That sounds like a pretty neat idea.
What if the Imperial Remnant was trying to distance itself from its dark past and forge a new way forward for itself but the Knights of Ren are hellbent on retaining its autocratic nature? The IR seeking peaceful coexistence with the New Republic but the Knights of Ren are still stuck in the conquering warlike mentality of the Empire. I would take away the focus from how the New Republic is developing but let’s be honest, conflict is what drives these kinds of stories.
A society at war with itself, one half looking to build a better future dealing with its dark legacy while the other half wants to restore the Empire to its former glory.
I always thought the sequel trilogy should have been about a civil war between Imperial factions: a large militaristic but pragmatic remnant who want to establish a post-Sith order & a smaller group of Sith-cultists carrying out terrorist attacks. The New Republic gets reluctantly drawn in as the conflict spills out into its territory. You could have a Snoke figure or the Sith eternal as the hidden force fuelling the conflict, bringing the new Jedi order into the fray.
I was thinking of having Episode VII be an Empire civil war story, but honestly, yeah, the whole trilogy could have been centered around what you’re describing. The only thing is, I’d still want there to be a sense of some existential threat to the Republic, at least in Episode IX.
I was talking to Servii about this in PMs, I think it’s interesting how open the galaxy seems to be in the PT, compared to the OT and ST where the galaxy gradually seems smaller and smaller. If I were to write my own version of all of Star Wars, I’d lean into that hard. The galaxy is bustling and vibrant in Episode 1, but the Clone Wars and then later the Empire mar the galaxy so badly that it’ll never really recover. Trade completely breaks down, hyperspace lanes are forgotten, planets are abandoned, etc. The New Republic may try to make things what they once were, but with so much galactic infrastructure destroyed and pilfered, it could never.
Jakku is symbolic of what the future of the galaxy’s like. A world which was once an imperial dumping ground now has its own, new ecosystem of scavengers, and the Star Destroyers and walkers which once terrorized the galaxy are now great sources of livelihood. It’s not glamorous like what their great grand-parents would’ve done for a living, but it’s a new niche that didn’t exist before. Without the Empire, Jakku wouldn’t exist.
After Episode 9, the galaxy will never recover or return to its past glory, but will learn to thrive in the new post-Empire reality. Like after the fall of the Roman Empire, civilization will not exist on the same scale that it once did, but new, complex societies are born in the aftermath.
Not to mention, having a more decentralized galaxy moving forward would pave the way for lots of smaller scale stories in the future. You could have drastically different events going on in different corners of the galaxy, so as a result, the galaxy would actually feel bigger.