Editing Legend of the Galactic Heroes (section)

===797 UC===

796 UC concludes with the emperor, Kaiser Friedrich IV, dying of natural causes.  With no clear line of succession, a power struggle ensues.  The Kaiser has three descendants: two older daughters married into powerful families, and a young, spoiled grandson named Erwin Josef (child of the kaiser's dead son).  Reinhard and Prime Minister Klaus von Lichtenlade support Erwin Josef, enraging the rival claimants and indeed most of the nobility who see Reinhard and Lichtenlade as usurpers trying to put a puppet on the throne.  

The nobles, led by Otto von Braunschweig and Wilhelm von Littenheim (the heads of the two families the emperor's daughters married into),  assemble a force called the Lippstadt League intending to challenge Reinhard.  They manage to sway some of the military, led by the aged military genius, Admiral Merkatz, to support their cause, and set up their headquarters in Geiersburg fortress, a fully armed and operational battle station of rock and liquid metal(as opposed to Iserlohn, which is all metal) with a fleet-killing energy cannon.  Reinhard, now military commander of the loyalist forces, rallies his admirals and brings the fight to the rebelling nobles, pressing them back.  

A colony owned by Braunschweig launches a rebellion against him, and is nuked in response.  Reinhard learned of the attack and ordered it to be intercepted, but his adjutant, Oberstein, stalls and allows the attack to occur, while making sure that it's documented.  The attack is broadcast throughout the empire and support for the league evaporates.  The nobles of the league are turned on by their own retainers.  Most of the regular military who sided with the league surrender to Reinhard and are reabsorbed into the fleet, while Admiral Merkatz defects to the Alliance. 

At the very conclusion of the conflict, an assassination attempt is made on Reinhard.  The attack is foiled but Reinhard's closest friend and second in command, Siegfried Kircheis, is killed.  Oberstein gathers Reinhard's admirals and gives them the idea of blaming the assassination on the Prime Minister.  Taking the initiative, Oskar von Reuenthal and Wolfgang Mittermeyer charge back to the Imperial capitol of Odin, capturing the Prime Minister and seizing the Imperial Seal.  Reinhard is now the sole power behind the throne.

====Meanwhile====
Reinhard was concerned that a civil war in the empire would invite another invasion by the Free Planets Alliance.  To keep the alliance distracted, he dispatched a prisoner of war turned traitor with a plan to incite the disgruntled FPA military into launching a coup.

It works.  In fact it works quite well, with virtually every fleet EXCEPT Yang Wenli's turning against the government, which is at this point extremely unpopular with the military.  Some blame it for not supporting the invasion enough, others are angry that the invasion was sent in the first place, and just about everyone thinks the civilian leaders are self-serving, two-faced morons.  Yang however, out of stubborn loyalty to the concept of representative government, refuses to join the coup and leads his fleet against the rebels.  In the aftermath of the failed invasion, Yang's fleet is the most experienced and strongest fighting force left in the alliance, and with some difficulty is able to sweep through the rebel forces and arrives at the capitol of Heinessen.  The coup fails and its instigators die in a murder-suicide to conceal the truth of the Empire's involvement.