Its stated goal is to restore the liberal governance of the previous Galactic Republic, which had been dissolved after its leader Palpatine seized absolute power and declared himself emperor.

While the Empire labels all dissenters and rebels as extremists and terrorists in Imperial propaganda, the Alliance is depicted and portrayed in various Star Wars media as a group of resilient freedom fighters, based on tolerance, self-empowerment, and hope for a better future using insurgency weapons and tactics.

Amidala was initially skeptical of Palpatine's evil intentions because he had supported her during the Trade Federation's occupation of Naboo (The Phantom Menace, 32 BBY), but Organa and Mon Mothma announced the formation of an anti-Palpatine 'organization'; the six Senators agreed to a pact of silence.

In The Imperial Handbook, Grand Moff Tarkin related that most members of the Delegation of 2000 were arrested; Mothma and Organa retained their Senatorship by remaining outwardly obedient to Palpatine, while secretly leading the unification of disparate bands of insurgents into what they termed the Rebel Alliance.

[8][9] Near the end of the third season of Rebels, in "Secret Cargo", Alliance co-founder Senator Mon Mothma, escaped assassination for condemning the Ghorman Massacre and speaking out against the Emperor (2 BBY).

Due to the highly decentralized structure of the Alliance, these units often operated independently with little oversight, and were frequently lacking in discipline, equipment, intelligence and combat skills.

The Imperial leadership considered collateral damage as "acceptable margins" in rooting out insurgents; this contrasted against the Alliance's surgical precision to avoid civilian casualties.

To minimize losses, the Alliance military leadership heavily favored carrier battle groups supporting starfighter strike crafts for fast-attack style of warfare, thereby leveraging a decisive advantage over the Galactic Empire's "big powerful ships" doctrine.

Anti-Imperial operations emphasized depredation and delayed actions, covertly relocating compromised bases to another secured system, interdiction in slowing down the Imperials' momentum, and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy without, in principle, becoming decisively engaged.

In 5 BBY, on the relatively unremarkable planet of Aldhani, a small Rebel team managed to infiltrate the local Imperial depository, stealing a decent portion of the sector payroll.

This created a massive Imperial overreaction, increasing their security spending and draconian law enforcement policies, making all future rebellious activity even more costly and difficult, which is exactly what the mastermind of this heist Luthen Rael wanted.

During the events of Rogue One and A New Hope, the Alliance learns of the construction of the 'Death Star', an enormous superweapon capable of obliterating entire planets, intended to cement the Empire's rule of terror.

Intelligence gathered reveals that a Death Star engineer antipathetic to the causes of the Empire had intentionally included a design flaw that, if exploited, could bring down the entire station.

With the help of the Rogue One squad led by Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor, a Rebel assault on an Imperial facility on the heavily-defended planet Scarif successfully manages to capture schematics of the Death Star.

In order to punish both her and her home planet government's central involvement in the Rebel Alliance, Leia is forced to witness Alderaan's destruction by the Death Star.

The Empire discovers the location of the primary Alliance headquarters on a moon of the planet Yavin through a tracking device covertly planted on Han Solo's vessel, and deploys the Death Star to destroy the base and crush the insurgency once and for all.

However, one of the Rebellion's allies, Queen Trios of Shu-Torun (whose world's technology had been fitted into the ships of the new Rebel fleet), revealed herself as an undercover Imperial agent sent by Darth Vader to sabotage their efforts.

In The Empire Strikes Back, the Alliance suffers a crushing defeat on Hoth when one of their main command centers, Echo Base, is overrun by the Darth Vader's elite personal Imperial armed forces, the Death Squadron and the 501st Legion.

The Alliance subsequently wins the Battle of Endor, in which Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader, the Death Squadron-Imperial armada, and much of the Imperial hierarchy are killed in action.

This, combined with the Imperial power vacuum, political infighting, and Operation Cinder—Palpatine's scorched earth contingency plan—encouraged thousands of inhabited planets to either declare independence from the collapsing Empire or defect to the Alliance.

[14] The Alliance fleet shifted military doctrine; the guerrilla warfare aspect of the grand strategy was de-emphasized, and conventional forces took over the primary prosecution of the war.

Three decades later, by the time of The Force Awakens, the New Republic backed the Resistance army, a successor of the Alliance, to stand against the First Order, a new military power formed by hardline remnants from the Empire.