Emperor's Ruling Circle

The Emperor's Ruling Circle (sometimes known as the ERC or the Cabal) was an important faction of the Imperial leadership in the years after the Battle of Endor.

In origin, the "Emperor's Ruling Circle" may have been simply an alternative name for the group of Imperial Advisors who formed the Imperial Ruling Council, also known as the Emperor's Inner Circle. Subsequent to Palpatine's death aboard the second Death Star, however, the name came to be applied to the quorum of Advisors who gathered under the leadership of Ars Dangor, who was both the New Order's administrative eminence gris and its premier public spokesman.

The ERC, led by Dangor, were were largely responsible for dictating the military strategy which the Empire pursued after Endor. They recalled Imperial fleet units to the Core and redeployed them to defend fortress worlds, many of which were planets on which they had holdings and interests. Of course, these same worlds were often the rich industrial and economic powerhouses of the Empire, located at strategic hyperspace junctions, but the policy was percieved as being driven entirely by self-interest, and it served as a major catalyst for the fragmentation of the Empire into rival fiefdoms. Rather than being reduced to props the Advisors' power and status, commanders like Admiral Zsinj broke with Imperial Center and establish themselves as warlords in the sectors they already controlled.

Six months after Endor, this strategy had not checked the expansion of the New Republic, and the ERC was locked in a power struggle against Grand Vizier Sate Pestage, ex officio the nominal head of the Ruling Council and "interim emperor". In fact, both sides were being played off against each other by Director of Intelligence Ysanne Isard, who regarded them all as incompetents who had to be removed to ensure the New Order's survival.

Events came to a head at Brentaal IV, a key military and commercial hyperspace junction in the Core, which Pestage sought to hold for strategic reasons, and where leading members of the ERC had important holdings. The world was defended - and, inevitably, lost - by the incompetent Admiral Lon Isoto, who Isard presented to the as the Cabal's candidate, while persuading leading members of the ERC that he was Pestage's man..

While the Grand Vizier was astute enough to realise that he had been manipulated by Isard, the Cabal blamed the Grand Vizier for his conduct of the war, and some began to openly suggest recruiting warlords such as Harrsk and Teradoc to defend their holdings. As Pestage sought to escape Isard's machinations and secure his own control of his fiefdom in the Ciutric Hegemony, Isard presented his actions to them as treason against the Empire, and called on them to act.

In the event, those who acted were General Palatir Carvin and the civilian Advisors Challer and Plumba, who siezed power and formed a troika known as the Tribunal - only to be deposed themselves by Isard, who established a dictatorship using the Imperial Intelligence aparatus, with herself as empress in all but name. Between the actions of the Tribunal and Isard, it seemed that the ERC was a spent force.

However, Ars Dangor himself survived, and, along with other members of the group, he reemerged after the fall of Coruscant to provide a nebulous central authority for the Empire. The ERC supported Grand Admiral Thrawn as military commander - mistakenly believing that as an alien, and with no standing in their rarified political world, he would necessarily remain beholden to their patronage and government. Ironically,Thrawn's death prevented him eclipsing them, and subsequently, the surviving members of the Cabal gathered with a group of senior military officers to continue the offensive.

Driving deep into New Republic territory, the Cabal conquered Coruscant and forced the New Republic to withdraw to the Outer Rim. However, Dangor's suggestion that they should convene in the old Senate and elect one of their number as Emperor provoked a vicious civil war. In the aftermath of the war, Palpatine was revealed to have survived as a clone on the Deep Core world of Byss, and as Imperial order was reimposed, the surviving members of the Cabal probably joined the re-unified Imperial Ruling Council.