Grand Marshal (Galactic Empire)

Grand Marshal was a rank created by the Galactic Empire shortly before the Battle of Yavin. It was proposed by Priority Sector High Commander Dasko Nihos and it was approved by the Imperial Senate.

Powers of a Grand Marshal
A Grand Marshal was a very senior member of the Imperial Military. This rank was equal to the ranks of Grand General and Grand Admiral. A Grand Marshal was in charge of the TIE Corps and usually commanded several hundreds of starfighter groups.

History
The rank was proposed by Priority Sector High Commander of the Extragalactic Oversector, Dasko Nihos, who was in command of all Imperial forces there. Although his Grand General and Grand Admiral were higly skilled, Dasko's forces were usually lacking any formal starfighter hierarchy. As such the Imperial Doctrine which emphasized on strong capital ships was a total failure for Dasko and his troops.

He tried to separate the Starfighter Corps from the Imperial Navy, like the Galactic Republic once did. As a result in 2 BBY Dasko traveled to Coruscant in order to approve the creation of the rank of the Grand Marshal, thus separating the two branches from each other.

This action was known as 750 act, (because of the number of institutions that were deleted if the TIE Corps separated from the Navy), and it was finally approved by the then active Imperial Senate.

The result was that multiple starfighter aces became Grand Marshals and multiple other indivinduals were promoted to other lesser ranks that were created after the Starfighter Corps had separated from the Imperial Navy. Such ranks included the Force Marshals, the Chief Marshals and the High Marshals.

Legacy
Although the rank was solely used by the Galactic Empire at that time, after the Imperial defeat on Endor, Dasko Nihos created his own regime on the Extragalactic Void and he kept the rank of Grand Marshal, granting it to some of his most trusted starfighter corps officers.