Ruusan Reformations

<Ruusan Reformations

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Seventh Battle of Ruusan^[1]

Unification Campaigns^[2]

Ruusan Reformations

Date

1000 BBY^[2]

Outcome

TheGalactic Republic reorganizes itself, stripping powers away from theSupreme Chancellor and reinvesting it in theGalactic Senate^[1]

"Now that the Brotherhood of Darkness has been defeated, the Galactic Senate wants to put an official end to this war. There is important legislation on the table that could change the face of the Republic forever. Valorum wants to discuss it with me before the Senate votes."
"And this legislation will affect the Jedi as well?"
"It will, in ways you cannot even begin to imagine."

―Valenthyne Farfalla andJohun Othone, discussing the proposed governmental reforms^[3]

TheRuusan Reformations, also called theRuusan Reformation, was an event that restructured the entireGalactic Republic following theNew Sith Wars, taking power away from theSupreme Chancellor and reinvesting it in theGalactic Senate.

Reformation[]

"Do you realize the ramifications of what you are asking, Tarsus? Your proposal calls for the Jedi to renounce their military ranks and completely disband all our military, naval, and starfighter forces. You are asking us to destroy the Army of Light!"

―Valenthyne Farfalla^[3]

Tarsus Valorum-TEA — Tarsus Valorum, the architect of the Ruusan Reformation

The reforms were enacted by then-ChancellorTarsus Valorum and also resulted in theRepublic Measures & Standards Bureau resetting the year zero to the year of theSeventh Battle of Ruusan, which would come to be known as1000 BBY by theGalactic Standard Calendar.

The system of government did not seem to change too dramatically (as the Republic had been ruled by a Supreme Chancellor and the Galactic Senate as early as15,000 BBY) but theJedi Order underwent a significant adjustment. In symbolic measures, largely to convince the Republic that they would not become a conquering army, the Jedi abandoned their battle armor, renounced all military ranks (such as "Jedi Lord"), dissolvedtheir commander-in-chief, disbanded their army, naval and starfighter forces, and placed themselves under the supervision of the Supreme Chancellor and theJudicial Department, effectively dissolving theMilitary. In order to lessen the chance of aSith resurgence, the Order began training children from birth. In addition, the training ofPadawans was centralized onCoruscant, to remove the danger of unsupervised students delving into forbidden Sith knowledge.

Politically, however, the Reformations did affect representation within the Senate. In an effort to remove corruption and decentralize power away from a few powerful Coreward sectors that held the most representation, Valorum took the then-existing millions of sectors and reorganized them into only 1,024 sectors. Each of the new sectors were granted its own Senator, although a few exemptions were made for politically powerful core worlds to retain their individual representation. Other slots, such as those for species types and cultural entities were also granted.^[4] TheReformation Act was a critical piece of legislation.^[5] TheArmistice Celebrations were a holiday that celebrated the anniversary of the Ruusan Reformation.^[3]

The Reformation put an end to theRepublic Dark Age. It was considered to be the start of theGolden Age of the Old Republic. In some cases, such asPalpatine's Declaration of a New Order marking the transition of the Old Republic to theGalactic Empire,^[6] this event was even marked to be the "official" founding of the Old Republic.^[7]

Simultaneously,Darth Bane's Sith Order also underwent its own reformation, reorganizing into theRule of Two.

Behind the scenes[]

The Ruusan Reformation was introduced in the timeline in order to explain several differences between the Old Republic as presented in the comics, and the one which appeared in theprequel trilogy.

InLegends, the Republic is well established to be extant for about 25,000 years,^[8] based onObi-Wan Kenobi's line inA New Hope that the Jedi had been "the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic" "for over a thousand generations." For a long time, Legends sources were the only works set during the Republic era—most notably the popularTales of the Jedi sagas. However, inAttack of the Clones,Palpatine mentioned the Republic had "stood for a thousand years." This at first seemed to conflict with both theC-canon wider history and theG-canon in the films. In G-canon the difference between the Old Republic and the Galactic Republic was addressed in the second season of the TV showStar Wars: The Clone Wars, making reference to a fallen "Old Republic", in which the Jedi Order was also present, predating the Republic of the Prequel-era.^[9]

Prior that, in the Expanded Universe, the Ruusan Reformation—in which the Republic is reorganized following the already-established defeat of the Sith a thousand years prior to the films at the Seventh Battle of Ruusan—was invented by subsequent writers to give an explanation on Palpatine's line, thus bringing all these sources into relative harmony through aretcon. It also explains how, in the context of the Expanded Universe,Sio Bibble could honestly claim, inAttack of the Clones, that there had not been a full-scale war since the formation of the Republic.^[1]

Palpatine's statement that the Republic had "stood for a thousand years" might have been hyperbole - in other words the equivalent of saying the Republic had "stood forever" and was not meant to be taken literally. Given Palpatine's nature as a politician, prone to making grandiose statements and generalizations, gives great weight to this argument.Sio Bibble's remark could also be taken the same way, he may not have considered the earlier wars as "full-scale" or alternatively there could have political revisions to the official Republic history (such as there are in real life) that could have led to majority public opinion that therehad been no earlier wars, when in fact there had been.