McFlabbergasty said:
After the debacle that was the Battle of Coruscant, the remnants of the Republic's military and citizenry separated themselves into two distinct groups: the "Alliance to Restore the Republic" and the "Galactic Empire".
Yes. The Rebels are in all six films. The Empire isn't seen until Episode II, though. It was formed some time between when the first film and the second film take place (25 BBY and 21 BBY, respectively).
For four fiery years these factions worked together to crush the clone menace, even while holding starkly-differing views on what the post-War galaxy should look like.
The Alliance wanted a constitutional, representative government composed of equal parts all known sentient species. The Empire demanded Human supremacy and loyalty to its supreme leader, Palpatine, above all else.
How the Empire won, at least until the events of the OT, is one of the major stories I am trying to tell in my prequels.
Interesting. Not to be nitpicky, but how do you relate that to the framing of the war in the OT as a "Civil War" (I think that's the first line in the ANH text scroll). This implies that there is a feeling or conceptualization that the (a great deal of) the Galaxy should be ruled by one government, but that the current one is not legitimate. If the split occurs before Episode 1, into two governmental entities, both with administrative power over a territory, and this split continues for some 30 years, when the perception of the War being a "civil" one might be challenged. In other words, you'll need the Empire firmly in control of most of the territory before the end of Ep 3.
On another note, and an issue I'm wrestling with: how did the Palpatine government become named "Empire"? Labels are important, and they need to be seen as legitimate. For a political culture where some form of democracy has been entrenched for "a thousand generations", the label "Empire" is likely quite loaded with negative sentiments. I'm wrestling with this myself.