- For the comparable empire in the original Space Battleship Yamato and its sequels, see Gamilas Empire.
Emblem of the Great Garmillas Empire.
The Great Garmillas Empire, commonly referred to as Great Garmillas, is an intergalactic empire governing the Garmillan people. The empire has spread far from its homeworld, the planet Garmillas, to encompass the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, much of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and parts of the Milky Way Galaxy. Its expansion has been driven in part by military conquest and the absorption of other peoples into the empire.
Organization
In the final year of his one hundred three-year reign, Leader Abelt Dessler holds ultimate power over all aspects of the empire ("Wish Upon a Star"). Much of his continuing authority is sustained by the Imperial Guard. Starting as a personal protection service in for the family of Abelt Dessler, the Guard expanded tremendously to become the ideological guardians of Dessler's regime, a secret police force with wide latitude to monitor the population and punish suspected malcontents, and a heavily armed military power capable of suppressing opposition on a planetary scale[1] ("Wish Upon a Star", "Point of No Return"). Courtroom judges hear cases brought against suspects by the Imperial Guard, but in some instances, judges serve only to give legal approval to the Guard's actions, and not to carry out fair and impartial trials ("Out of the Forest of Memory"). Dessler's policies are enacted directly through senior staff that include civilian ministers, the director of the Imperial Guard, and the highest officers in the regular military ("Point of No Return", "Over the Black Light", "The Planet That We Head For").
One of Dessler's primary goals is to unify his regime with that of the nearby planet Iscandar and its ruler, Queen Starsha Iscandar. Garmillas military and civilian personnel alike show reverence to the queen and members of the Iscandarian royal family, but the process of unification stalls in its later stages due to Dessler's increasing use of violence ("Prison Planet 17", "The Distant Promised Land").
The city of Baleras on the planet Garmillas serves as the capital of the empire ("Wish Upon a Star"). Beyond Garmillas and the star system in which it resides, the territory of the empire is divided into provinces, such as the Nord Greater Province in which the planet Alteria is located. The capital dispatches Garmillan governors to administer the provinces ("Point of No Return"). Great Garmillas continues to expand its territory by annexing other species and civilizations, sometimes through wars waged by the massive Garmillas Imperial Astro Fleet ("Messenger of Iscandar", "A World I Once Saw" "Over the Black Light"). The empire also works to colonize unpopulated places. When a world that the empire desires is not habitable, it will "Garmillasform" it, altering its environment and seeding it with various life forms from Garmillas supplied by a network of floating continents[2] ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "The Year is 2202--Raise the Space Battleship Yamato").
The people of Great Garmillas are organized into a two-tier system of citizenship. Members of the Garmillas species are placed into the first tier; most aliens occupy the second tier and enjoy far fewer legal and social rights, even as they are required to demonstrate loyalty to the empire. On rare occasions, individual members of these other species can distinguish themselves through service or some other means and be rewarded first-class citizenship ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field", "Wish Upon a Star", "The Planet That We Head For").
Following the fall of Dessler's regime, the most brutal and authoritarian aspects of the political system have been removed by a provisional government as part of its reforms, although other institutions have been left in place to some extent, including the continuation of close ties with Iscandar ("The Distant Promised Land", "The Forever War", "Tension--Get to the Lunar Embassy").
History
The Great Garmillas Empire was declared in 1199 CE ("Wish Upon a Star"). No later than around the year 1800, the empire had discovered and taken possession of the Aquarius gate network, an ancient system of subspace corridors constructed and abandoned by the Aquarius civilization. With this network, the empire could easily expand its reach across intergalactic distances to the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way ("A Choice for the Future", "Out of the Forest of Memory").
Notes
References
Japanese language information
大ガミラス帝国 Dai gamirasu teikoku