A Human male served the Galactic Empire as an Imperial Advisor during the Galactic Civil War. Of the several thousand Advisors who ran Galactic Emperor Palpatine's bureaucracy, the Advisor was one of only a few hundred who demonstrated genuine loyalty to the Emperor and his New Order. Those individuals were consequently appointed to the Imperial Ruling Council, also known as the Emperor's Inner Circle. Based on the galactic capital world of Coruscant, the members of the Ruling Council were permitted private audiences with the Emperor. Their duties were to manage the Empire and carry out the Emperor's will.
Palpatine encouraged competition between his Advisors, tasking them with overseeing not only their home systems but those of rival Advisors as well. He thus kept them loyal to him while discouraging internal cooperation and alliances between them.
To further promote suspicion among his Advisors, the Emperor doted on only a select few at any given time. In 4 ABY, the tall-hatted Advisor was one of six Inner Circle members who accompanied Palpatine to the second Death Star, a massive Imperial battlestation under construction in the Endor system. The group arrived aboard the station in the Emperor's private shuttle and, flanked by Palpatine's Royal Guard, disembarked into a hangar crowded with a welcoming assembly of Imperial officers and stormtroopers. The Emperor was greeted by his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader, and as the two departed the hangar, the Advisors silently followed in their wake. A short time later, the station was destroyed during an attack by the Rebel Alliance fleet, and all six Advisors—as well as both Vader and the Emperor—were killed.
The Advisor had pale skin and brown eyebrows.
High-ranking advisors often wore lavish robes indicative of their status, and the Advisor wore a light blue robe with a piece of tall, dark blue headwear.
The tall-hatted Advisor's lone scene in Return of the Jedi
The tall-hatted Advisor was one of six who followed the Emperor onto the second Death Star in Richard Marquand's 1983 film, Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. The tall-hatted Advisor's outfit was inspired by Catholic bishops, whom the film's assistant art director, Nilo Rodis-Jamero, looked to when designing the robes and elaborate headgear of all of the Advisors. In concept art of the arrival scene by artist Ralph McQuarrie, tall hats are worn by two different Imperial digitaries, neither of whom are dressed in blue.
Prior to Return of the Jedis release, the arrival scene was described in James Kahn's novelization of the film, in which Kahn refers to the group as "the Emperor's courtiers." The character's death aboard the Death Star was not revealed until the 2013 Topps Star Wars Galactic Files Series 2 card set.
In 2003, a production photo of five of the six Advisors seen in Return of the Jedi was included in an article published on StarWars.com, accompanied by text that read: "Among the members of Palpatine's Inner Circle are: Sate Pestage, Janus Greejatus, Sim Aloo, Ars Dangor, and Kren Blista-Vanee." At that time, three of the Advisors in the photo had already been identified in the Expanded Universe as Greejatus, Aloo, and Blista-Vanee, but neither the tall-hatted Advisor nor the black-robed fifth Advisor had been named.
As Sate Pestage, a pre-existing Expanded Universe character, had been visually depicted sporting headwear similar to that worn by the fifth Advisor, the StarWars.com article led to some fan beliefs that the tall-hatted Advisor was Dangor. Contradicting this idea was an illustration of Dangor from 1997's Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook, Special Edition, which did not resemble any of the Advisors seen in the photo, as well as several sources which established that Dangor lived past the Battle of Endor. However, the rebooted Star Wars continuity reconciled the two characters and firmly established that the tall-hatted Advisor was in fact Ars Dangor.
- Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays
- Star Wars: The Action Figure Archive
- Star Wars Customizable Card Game — Death Star II Limited
- Star Wars Customizable Card Game — Reflections II: Expanding the Galaxy
- The Dark Side Sourcebook
- "Ask the Master" — Star Wars Insider 89
- "Star Wars Q&A" — Star Wars Insider 96
- Star Wars: The Official Starships & Vehicles Collection 22
- Star Wars Character Encyclopedia