Chiss families differed from family units of other sentient species in several notable regards. The government of the Chiss Ascendancy was an oligarchy based on Nine Ruling Families, with the Chiss Syndicure and Aristocra composed of high officials from the Ruling Families and lesser but still influential Great Families. As with much of Chiss society, Chiss families were highly hierarchical. Chiss families had a hierarchy of political ranks as well as social or family ranks. Family ranks applied to all family members. Families' political hierarchies applied to those who worked in politics, policy, and public service; and by extension, those affected by the decisions of family officials. The head of a Chiss family was called the Patriarch, and did not need to be male. The name of one's Chiss family formed the first component of a Chiss name, such as "Mitth" within the name "Mitth'raw'nuruodo," and also the first part of one's core name.
The process of a Chiss joining a new family and leaving their old one was called rematching. Members of the Chiss Defense Force were recruited from every Chiss family. Conversely, Chiss families would often recruit promising young students, cadets or even officers to join their families. Family politics were not supposed to affect Defense Fleet business in any way. The desire to separate Fleet operations from family politics was so ingrained that, upon promotion to flag rank, officers of the Chiss Defense Force were stripped of their family ties, regardless of what their rank within their family had been. This was done so the upper echelons of the Defense Force would not be swayed or biased by family favoritism or rivalries. Nevertheless, the Syndicure sometimes meddled in Defense Force affairs, often with the covert participation of members of the Defense Hierarchy Council.
Chiss Great and Ruling families typically possessed "family fleets", which functioned as planetary defense forces for planets affiliated with that family. In certain cases, Chiss families could declare family emergencies and bring officers and warriors directly from the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet to staff their family fleets and defend their interests. Clever manipulation of ambitious mid- and low-level Chiss civilian officials of three Great Families into declaring such emergencies nearly led to a civil war in the Chiss Ascendancy.
Thousands of years prior to the Clone Wars, Chiss families were like families of other sentient species: groups of people related to each other by blood and marriage. At that time, Chiss families could not be joined by anyone except by birth or marriage. Chiss family Patriarchs saw such arrangements as leading to decline and stratification. Dissatisfied with the perceived limitations of such a family system, some Patriarchs began to explore ways to recruit Chiss into their families not involving marriage. Those experiments yielded the Chiss family system as of the last year of the Clone Wars, where Chiss prospects could be brought into a family as merit adoptives and those who proved themselves worthy could rise to the rank of Trial-born or possibly even ranking distant.
In 1 BBY, the Chiss families of the Ascendancy are in a state of heightened tensions. Admiral Ar'alani believed the inter-family disputes had put the Ascendancy on the brink of a civil war.
Chiss families were organized in several different ways, both within and between the various families. Family officials could invoke so-called "family secrecy protocols" to prevent members of their families from disclosing sensitive information relevant to their family's interests.
In order of least to greatest privilege and prestige within a family, Chiss family ranks were:
Most Chiss who joined a family via rematching did so as merit adoptives, although it was not unheard of for families to invite highly sought-after individuals to join at higher ranks.
The process of a Chiss joining a new family and leaving their old was called rematching. Chiss families often recruited promising young students, cadets, and officers from the Chiss Defense Force to join their families. A Chiss' core name included the end of the name of their family. As such, upon rematching, a rematched Chiss would have a new core name as well. That happened when the Chiss born as Kivu'raw'nuru was adopted into the Mitth family, thus becoming "Mitth'raw'nuru" and changing his core name from "Vurawn" to "Thrawn".
Upon promotion to flag rank (commodore or higher), Chiss officers were stripped of family ties in a ceremony. This was done so the upper echelons of the Defense Force would not be swayed or biased by family favoritism or rivalries. Nevertheless, the Syndicure sometimes meddled in Defense Force affairs, often with the covert participation of members of the Defense Hierarchy Council.
Ozyly-esehembos, known as sky-walkers, were also removed from their family of birth at a young age, being a member of no family during their tenure among the sky-walker corps. However, upon their departure from the corps, former sky-walkers were sought for recruitment by many families as a sign of prestige. In the case of Cohbo'rik'ardok, the older sister of Senior Captain Thrawn, she had been born as "Kivu'rik'ardok," taken as a sky-walker at the age of five under the name "Rik'ardok," adopted into the Irizi family upon loss of her powers of Third Sight and given the name "Irizi'rik'ardok," and finally married a man of the Cohbo family named Bomarmo, thus taking on the name "Cohbo'rik'ardok" with the core name "Borika."
Known political ranks within Chiss families, from highest to lowest, were as follows.
- The "Patriarch" of a family was that family's leader. Patriarchs did not have to be male, as some Chiss speculated that certain female officials could one day become their family's patriarchs.
- The "Speaker" was the leader of a family's delegation of Syndics to the governing Chiss Syndicure, and the second-highest official in the family.
- A "Syndic" was a member of the Syndicure, the main political body of the Chiss Ascendancy.
- A "Patriel" handled family matters on a planetary scale.
- A "Councilor" handled family affairs at the local level.
- An "Aristocra" was a mid-level official of a family. The term "Aristocra" also referred to an organization within the Syndicure.
The Chiss Ascendancy was ruled by Nine Ruling Families of high prestige, power, wealth and influence. Below them were the still-influential but less powerful "Forty Great Houses", commonly called the Great Families. Families that were neither members of the Ruling Families nor the Great Families had much less power, prestige, and political influence. Notably, families could be promoted or demoted from the Ruling or Great Families. While there were Nine Ruling Families and Forty Great families in 19 BBY, neither of those groups had a legally fixed number of members. Chiss historical records showed times when there had been as few as three and as many as twelve Ruling Families. Chiss legends of the dawn of the Ascendancy even claimed that the Stybla family had once been the only Ruling Family. Members of the Nine and the Forty had family crests to represent them, whereas other, lesser families merely had stylized names.
Common to Chiss culture was a strong sense of obligation to one's family and a desire to bring the family honor, glory, and power. This was attitude was prominent among high-ranking family officials such as Syndics and Patriarchs, but often also among Chiss who joined a family from another family of lower status. Some families, such as the Xodlak family, took that attitude to extremes beyond the norm.
"Family politics" referred to rivalries, competition, alliances and partnerships among the Ascendancy's families. Family politics often dominated decision making in the Ascendancy, although it was frequently not given as the official reason for taking courses of action. Family politics were not supposed to affect Defense Fleet business in any way. The desire to separate Fleet operations from family politics was so ingrained that, upon promotion to Flag rank, Officers of the Chiss Defense Force were stripped of their family ties, regardless of what their rank within their family had been. As such, official explanations cited other reasons when family politics were the true reason behind decisions affecting the military
Many Chiss remarked that Senior Captain Mitth'raw'nuruodo "Thrawn" was completely oblivious to the nuances of politics, despite being a tactical genius in combat. At times, some Chiss officers such as Laknym wondered whether Thrawn was "playing politics," to which their superiors such as Mid Captain Ufsa'mak'ro would reply that Thrawn didn't even understand politics. Years later, many Imperial personnel had similar thoughts on Thrawn's political obliviousness.
Each Chiss Ruling and Great Family had a fleet of warships used as planetary defense forces for planets affiliated with that family. Each family's fleet had particular types of warship design, and officers and warriors of the Expansionary Defense Fleet were trained to know their family's vessels' strengths and weaknesses well. Ruling Families were permitted much larger, more powerful, and more modern fleets than Great Families. In the event of a Ruling Family's demotion to Great, they would lose the right to the majority of their fleet and the most advanced craft. Nevertheless, Great Families retained fleets for planetary defense.
Great Family fleets included the Xodlak fleet, the Coduyo fleet, and the Pommrio fleet. Family fleets were typically used for smaller-scale engagements than the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet would be deployed for, and in certain cases consisted of vessels at least one-hundred years old. In 18 BBY, the Grysk Hegemony and Agbui led by Haplif attempted to instigate a civil war in the Chiss Ascendancy by causing the Xodlak, Pommrio, and Erighal family fleets to attack one-another to claim a planet supposedly rich in the valuable metal nyix. Each of those three great families declared a family emergency, recalling their officers and warriors from their Defense Force assignments to crew their family fleets to try to claim the world Hoxim.
Each family's warships had their own set of unique peculiarities in their design and operations, and each family emphatically taught its Fleet warriors about their family fleet's strengths and weaknesses. This came in handy for Senior Captain Mitth'raw'nuruodo at the Hoxim incident, where he employed Xodlak, Pommrio, and Erighal soldiers under his command to target their own families' ships with "a maximum of ferocity and a minimum of actual damage," a tactic that had been dubbed a "light show."
Chiss families were first mentioned as political entities in the 2019 novel Thrawn: Treason, the final volume of Timothy Zahn's canon Thrawn trilogy. They first appeared in the 2020 novel Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising, the first novel of Zahn's Star Wars: The Ascendancy Trilogy. Chiss families originated in the 1998 Star Wars Legends novel Vision of the Future, and first appeared in the 2004 novel Survivor's Quest, both written by Zahn.