She appears in all three films and is never shown as fleet admiral. Her authority is moral and practical: she gives up a false base under interrogation, endures Alderaan, works in the Hoth command centre, and fights on Endor.

Recruited between the farm and Yavin, he is Red Five, then leads a Hoth fighter group. He abandons the fleet for Dagobah and leaves the Endor team to face Vader. The films take care never to make him the Alliance’s supreme commander.

Mon Mothma gives the political frame, Ackbar commands the fleet from Home One, Rieekan runs Hoth, Dodonna plans the trench run, and Madine briefs the Endor raid. No single field marshal ever appears.

Wedge survives Yavin, flies at Hoth, and helps wreck the second station: the model rebel pilot with no fame and no Force. Biggs is already in Red Squadron and dies in the trench.

Han begins as a hired pilot and ally of convenience, and the promotion to general happens off screen. Lando starts as a defector from Cloud City and ends up leading the fighter wing.

The Ewoks are allies of the hour. Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO serve out of personal loyalty rather than any rank the films define.

The movement speaks in military language and rank, with squadron colours and mixed alien officers. It is identified by orange flight suits, rank badges and a war-room map more than by any seal or constitution. The crawl’s program is freedom, while a written charter or debate on a restored Republic is never shown.

Colour-coded starfighter squadrons, Mon Calamari cruisers by Endor, special-operations teams, ground troops and spies. The films never show a numbered order of battle, a war department or conscription, so institutional depth is implied but never catalogued.

X-wings carry the strikes, Y-wings the first bombing run, A-wings crash the Executor’s bridge, B-wings fill the Endor launch, and snowspeeders are rigged against walkers. Home One is Ackbar’s flagship, and the Falcon is an irregular ally. The pattern repeats until it works.

Yavin 4 and Hoth are both found by the Empire, the fleet rendezvous is spoken of and never seen, and Endor is a battle site rather than a capital. No permanent headquarters appears after Yavin.

Leia carries the plans and the Bothans die for the second station’s secrets. Yet the Empire tracks the Falcon, Vader finds Hoth, and the Emperor builds Endor as a trap. The trilogy is rigorous on this difference.

The Alliance can concentrate for one battle but cannot hold a planet, and it leans on outsiders: a smuggler, a gambler, a tribe. It is no Jedi order. It can use a Jedi without governing one, and it never tries.

The Alliance begins already inside the war, with no legitimate government to petition. The Resistance begins by trying to make a Republic take a threat seriously and to find a Jedi, and becomes a survival army only after that Republic is beheaded.

In the classic films she shares command with Rieekan, Ackbar and Mon Mothma. In the sequels her name defines the movement. Treating her forces as one army erases the Republic between Endor and Hosnian and the fact that her later command is smaller and more personal.

Classic pilots and commanders are volunteers and professionals. Sequel recruits include a hotshot who must be demoted, a defecting stormtrooper, a scavenger and a mechanic. The Alliance is full of people with nowhere else to put their cause; the sequels are full of people who were never born into one.

Yavin and Endor are planned assaults on known machines. Hoth, the fleet chase and Crait are escapes. The original trilogy escalates toward a battle; the sequel trilogy decays toward an escape.

Yavin is literally won by a smuggler’s return, so help is no sequel invention. The difference is structure: at Endor the fleet is already there and the Ewoks tip the ground fight, while at Exegol the Resistance is the anvil and the allied ships are the hammer.

He is a name until Return of the Jedi, then the strategic centre who designs the trap. In the sequels he is a hidden continuation, a late revelation of the last film rather than anything the first two sequels stated.

Yavin’s torpedo and Endor’s throne-room duel are not the same event as Ackbar’s orders; Crait’s projection and Exegol’s chorus of Jedi are not Poe’s generalship. A sound account keeps those columns separate.

Only the Empire is shown, with an Emperor, Vader, Tarkin as the face of military government, and fleet commanders such as Piett. The Republic is something lost or worth restoring, never an institution in session, and the Senate is mentioned only as recently dissolved.

A Republic exists and is the stated supporter of Leia’s force. The First Order is not shown as the Empire’s legal heir; it simply is. Hosnian removes the Republic capital in one silent vista, and the Resistance does not become that Republic by default.

The Rise of Skywalker claims Palpatine stood behind Snoke. That sits on top of the earlier map without erasing the fact that, for two films, the First Order was treated as a separate successor regime.

Older Expanded Universe stories built a continuous New Republic war with campaigns and admirals the films never show. They are useful as a warning: a fan continuity can fill the Endor-to-Hosnian gap so thoroughly that the films’ silence feels like an omission rather than a choice.

The stolen plans are treated as a pre-film given, exactly as the crawl delivers them. Whatever a later film shows about the theft belongs to that film, and the study keeps that door shut.