"Master," Kylo Ren said, looking up at Snoke's hologram. "I'm curious. I have questions."

"Speak, then, Kylo," Snoke invited. "Your conviction must be unharmed. Unimpaired. Perfect."

"Good," Kylo replied, frowning. "Because, I was sort of wondering about this whole… plan."

"What part of the plan is a problem?" Snoke said. "The Jedi order is dead, the Resistance is weak, the New Republic will be caught off guard by Starkiller Base when it is ready to fire. What can stop us?"

"I'm not saying anything can stop us," Kylo explained. "I'm just… thinking."

He opened his hand, examining it, then closed it again. "Because… my grandfather was the second in command of the Empire, which was the direct successor state to the Republic, and the Emperor kept explaining how he was merely keeping the Republic alive in a time of crisis, until eventually he explained that actually there was no longer any need for a Senate."

"Did you here to ask me questions, or talk about your history homework?" Snoke asked.

"Questions, Master," Kylo said. "I'm just worried about whether anyone will listen to us."

"Of course they will!" Snoke replied. "The terror of Starkiller Base will make it so that nobody dares to defy us!"

"...will it?" Kylo asked.

"Of course it will," Snoke told him. "How could you doubt it? Nothing can possibly resist Starkiller Base!"

"Well…" Kylo began, a little dubious. "I'm… fairly sure that exactly the same thing was said about the Death Star. And… that got taken out by a small fighter strike."

"Then Starkiller Base will simply not be blown up," Snoke said. "If you refused to build anything that could get taken out by a small fighter strike then you wouldn't build anything or recruit anyone."

"But that's not the only thing I'm actually trying to say," Kylo complained. "Didn't the Empire have the ability to punish people for rebelling during time periods that weren't the four weeks that the Death Star was operational?"

Snoke looked stern.

"Or the half hour that the second Death Star was operational," Kylo added.

Snoke looked slightly less stern and more annoyed.

"Yes, but those clearly didn't work," he said. "They weren't sufficient! It is terror of the ability to destroy a planet which is the only sure and certain way of preventing rebellion against my rule!"

Kylo shook his head.

"So what happens if there's a mass uprising on a planet ruled by the First Order, but the uprising hasn't taken over yet?" he asked.

"Starkiller base blows the planet up," Snoke answered, simply.

"...huh," Kylo frowned. "Planet refuses to let us take over?"

"Starkiller base blows the planet up."

"A small cell of rebels is suspected?" Kylo asked, warily.

"Starkiller base blows the planet up," Snoke told him. "Kylo, you really must listen when I answer your questions, or you should not bother asking them!"

"I mostly think that this way of doing things means that we're going to run out of planets remarkably quickly," Kylo said. "And there doesn't seem to be a reason for planets to do anything other than rebel."

He paused.

"Also, I should point this out, the design for Starkiller Base means that it takes several hours to fire. It would take literal years to work through all the planets in the galaxy that have Senate representation alone."

"We will not have to work through all the planets in the galaxy!" Snoke said. "During the Empire there were only a few planets that even considered rebellion!"

"That's what actually made me start thinking about this," Kylo admitted. "Because… to the planets of the galaxy, during the Empire, the Empire was the clear legitimate government, and they had Senators. The moment that the Empire blew up a planet and stopped having Senators is the moment when they started facing much bigger rebellions in more places, because everyone could see that there was no legitimacy to it."

"And what do you know about legitimacy?" Snoke asked. "Who here is the Supreme Leader, you or me?"

"You are, Supreme Leader," Kylo said.

"And the First Order is the continuation of the Empire!" Snoke went on.

"But nobody actually believes that," Kylo pointed out. "It is literally part of our plan that nobody knows we're doing any of this and that we're not in any way significant. If we suddenly say, aha, we're actually the heirs to the Empire, then we're going to look like we just made it up."

He folded his arms. "Citation: the general reaction of most of the galaxy when Luke Skywalker declared he was doing a New Jedi Order."

"That is the whole point of doing the secession," Snoke said. "Many systems joining us at once by leaving the New Republic is a clear sign of our being an apparent successor to the New Republic, and a better one. Relax, Kylo. Everything will work out just fine."

"Sure," Kylo lied. "Only… I have to ask, you know this whole, we're not a threat, thing?"

"Obviously," Snoke answered.

"How we've been hiding that the First Order actually has a fleet crewed by Stormtroopers trained from kidnapped children?" Kylo went on. "And our true intentions, so the New Republic doesn't know?"

"Yes," Snoke sighed, clearly bored with this conversation. "Cease your prattle and get to a bit I don't already know."

"Does literally any civilian in our seceded population know about this stuff?" Kylo asked. "Because I have personal experience with what it feels like when someone who I thought was a kindly friend turned out to actually be standing over me with a weapon, and I burned his life to the ground."

Snoke shrugged.

"I'm sure it will be fine," he said. "Unlike you, the civilians haven't been subjected to decades of gradual mental influence."

"What?" Kylo asked.

"Nothing," Snoke replied. "Go and play with your starfighter or something and we'll discuss the Force when you've calmed down."

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate," Leia Organa said, around three days later. "I wish to yield my time to an external speaker. I can assure you, I'm as surprised as you by who approached me to speak."

The viewscreen activated, and a man in a mask strode out to stand underneath it.

"Welcome to my talk," Kylo said. "It's entitled, I'm Not Apologizing, But Here's What The First Order Are Doing."

He twiddled a setting on his lightsaber, turning it into an extremely extravagant twenty-meter-long laser pointer.

"I will not be taking questions," he added, then clicked onto the first slide. "This is Starkiller Base and it's basically a bigger Death Star that hasn't been finished yet…"

AN:

Look, there's just a lot of questions about legitimacy, okay? If you keep the nature of the polity you're making secret from the overwhelming majority of your citizens, then they'll kinda object when it becomes clear.

No one rules alone.