Hm, thinking about it, the guts thing might have been misplaced. I was thinking about how he couldn’t stand up to Tarkin, but that might just be the Empires hierarchy at work. Tarkin in turn can’t outreach Vader. He is good at his job, but there could be a ceiling that he can never break. Pity that we don’t know much about the system and how upwards mobile it is (please no explanations from the EU ;)). If it’s indeed akin to medieval systems - hey, we have counts and lords and emperors and stuff - he is just stuck. A count can achieve a high rank in the court bureaucracy, but without a promotion to at least duke level, he’ll never be part of the ruling circle.
Also, at the very end, he definitely didn’t seem cowardly. Rather resigned.
Darn, you convinced me.
