The Empire was space Nazis. They strip-mined planets and destroyed ecosystems to replace with supplies for the war-machine. They arrested and held people without trial, enslaved massive amounts of people, subjected non-humans to second-class citizens (or worse), and deliberately targeted civilians as means of suppressing dissent. Add in Imperial predilection for torture and destroying historical and cultural artifacts, not really possible to see any way that they can be seen as good guys from an OOC or real-world discussion.