Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/March 5, 2009

Ysanne Isard was the Director of Imperial Intelligence for several years during the Galactic Civil War, and ruled the Galactic Empire herself for a time after the Emperor's death in 4 ABY. Isard followed her father, Armand Isard, into Imperial Intelligence at a young age, blossoming into a model field agent. Her ambition, marked her as a threat to her father, and he made plans to remove her. After the Alliance to Restore the Republic stole coordinates of the location of the Death Star's construction site, Ysanne was sent on a suicide mission to the planet Darkknell. She survived, though, and returned with charges of treason against her father. Armand Isard was executed immediately, and his daughter took his position as Director of Imperial Intelligence. Isard was exceptionally close to Palpatine, so much so that she was given the second Executor-class Star Dreadnought constructed, the Lusankya. Buried underneath the surface of her homeworld of Coruscant, the Lusankya became a prison and brainwashing facility, and Isard used it to torture the secrets out of many enemies of the Empire, as well as convert selected prisoners into sleeper agents.

After the Battle of Endor, Isard became an advisor to Grand Vizier Sate Pestage, all the while engineering his downfall. In the same day, Isard had Pestage and the Imperial Ruling Council assassinated, leaving her Empress in all but name. Isard commanded a sizable force at the height of her power, though the fact she held Coruscant made her a target for the New Republic. Knowing Coruscant would inevitably fall to the New Republic, she had the Krytos virus developed, so that they would inherit a sick world and hopefully fragment. After blasting off Coruscant in the Lusankya, Ysanne Isard supported a political coup of Thyferra, and became a warlord. Rogue Squadron followed her to Thyferra, though, and managed to defeat her forces and capture the planet. Isard was presumed dead.

She had, in fact, survived, and remained in hiding during the Thrawn campaign, biding her time and contemplating past mistakes. Sometime during her time in hiding, she was contacted by the reborn Palpatine, and pledged to steal back her Lusankya and present it to him. When her clone allied herself with warlord Delak Krennel and reemerged in the Ciutric Hegemony, Isard provided Rogue Squadron with the location of the Lusankya prisoners, among them Rebel Alliance General Jan Dodonna, to discreetly obtain their aid in eliminating her clone. She betrayed the New Republic, though, and attempted to steal the Lusankya from New Republic control at the Bilbringi shipyards. However, a New Republic Intelligence agent, Iella Wessiri, was waiting for her and shot her dead.