The Galactic Empire is the main villains in most of "Star Wars" media, but is the Empire really the bad guys? The Empire was the government in the Galaxy and billions of people were apart of the Empire, such as officers and Storm troopers, to engineers and workers.
While the Empire was in fact ran by two Sith Lords, Darth Sidious, who was the Emperor, and Darth Vader, a Clone Wars hero turned Sith Lord. The Sith were actually the better way to go then the Jedi, since the Jedi suppressed their emotions and were not allowed to even love. The Sith, however, were able to do all those things, and they were not necessarily evil, they were just power hungry people. Emperor Palpatine wanted to control the Galaxy and have peace.
They have done some bad things, just as every government in the real world has. We only see a handful of worlds in the current Star Wars Universe and these worlds were worlds with known rebel activity. Lothal, was suppressed due to Rebel attacks on Imperial Outposts, while planets like Vardos, Naboo, Coruscant and many others thrived.
Now the Empire was indeed flawed, they banned religion and anything related to the Jedi, they also made it illegal to speak ill of the Empire. Now suppressing rights like that is where it gets murky with the Empire. Also, the fact that they wiped out almost the entire Geonosian population on Geonosis after the Death Star construction left the planet, was a little much.
Now the Rebellion, they have done a lot of bad things too, they blew up not one, but two Death Stars, with Millions of people on board. In the book "Lost Stars" it is discussed how a majority of the Empire felt after the destruction, and many looked at the Rebels as terrorists who had killed their friends. It made the Rebellion look terrible in the eyes of the citizens of the Empire.
Now, was the Empire really bad? Yes, they were in fact bad. The Empire would basically strip mine worlds and take their resources which would destroy that planet, we see this on Lothal in "Star Wars: Rebels" and with Jelucan from "Lost Stars". The Empire was also willing to destroy Vardos and Naboo during "Operation:Cinder", so they were clearly not even nice to their own people in the end. The Rebellion was not good either, but they were clearly a lot better for the Galaxy as a whole.
