Imperial Ruling Council / Legends The Imperial Ruling Council was the name given to the group of Imperial Advisor s who constituted the most powerful collective body in the galaxy during the New Order . While Palpatine was Emperor , it was the Council that managed the daily affairs of the Empire and carried out his will . After his death , it became the effective central government of the Empire . Prior to the Battle of Endor , the Council was also widely known as the Imperial Inner Circle and Emperor ' s Inner Circle , and after Endor , the survivors and their successors organized themselves as the Emperor ' s Ruling Circle , the Cabal , the Tribunal , and later as the Imperial Interim Ruling Council . Members of the Council were addressed as " Lords . " Technically , the Council seems simply to have consisted of Advisors to be convened for discussion at the Imperial Court . There were several hundred members of the larger group . Sate Pestage , as Grand Vizier , was the senior member of the group , serving as the key policy strategist . Evolution up to the Battle of Endor . The Ruling Council had its origins in the cadre of aides who Palpatine had gathered around himself while still senator for Naboo . These men , among them Pestage and Dangor , remained the most important members of the Council until the final year of its existence , and they shared Palpatine ' s vision for the galaxy not out of personal ambition , but out of idealism and loyalty . Over the years , however , as Palpatine grew in power as Supreme Chancellor , he recruited more trusting advisors whose sympathy with his agenda was allied with intense private ambitions of their own , like Mas Amedda , Sly Moore , and Sarcev Quest . Later , as the absolute autocrat of the galaxy , the Emperor inevitably drew those who were interested only in personal power . Some were men with real talents which Palpatine could bend to serve his will , others loyal and reliable agents and assistants , while many at times seemed little more than craven sycophants and court jesters . But even such men could , with the backing of Imperial patronage , serve as instruments of genuine fear . By the height of the Empire , the ranks of the Advisors had swollen to include several hundred individuals , many of them Human males . With the Imperial Senate reduced to a powerless gathering , membership of the Council represented the summit of civilian power in the New Order . Only a handful of the Emperor ' s most trusted advisors were appointed to the Imperial Council ; and those that fell out of favor with Palpatine were quickly replaced with yet other , power hungry advisors . In order to ensure they were bound to serve him , due to finding fear and greed more useful tools than loyalty to ensure such , he also made sure that the advisors had more enemies among them than allies . As a result , the Council formed a society composed of twisted sycophants and back - stabbers . Normally , a few dozen of the Advisors would be in attendance at the Imperial Court , including those that sat on the Council . This in essence made the Imperial Council the central executive leadership of the Empire . The majority of Imperial Advisors were dispatched across the galaxy , where they served as on - the - spot overseers for the regional governors and the individual planets of the Empire . Planetary governors , and even some Moffs , were directly appointed by the Emperor ' s advisors . Palpatine seems to have deliberately engineered a situation in which it could be believed that the leading Advisors were directing central policy on their own initiative . Personal communiqués from Ars Dangor served as the formal sanctions for such major acts of policy as the creation of Oversectors , the dissolution of the Imperial Senate , and the granting of galaxywide military authority to Lord Darth Vader . In the course of their missions , Palpatine allowed his advisors to build up personal powerbases of their own , sometimes even interplanetary fiefs . Mutual jealousy and avarice meant that they kept each other ' s ambitions in check , and , always outnumbered by their rivals , they remained ultimately individual agents , dependent on Imperial patronage for their status . Palpatine encouraged this adversarial system , often giving one advisor oversight over a system or region which was home to another advisor ' s political power base . This made administration of the Empire less efficient , but benefited Palpatine by ensuring that he continued to be the source of all political power in the Empire . Although they wielded immense power , the Advisors ' dependence on Palpatine ' s favor to further their own ambitions meant that they commanded fear and obedience only through the authority they borrowed from the Emperor . By and large , they were regarded as creatures of the Imperial Court , perfumed sycophants and costumed clowns , and this was certainly true of men like Sim Aloo , Kren Blista - Vanee , and Janus Greejatus . But others , while nevertheless Palpatine ' s servants , stood out from the crowd . Ars Dangor was committed above all else to the political vision of a man he admired and deliberately shunned the trappings of court finery . While behind his supremely elegant manners , Sarcev Quest concealed the fact that he was an Emperor ' s Hand , as well as a one - time Jedi trainee , used by Palpatine as his spy among the Council . One area that the Advisors did hold power over was the appointing of almost all governors and some Moffs . Every Moff was also appointed an Advisor to oversee his efforts , although Moffs also sent duplicates of all of their reports directly to Palpatine . The Advisors also oversaw the Imperial bureaucracy . Vader ' s position in relation . Though he was Emperor Palpatine ' s Sith apprentice and de facto second - in - command , Darth Vader was never a member of the Council . Vader held the Inner Circle in utter contempt , as they were not Sith nor did they use the Force ; but from a certain point of view , Vader ' s self - justifications and private ambitions were little different than those of the most pathetic of the men who Palpatine had twisted and transformed into his favored creatures . As usual , a number of Advisors accompanied Palpatine when he moved his court to the new Death Star prior to the Battle of Endor . But although the destruction of the battle station accordingly reduced the Council ' s numbers , it by no means represented a fatal blow to the group , and many of the leading members survived , including those who had remained on Coruscant , and those who had been on missions elsewhere in the galaxy . After Endor : Sate Pestage and the Cabal . In a purely technical sense , the catastrophe at Endor had no effect whatsoever on the Council . For many years , it had been widely believed that Palpatine had withdrawn into reclusive seclusion , ceding effective control of the Empire to his intimates — and this was only half a lie . The Advisors had always been responsible for the execution of Palpatine ' s will and the intricacies of Imperial policy , and now they were merely implementing the legacy of a dead political visionary rather than the will of a living ruler . However , with only the ghost of Palpatine ' s authority behind them , they had lost much of their power and purpose , not least the crutch of the tyrant ' s Force mastery . Grand Vizier Sate Pestage , who had been left in charge on Coruscant , was " ex officio " the head of the Ruling Council , and accordingly became " interim emperor " ; but Pestage was primarily a counselor , friend , functionary and courtier to Palpatine . It was Ars Dangor who was both the New Order ' s administrative " éminence grise " and its premier public spokesman , and accordingly , it was around him that a quorum of Advisors gathered on Coruscant , and attempted to provide leadership for the Empire . These men are sometimes referred to simply as the Ruling Council , and they do seem to have constituted a legitimate quorum , but they were known to their rivals as the Cabal , and they styled themselves the Emperor ' s Ruling Circle or the ERC . In origin , it is possible that " Emperor ' s Ruling Circle " was simply another name for the Inner Circle , but it is used to differentiate the Cabal from the pre - Endor Council , and this usage will accordingly be adopted here . The ERC were largely responsible for dictating the military strategy which the Empire pursued after Endor , recalling Imperial fleet units to the Core and redeploying them to defend key fortress world s . These planets were often the rich industrial and economic powerhouses of the Empire , and strategic nodes on major hyperspace routes . Dispatching fifteen Star Destroyers to Kuat , for example , was an entirely sound strategic move , and right up until the signing of the Bastion Accords , the Empire would doggedly pursue a policy of retrenchment around fortress worlds , intended as a prelude to a key strategic defeat of the Alliance and a reconquest of lost territory . But it was no coincidence that many of the worlds the ERC selected for defense were also the worlds which the group ' s members regarded as their own fiefdoms , and the policy was perceived in many quarters as being driven entirely by self - interest . It should not be thought that the ERC ' s actions were a total disaster : many elements of the fleet did obey their orders , and they consolidated Imperial authority in a way that prevented the heirs of the Rebel Alliance ever completely crushing the New Order ; but their move to take control also served as a major catalyst for the fragmentation of the Empire into rival fiefdoms . Even the one they placed in command of the Navy , Admiral Kermen , went rogue . Many of the ERC themselves sought only to secure control of their own local powerbases , and they misjudged the Empire ' s military leadership in issuing orders that would have reduce them to mere props for their personal power . Fleet commanders like Admiral Zsinj simply imitated the example of the Council members , breaking with Imperial Center to establish themselves as warlords in the sectors they already controlled . The Cabal , by issuing orders as the Empire ' s central authority , was inevitably challenging the leadership of Sate Pestage , who officially headed the Council and held the throne as regent . It is unclear how much of a genuine fracture in the chain of command there was in the first months after Endor , and Pestage was initially confident of his own position : he was not without support on the Council , most notably from Palpatine ' s former agent Sarcev Quest , and he also enjoyed some backing from units of the Imperial Royal Guard . But a conflict between the Grand Vizier and the Cabal was carefully cultivated by Director of Intelligence Ysanne Isard . She regarded Pestage and the Council alike as incompetents who had to be removed to ensure the New Order ' s survival , and so , she played both sides off against each other . Six months after Endor , matters came to a head at Brentaal IV , a key military and commercial hyperspace junction in the Core . Neither Pestage nor the Cabal wished to lose the world — the Grand Vizier sought to hold the planet for strategic reasons and to prove himself capable of resisting the New Republic , while leading members of the ERC had important holdings there ( and it was home to at least one councilor ) . But Brentaal was defended by the incompetent Admiral Lon Isoto , who Isard presented to the Grand Vizier as the Cabal ' s candidate , while persuading leading members of the Council that he was Pestage ' s man . As Isoto stumbled his way from disaster to defeat , Isard told each side that the other was preventing his replacement by a more competent commander , in the hope of undermining their position . While the Grand Vizier was astute enough to realize that he had been manipulated by Isard , the Cabal blamed Pestage for his conduct of the war , and some began to openly suggest recruiting warlords such as Blitzer Harrsk and Treuten Teradoc to defend their holdings rather than rely on commanders loyal — as they thought — to the Grand Vizier . Pestage ' s position was weakened by his loss of Sarcev Quest ' s support : according to some sources , Quest believed that the real Grand Vizier had fled to Byss in the Deep Core and replaced himself on Coruscant with a mentally unstable clone . As Pestage ( or his clone ) sought to escape Isard ' s machinations and secure his own control of his fiefdom in the Ciutric Hegemony , Isard presented his actions to members of the Cabal as treason against the Empire , and called on them to act . This had the — perhaps unanticipated — effect of breaking the unity of the ERC , as General Paltr Carvin and the civilian Advisors Challer and Plumba seized power and formed a troika known as the Tribunal , although they were rapidly deposed in turn by Isard herself , who used the Imperial Intelligence apparatus to eliminate her remaining opponents , and established a dictatorship with herself as empress in all but name . Between the actions of the Tribunal and Isard , it seemed that the ERC , and indeed the Ruling Council as a whole , was a spent force . After the fall of Coruscant . Somehow — it is unclear how , or why — some members of the Council escaped Isard ' s purges , among them Ars Dangor and Sarcev Quest . After Isard ' s loss of Coruscant and her retreat to Thyferra , Dangor and the survivors of the ERC relocated to Orinda , where they once again provided a tenuous central authority for the Empire . They supported Grand Admiral Thrawn as Supreme 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 . They considered granting him the title of Emperor if he was successful , still assuming they could control him afterwards ; however , even during his campaign he acted largely on his own , stating that he was the sole leader of the Empire . At this time , New Republic Council Research apparently learned that the IRC had survived the fall of Coruscant , and was helping build up a war effort ; but its Director , Voren Na ' al , had trouble believing it . Ironically , Thrawn ' s death prevented him eclipsing them , and subsequently , they were able to build on his successes by driving the New Republic from the Core Worlds and reconquering Coruscant . With their usual naïve optimism as to the way the other elements of the hierarchy would react , the survivors of the Cabal suggested that they should convene the Ruling Council in the Senate and elect one of their number as Emperor — a proposal which provoked first outrage from the Navy , the Moffs and COMPNOR , and then a vicious civil war . In the resulting chaos , observers may have been forgiven for overlooking the shifting balance of power within the Council itself . Sarcev Quest had been building up support among his fellow Advisors and also winning over units of the Imperial Royal Guard . Then , as if out of nowhere , a seemingly reborn Palpatine reappeared on Byss with Pestage at his side , and Quest led the Council and the Royal Guard in reaffirming their allegiance to the Emperor . The Council on Byss . However , Sarcev Quest was no longer Palpatine ' s loyal spy among the Advisors , and the Council members were reluctant to surrender the authority they had acquired since Endor — not even to Palpatine . At Quest ' s urging , the Council had already lent its patronage to Carnor Jax , a Royal Guard officer and aspirant Sith Lord , as a new figurehead for the Empire , and now Quest and Jax worked together , in the heart of the Imperial court , to overthrow the Emperor . Laying the groundwork for a coup , Quest installed Carnor Jax as one of the cadre of Imperial Sovereign Protector s who provided Palpatine ' s personal guard , and together , they sounded out support , eliminating rivals like Sa - Di and Nefta , the only other Force - users on the Council . With funds provided by Council members like Xandel Carivus , Quest bribed the Emperor ' s physician to sabotage the genetic material for the clone bodies which were the key to Palpatine ' s rebirth . On the most basic level , the motivations of the conspirators are not hard to understand : they were faced with the palpable madness of the cloned Emperor , the transfer of much of their power to a Dark Jedi elite , and the willful , wanton destruction of Operation Shadow Hand . Some perhaps believed that they were taking necessary action for the good of the Empire ; others were concerned for their own survival and status , even driven by ambition — but at the back of the Council there was now a small , shadowy group of Force - users : Jax and Quest , of course , but the key role of Lord Jax in the conspiracy may indicate the support of his mistress , Lumiya , while the subsequent appearance of Blackhole stormtroopers as Jax ' s personal guard hints at a connection with Lord Cronal . Palpatine seems to have been oblivious to the machinations of the Council , and while there is no evidence that they predicted events on Onderon and the destruction of Byss , they were nevertheless ready to make their move and remove those who might oppose them . This was , of course , a coup , but it was a coup by those who had , ever since Endor , regarded themselves as rulers of the Empire and guardians of the principles of the New Order . The " Council of Blood " . With the destruction of Byss , the Council reconvened in the Council Tower in De - Purteen , capital of the resort world of Ord Cantrell . Yet it appears that Quest had been too careful . Lord Jax seems to have been regarded by most of the others as the leader of the conspiracy , the new Dark Lord and heir - apparent to the Imperial throne — but , since he preferred to command from his Star Destroyer in the manner of Darth Vader , Sarcev Quest was left to see to the running of the Council . After Jax ' s assassination at the hands of Kir Kanos and the death of his military lieutenant General Redd Wessel , the rest of the conspirators accordingly turned on Quest and removed him from power . They often spoke of Jax as the inceptor of the conspiracy , and there is little evidence that they paid much mind to the former courtier they had tortured and exiled to Nar Shaddaa . After the death of Jax and the removal of Quest , the Council chose Burr Nolyds as their leader . With no more than a handful of Advisors now surviving , Jax had already bolstered the ranks of the Council with new blood like fleet commander Admiral Jeratai and media baroness Mahd Windcaller , and now alien leaders loyal to the New Order were brought onto the Council for the first time , such as the Whiphid spearmaster Ch ' Unkk . Reflecting the changes , the Council now styled itself the Imperial Interim Ruling Council — interim , presumably , in as much as many of its members were not Advisors , and thus had no " de jure " right to sit on the Ruling Council . But while Jeratai and Windcaller struggled to guide the Empire through the crisis , the other Council members were being manipulated both by Black Sun and by Yuuzhan Vong agent Nom Anor . For four years , a clone of Feena D ' Asta had been Black Sun ' s agent on the Council , who they used to use to enhance their own leverage and direct their agenda of peace between the Empire and the New Republic . Nom Anor ' s aim , on the other hand , was to hasten the downfall of the Empire , thus paving the way for an easier Yuuzhan Vong invasion . Assassinating Nolyds and several other key Council members , and convincing the rest of the Council that vengeful Royal Guardsman Kir Kanos was behind the killings , Nom Anor engineered the accession of his inept pawn Xandel Carivus as the final leader of the diminished group , and Carivus , in a final coup , declared himself Emperor and imprisoned the rest of the Council . The reign of Xandel Carivus lasted mere hours , as Baron D ' Asta , Kir Kanos , and the New Republic Super Star Destroyer " Lusankya " arrived at Ord Cantrell . Kanos executed Carivus , and in the aftermath , the D ' Astas withdrew from the Empire , while New Republic troops seized most or all of the imprisoned Councilors . Although Imperial officers and administrators were still the only effective source of authority in large areas of both the Deep Core and the Outer Rim , there was no unifying authority , and the resurgent New Republic was consequently able to claim that the Empire had effectively ceased to exist as a state . Aftermath . Following the events on Ord Cantrell , many loyalist officers joined the forces of the warlords . When thirteen warlord holdings were unified in 12 ABY , the United Warlord Fleets later joined with Imperial factions in the Outer Rim and formed the Imperial Remnant , which was governed by the Council of Moffs rather than a revived Ruling Council . Individual Council members survived , of course , such as Sarcev Quest , until he was hunted down and executed by Dark Jedi berserker Jeng Droga , and it can be noted that a few months after his exile to Nar Shaddaa , his lover Roganda Ismaren attempted to set up their son Irek as ruler of the Empire in a scheme with a crypto - Imperial " court party " that bore some of the hallmarks of his inimitable style . Also closely involved in this scheme was Lady Theala Vandron , daughter of the late Crueya Vandron , a senior Advisor and founder of COMPNOR . Membership . Current sources do not allow a full reconstruction of the personnel of the Imperial Ruling Council . The following are noted by the date at which they are first recorded as serving among Palpatine ' s advisors or as members of the Council . It is noted that Palpatine only met with a dozen of his Advisors at a time in an effort to keep them paranoid and divided . It was not uncommon for him to execute old Advisors before promoting newer ones to the Council . Behind the scenes . While the well - known publicity photo which appears in the " The Dark Side Sourcebook " only shows five Imperial advisors , close viewing of " " reveals that six advisors disembarked from the shuttle with the Emperor upon arrival at the second Death Star .