[Image description 1: the symbols for the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance from the original Star Wars trilogy are positioned above the symbols for the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order from the prequel trilogy. The Empire and Republic’s symbols are both circles within circles, each with six spars reaching out from the inner circle and six detached segments forming another broken circle around the symbols’ inner rims. The Rebellion and Jedi’s symbols are not circles though they fit inside of the shape of one. They flair up the sides around empty inner space. The Jedi’s symbol is more intricate with a feathery effect up the sides and a starburst near the bottom of its central spire.
Image description 2: The canon symbols for the SWTOR Galactic Republic and Sith Empire up the top, with the symbol of the Old Sith Empire and a blank space where the symbol for the SWTOR Jedi Order should be down the bottom. The Sith Empire’s symbol is a hexagon with a smaller hexagon in its middle. Six spars like arrows radiate out from the centre. The Galactic Republic’s symbol is similar to the prequel’s Jedi Crest inside a ring. It has the same feathery details up its sides and a spire up its middle. Arrows indicate the symbol of the Galactic Republic belongs in the space for the Jedi Order and the symbol of the Sith Empire should be in its place.]
The way faction insignias from original Star Wars trilogy and the prequels era media relate is beautiful. The Galactic Empire and Republic’s roundels are each other’s inverse. The symbol of the Rebel Alliance is about the right shape for the symbol of the Jedi – the victims of the Empire’s first purge – to be hidden inside of it.
Then you look at the insignias for the SWTOR factions and, whoops, the Sith Empire has the one which belongs to the Galactic Republic while the Republic is using the Jedi’s because theirs has been stolen by the villainous Sith.
This is indicative of a wider problem with the world-building of the Sith Empire, which is that most of the writers were too lazy to properly develop lore for them and just tried to dump the Galactic Empire under a ‘Sith’ sticker into the game instead.
That’s like making wholesale assumptions about the Roman Empire based on the British Empire, or the Sassanid Empire using the Mongol Empire. The reconstituted Sith Empire predates the Galactic Empire by more than three thousand years, has its centre of power in the Stygian Caldera rather than the Core Worlds, and has its cultural, institutional, and legal roots in the Old Sith Empire as perverted by Vitiate rather than the Galactic Republic as perverted by Palpatine. You can’t just copy one evil empire into another time and place to make another evil empire – that’s not how civilizations work!
It's extra disappointing because keeping the connection between the Galactic Empire and Republic’s insignias could have added an extra weight to some of the Pub side DS-choices. You can claim that those people deserved it, you can say the Sith do worse, you can accept the arguments of characters like General Garza that these things are necessary in wartime but the path of moral compromise is the path that ends with the Galactic Republic becoming the Galactic Empire. It is the path which will lead to the Republic becoming the Galactic Empire. Millions of choices, millions of compromises until the Supreme Chancellor declares the end of democracy as the Senate applauds him.
Giving the factions two symbols a piece would have been a nice way to add extra depth. Is the Consular acting as an agent of the Order or of the Senate? If your Knight ends the class-story while dark-sided and gets publicly humiliated by Satele Shan, do they then use the Republic’s insignia rather than the Order’s afterwards? And it stands in contrast to the Empire that the Republic and Jedi Order do have separate symbols because the Republic practices the separation of powers where the Empire does not; the Senate, the Courts, the Bureaucracy, the Jedi, are meant to maintain their independence so they can keep each other in check.
Meanwhile the Sith and the rest of the Empire all wear Darth Vitiate’s personal insignia because they are all subordinate to him until you rock up to Ziost and suddenly they aren’t. After a thousand years of serving as Emperor’s stooges the Empire’s people have discovered the truth about Medriaas and his attempt to consume all life in the galaxy and are openly at war against him. Imagine boarding the Imperial station to discover all the old Imperial symbols hastily painted over with the long disused emblem of the Old Empire. It’s one thing to hear Lana Beniko say “Vitiate is not our Emperor, not anymore” but another to see it.
