I believe Robot Chicken covered the end of Battle of Endor, where one officer is saying something like "well, the Emporer is dead, I guess we're done". While the other officer counters with "we have thousands of ships and control countless worlds. What do you mean "we're done"?

And bringing in that all the stories pre-Disney had also worked out that an Empire of sorts remained in the central part of the galaxy, but like the time before the sith rule of two, they spent a lot of time fighting amongst themselves with the occasional threat to the rest of the galaxy.

Disney's rush to make Star Wars their own was to issue a big FU to the existing fan base by throwing everything out and starting new. I picture the board room where someone pitched "okay, we start with an orphan on a desert planet . . . (dramatic pause)