The Viscount was the lead ship of the Viscount-class Star Defender line produced for the New Republic and later the Galactic Alliance.
The Viscounts design was worked out after the Black Fleet Crisis when the New Republic military realized the need for more powerful dreadnoughts. By the time it was finished, twenty-five years after the Battle of Yavin, so many Super Star Destroyers had been captured by the New Republic, that the government considered halting construction on more ships.
The Viscount itself was meant to be a prototype for the design and was built as a battlecruiser at three kilometers in length. The subsequent full-scale vessels were 17 kilometer-long dreadnoughts such as the Bounty and the Krakana.
Prior to the Yuuzhan Vong War, it fought rogue Imperial elements while the New Republic consolidated power throughout the galaxy, following the official end of the Galactic Civil War. Being the largest and most powerful of all Mon Calamari-designed warships, the Viscount and its sister ships were later put to good use during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.
Originally stationed at Coruscant, the warship was eventually deployed to Mon Calamari, following the reorganization of the New Republic into the Galactic Alliance.
During the Defense of Mon Calamari, Admiral Traest Kre'fey deployed the Viscount as part of a trio of heavy warships that included the Super Star Destroyer Guardian and the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser Harbinger. The long-range weapons on the Viscount were utilized to sow heavy damage on the Yuuzhan Vong armada.
The Viscount first appeared in the Del Rey novel The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, written by R. A. Salvatore and published on October 5th, 1999. While the 2007 Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Roleplaying Game sourcebook Starships of the Galaxy, Saga Edition established a length of seventeen kilometers for the Viscounts class, 2012's The Essential Guide to Warfare specified the Viscount as an anomalous three-kilometer prototype. Paul R. Urquhart, one of Warfares co-authors, explained this reference as drawing on both canonical contradictions and fan debates over the Viscounts size, while also reflecting the high degree of variation within Mon Calamari Star Cruiser classes.
- Starships of the Galaxy, Saga Edition
- The Essential Guide to Warfare