The Future Historical Role Of The First Empire

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the First Empire must have emerged from the Third Dark Ages that had resulted from the collapse of the Stellar Union just as, in Anderson's Technic History, the Terran Empire emerged from the Time of Troubles that had resulted from the collapse of the Solar Commonwealth.

The Second Dark Ages had merely separated the interplanetary Solar Union from the interstellar Stellar Union. However, the collapse of an interstellar civilization was a catastrophe on a larger scale. Consequently, order was eventually restored neither by psychotechnicians nor by Coordinators but by older style imperialists, not by science but by force. However, at the same time, the Nomads preserved knowledge that would in the longer term benefit the much later post-Imperial Galactic Civilization.

Thanks to the Nomadic legacy, that civilization was served both by psychotechnicians and by coordinating Integrators. Their skills were indispensable when, for example, Earth had to be evacuated.

Am I deducing what must have happened or merely making a new story based on material presented by Poul Anderson and Sandra Miesel? In this context, there is no difference. If my inferences make sense, then they can stand as the explanation unless and until an sf writer thinks of something better.