for their protection. (Vader, alas, not being susceptible to conning, or to keeping his deals.)
Put Lando in charge? And Lando would become the greatest politician ever. And unlike most politicians, he’s been in the underbelly of society–he knows the difference between the way things look on paper and the way they play out in reality for the people on the bottom rung. I bet you that Lando has a list of things that SUCK about society that he would totally change if he could, but will exploit the fuck out of and con because one con artist can’t change the world.
But if you make him the Emperor’s Grand Vizier? Then he can. And he can schmooze the higher-ups into LIKING some of it, and point stormtroopers at them if they balk at the stuff even he can’t charm them into liking. Things will change, and change QUICKLY, and all of a sudden the ordinary person on the street is going to find the laws are a LOT more in their favor. And the planets that aren’t Core Worlds are going to find the same thing. And the people who benefited, both under the Republic and the Empire, from exploiting others or just being born into the right class on the right planet? They’re going to find life a lot harder.
Anakin was right about one thing. A dictator can make change happen more quickly than a democracy, and a dictator who is wise and smart and good can really swing things in a positive direction. The problem is, how do you ensure that the person who comes after your dictator isn’t going to use that same power to push things in a negative direction?
And the answer is, in this case, that the former Rebel Alliance pushes for a restoration of the Republic, Han says “fuck yeah, anything to get me out of here,” and Lando says “sure, we can talk democracy, but we’re going to set it up differently so it actually listens to the needs of the guy on the street in the Outer Rim, not just the whims of the major Coreworld corporations.” And then, once the transition to democracy is complete (it probably takes a decade or so to get everything together, because Lando, like any good conman, would be out for all he could get, which in this case would be protections for his people, which by this point would be, like, everybody except the old elite) Lando would get himself elected a Senator. Maybe from his home planet, wherever that is. Or maybe he just picks a planet he likes that’s benefited from his reforms. And then he shows up and gets back to being respectable.
(And the remnants of the old elite, and the people who hoped to retain under the New Republic the same privileges they had under both the Empire and the Old Republic, they say to themselves, “oh shit.” They were counting on him being gone. They were counting on being able to undo some of his changes! And here he is!
Han has entertained fantasies of being able to go back to being a pilot when this is all over. But the former Emperor trying to haul cargo doesn’t really … work, for a variety of reasons. He periodically comes back to Coruscant to complain to Lando about this. Lando just points and laughs and has him (the former Emperor who toppled the Empire and Restored Freedom And Justice To the Galaxy!) record a message or do an interview in support of Lando’s latest piece of legislation. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories on the HoloNet about how democracy is a sham and Emperor Solo is still in command, albeit by proxy from the shadows by controlling Senator Calrissian. They are, of course, absolutely bass ackwards; in the reign of Emperor Solo, Lord Calrissian was the puppet-master working in the shadows controlling the Emperor, and now he is openly working through the democratic process.
Leia showed up on Coruscant as the Senator from Alderaan somewhere in the middle of all this. (Remember, this all would have had to have happened some years before A New Hope. Therefore, the Imperial Senate was never disbanded, however vestigial it may have been by the time Han burst on the scene.) She thinks the Emperor is an idiot (albeit a handsome one) and she finds him incredibly infuriating when he tries to flirt with her instead of talking politics. She thinks, at first, that this is because he has that Imperial gender chauvinism, even if he CERTAINLY doesn’t have the Imperial species chauvinism. (Actually, he points out HER chauvinism a couple of times, which both infuriates her and shames her, because she thought she was BETTER than that.) Eventually she figures out that the Emperor doesn’t want to talk politics with her because he doesn’t want to talk politics, period, full stop, with anyone, ever, for any reason. (It takes her longer than it should to figure this out because how, hoW, HOW does someone who genuinely hates both politics and being in charge end up as EMPEROR?)
With Lando, she gets along SO WELL, YOU GUYS, THEIR ENEMIES ARE TERRIFIED. Where they agree, they are ABSOLUTELY UNSTOPPABLE. Leia comes out with passion and fire, and then Lando comes out to schmooze, and if the one didn’t convince you, the other will. Where the disagree, they can usually find an acceptable compromise that works for both of them, and somehow everyone else goes along with it. Where they disagree but can’t find a compromise … everyone else is just Very Thankful that such things don’t happen often.
I don’t know how the relationships end up in this world. Maybe Leia marries neither of them. Maybe she marries both of them. Maybe Han and Lando are married, and Leia is the occasional invited third. Maybe Leia and Lando marry, and dominate Republic politics for decades while Han warms their bed when he’s in the area, and they are his safe harbor to come home to while giving him the freedom he needs to roam. (And he needs a LOT of room to roam after having been tied down as Emperor for so long.) Maybe Han and Leia marry, which fuels AT LEAST two dozen different conspiracy theories, and after Han abdicates he stays home playing with the children (and taking them out flying while Mommy is working), and Lando is their boyfriend and partner in every sense, but he maintains his own home and his own life because he finds he likes his life a little less … fiery, than life in the Organa-Solo household tends to be.
But while life is never quiet, they all live happily ever after.
This is an absolutely wonderful, exquisitely detailed analysis of the reign of Emperor Han Solo, First of His Name, Supreme Overlord of the Galaxy, Protector of the Stars, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, etc, etc.
It is said that the best leaders are those who do not want to lead. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ – Han is most definitely in the latter category. He was dragged into greatness kicking and screaming – and, much to everyone’s surprise, he actually ends up being moderately good at it.
Mainly because he has a very good grasp of his own strengths and weaknesses. He’s an amazing pilot. He’s not a politician – as such, he delegates like hell. Chewie gets to be in charge of the military as Great Grand Moff, and Han is extremely enthusiastic about being Lando’s puppet Emperor. He probably outright offers to abdicate and put Lando on the throne (Lando just laughs at him again. At length. In retaliation, Han makes him Chief Ambassador. So there.)
Han has a habit of giving Lando more Government Positions when the latter is annoying him. Lando really doesn’t mind; Han certainly doesn’t mind. Han is also a bit curious about where Lando dug up some of the people he’s putting into various government roles, as well as a little impressed – how the hell did Lando talk Talon Karrde into being Minister of Intelligence?!
Han, as such, is basically stuck with all the publicity stunts and formal appearances and Being Emperor. Which basically means wearing a bunch of very uncomfortable clothing and shaking hands and kissing babies and ugh. …he does kinda like opening up all the new charities and organizations. Especially when it comes to helping orphans, the homeless, etc – the people who really do need help. (And now he can).
Han also is particularly gleeful when it comes to repealing the Empire’s various human-centric policies. Chewie is as well.
How many spit-takes do you think occurred across the known galaxy when a number of people took in the fact that Han Solo had somehow ended up becoming Emperor? I think several individuals who had had business dealing with him in the past started wondering if just when they’d gotten so drunk they were now hallucinating…
Han and Darth Vader unexpectedly bond over an utter hatred of slavers and slavery. Han (and Chewie) provide him with a rather significant number of the Armed Forces and turn him loose in the Rim, with orders to stamp out slavery – Vader takes on this task with relish. (Lando quietly – or not-so-quietly – institutes the various social systems needed to help the suddenly vast numbers of former slaves; he and Han take a certain glee in watching holos of various Hutt-occupied planets being ‘liberated’.)
Just think about all the various long-term plans – of ‘former’ Jedi, of the Rebellion, of the Empire – that Han ruins by accidentally becoming Emperor. It’s positively gleeful; I also get a laugh out of Lando cutting finances to the Death Star because it’s a black hole in terms of all the money sunk into it.
@lectorel @norcumi @dogmatix @deadcatwithaflamethrower @darthrevaan @copperbadge @theotherguysride @morgynleri
Obi-Wan still keeps telling himself that this is the man that killed his brother, and that he has to make sure that Luke is trained to kill him, and never mind that Darth Vader is as close to being Anakin Skywalker again as he’ll get without some reason to be Anakin Skywalker rather than Darth Vader. (Like, oh, finding out that he has living children.)
But it’s going to be harder, because Luke isn’t going to be haring off after an escaped R2-D2 and meet Old Ben in the desert, and Owen and Beru aren’t going to be killed by storm troopers. Maybe Luke does convince Owen to let him go off to the Imperial Acadamy (just the Acadamy, now, because Emperor Solo said so). And yeah, he’s still eager to go off and join the Rebellion, because that’s what you do, right? Except that the Empire is changing, and for the better, and the Rebellion doesn’t need more pilots, it needs more politicians, and Luke isn’t that.
And Luke becomes a pilot, and maybe either in the Acadamy or on his first assignment he meets Bodhi Rook, who is a decent cargo pilot and a bit of a nervous wreck sometimes because he remembers how the Empire used to be, and no matter how much things change, he can’t help worrying about Jedha, and his family, and what if things change for the worse again? Because he was born during the Clone Wars, and a child during the early, more turbulant years of the Empire, and growing up there were always troops on the street and at the temple, and you don’t grow up with all of that without it effecting you.
Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to do now, his hope, his weapon, has gone out of his reach, and Darth Vader is still out there, and well, maybe this time he’ll succeed in killing the man who killed his brother (and never mind what actually happened, he’s told himself this lie over and over and over until he believes it). Because the effects of trauma and grief and living through the genocide of his people weren’t helped by isolation.
Yoda doesn’t get any actual news on Dagobah very often, but he can feel the slow lightening of the Force, the retreat of so much pain and misery and horror, and he mediates so much to reach out and see where the change is coming from. And it’s not what he expects, and there’s still darkness in the galaxy, but it’s less than it was, and there’s lightness to balance it, and isn’t that what he and Obi-Wan have been working toward? Well, that and the eradication of the Sith, but that’s to be the job of Obi-Wan’s student, and apparently he still has to wait for that. He can wait. Even if he goes into the Force before it happens, he can wait.
Galen Erso is gleeful when the Death Star is abruptly defunded and a moratorium is put on its construction, and even if he’s not necessarily free of Krennic yet, there’s hope again. There’s a chance.
(Krennic is not happy. Tarkin is not happy. They start looking for ways to fund this project without the support of the Empire. This does not go as well as they want it to, and they get themselves arrested for treason or something. Galen is absolutely estatic when this happens, and agrees to testify against Krennic, because of course he will.)
Jyn is still in prison, because officially what she did to survive was a crime. But rescue comes, and the rescue is her father hiring a lawyer to argue her case and to make deals with who he needs to, and the whole thing doesn’t quite go as they plan, but at least the result is what Galen hoped for. Or almost. Jyn still has to report to a parole officer, and there’s an automatic enrollment in some of the new social programs Lando’s implemented to ensure that she doesn’t need to resort to the actions that put her in prison in the first place.
Galen and Jyn don’t particularly care, because they have each other again, and they can finally mourn their loss, the hole in their family, and maybe start to heal.
…. there’s so much more, but I’m running out of steam for the moment. I’ll poke at it later, or someone else can take it and run with it.
*copy-pastes the tags*
@lectorel @norcumi @dogmatix @deadcatwithaflamethrower @darthrevaan@copperbadge @theotherguysride @hamelin-born
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