Jedi Council Forums - Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith

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Author	Topic: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith
Kevin_Solo Registered: Jun '07	Date Posted: 6/25 10:49am Subject: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith - Date Edited: 6/25 10:53am (1 edits total) Edited By: Kevin_Solo
	I don't know if this has already been debated here; but I'm interested in knowing the views of people about what Imperial citizens in the Galactic Empire during the Saga period knew about the Jedi and the Sith. 1. Would anyone have known that Palpatine was a Sith and Vader his apprentice? Would people close to Palpatine have known the truth, at least about him? In ANH, Tarkin said to Vader: The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion. Presumably Tarkin means that the Jedi no longer exist as an organisation. Vader may have been a Jedi, but has renounced his membership, though he still believes in the Force. Vader's belief, while known about, appears to be seen as an anachronistic eccentricity, tolerated because of him being a favourite of the Emperor. This can be seen in Motti's earlier comment in ANH: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel's hidden fort... 2. After the Jedi were suppressed in RotS, presumably they were declared an illegal organisation, due to their alleged attempt to assassinate Palpatine and subvert the Republic; and they were hunted down, according to Obi-Wan in ANH: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force. Presumably there was also a lot of propaganda discrediting the Jedi. Does this mean that by ANH the Jedi and Sith are regarded by the average Imperial citizen as fairy tales, perhaps told by them to small children, but certainly no longer believed in? I'll be very interested to know what people think on this subject, and how those who write have approached it in their writing.
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moosemousse Title: CR - FF:UK South Registered: Oct '04	Date Posted: 6/25 11:37am Subject: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith
	1. I expect that most would have been aware that Darth Vader was Darth Sidious' apprentice, maybe. I doubt that they would have known that Sidious was Palpatine. Vader may have turned to the Dark Side, but he still practised what he had been taught. 2. Maybe if Episode IV was a few hundred years after Episode III and the Jedi didn't recover, but with the time space as it is I doubt that they would be just fairy tales. Propaganda would surely have painted them as the enemy, but considering how prominent they were in the Clone Wars, it seems likely that most knew about them in some way. -----signature----- Vader's Mousedroid Society Fanfic links in my bio My fan art: http://boards.theforce.net/fan_art/b10020/26961879/ Bei der Instalation ältere Versionen aktualisiert # Boards: -1 \| # Messages: -1 (-1 today)
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1Yodimus_Prime Registered: Mar '04	Date Posted: 6/29 1:25am Subject: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith
	Personally, I tend to approach these questions from the perspective that even general knowledge is relative, and privileged knowledge - especially in a totalitarian state - is rarely accurate outside of the subcultures that control it. Palpatine was a heavily militaristic dictator. That he was able to maintain this image thirty years after the Clone Wars is a testament to his strategic skills, and I have no doubt that those skills were also employed to maintain a very tightly controlled public image of himself that was vastly divested - or even at odds - from the one we know. Therefore, it would come as a surprise to me if many people, even rebels, were aware that Palpatine was a Sith Lord along with Vader. Indeed, even Vader's position as a Sith Lord was probably not well known. Tarkin, as you mentioned, called Vader a 'sorcerer'. Not a Jedi, not a Sith. It could be that he's just terrible at coming up with demeaning titles, but I feel that it suggests Tarkin just wasn't aware of Vader's religious views. And why would he? As high as he was, he was present at the end of the Clone Wars, and according to Palpatine's propaganda, the Sith were just as dead as the Separatists. For question two, I mostly agree with Moose. The CW-era generation is aging by ANH. Many are grandparents, though most are still young enough to be very active in the public realm (whether that be imperial public or otherwise). So a significant minority of the galactic population are probably not only aware of who and what the Jedi were, but saw them second-hand, on the holonet. And there are the long-lived aliens to consider. Wookies, for instance, would've probably viewed the entire timeline from the Naboo war all the way to the death of Palpatine (and possibly even further to the fall of Thrawn) as occuring within the space of a single generation, rather than two-to-three. That said, even by episode 1, the Jedi image was hurt, and their population too small to maintain a consistent public awareness. Which means most of those in the CW-era generation had a skewed or entirely incorrect view of the Jedi and what they were, even ignoring whether they believed them to be good or bad. So it's entirely possible that most of those born after the purge have been raised with a very minor, broken understanding of the Jedi. And that's assuming they were lucky enough to be raised by parents who took notice of them enough to form an opinion prior to the war. A lot of parents probably didn't think twice about Jedi until everything went to hell. And even then, the war's fighting was so disconnected with the general populace that it's hard to say how much of a dent even this created. One of Palpatine's strokes of genius was in successfully keeping Republic citizens out of the line of fire - not because it saved lives - but because it meant nobody ever fought alongside a Jedi. Nobody ever befriended them, were saved by them or saved them in return, and nobody ever gave their lives for them. It was completely a one-way street. With the exception of the Clones and a few privileged people (or very unlucky people on highly contested planets), the general public never had a chance to personally get to know the Jedi firsthand. So on the one hand, nobody - even younger people - will be questioning if Jedi were real. On the other hand, their entire belief system and philosophy is lost to the point that citizens probably don't even know they had one, their Force abilities are regarded skeptically at best, and their image is either irreparably tarnished or so misinformed that it doesn't even matter if it's tarnished or not. Once the Empire was put in place, information could be completely controlled. Think about it: no schools would teach about them, and if a teacher was asked a question about it, there would no doubt be a standardized response. All their history would have been either destroyed or locked away (depending on how aesthetically valuable it was to Palpatine). Any positive actions the Jedi were responsible for would either be spun to look bad or would be reimagined such that some Moff or stormtrooper corps was actually responsible for it and, no sir-or-madam, you must be mistaken, the Jedi were in fact never on Utapau. All Jedi landmarks - the Temple included - would be either removed or, more likely, turned into something completely mundane, like a branch of the Department of Spacefaring Vehicles, or the local Tax Office. Really, Yoda and Ben seemed to have wasted a LOT of their time just waiting for Luke or Leia, when they should have been actively organizing and preserving as much Jedi history as they could. If by some horrible fluke, neither of Padme's twins survived to adolescence, at the very least they'd have a large, redundant set of underground libraries to preserve who and what the Jedi were. By the point of the EU's current time period, without something like this, I have no doubt that the Jedi really WOULD have become just a fairy tale. Those two idiots were ridiculously irresponsible. -----signature----- Rule 12: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head. --- http://boards.theforce.net/b/b1/26481069 - The Wise http://boards.theforce.net/B/b1/21283317 - Planet Hopping
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Kevin_Solo Registered: Jun '07	Date Posted: 6/30 11:16am Subject: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith
	Yodimus, I agree completely with you here: Really, Yoda and Ben seemed to have wasted a LOT of their time just waiting for Luke or Leia, when they should have been actively organizing and preserving as much Jedi history as they could. If by some horrible fluke, neither of Padme's twins survived to adolescence, at the very least they'd have a large, redundant set of underground libraries to preserve who and what the Jedi were. By the point of the EU's current time period, without something like this, I have no doubt that the Jedi really WOULD have become just a fairy tale. Those two idiots were ridiculously irresponsible. I did wonder why those two placed all their hopes and plans on the shoulders of the twins, who might have had all kinds of things happen to them before they reached adulthood. It didn't say much for their supposed commitment to republicanism and democracy.
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LaForzaViva Registered: Jul '08	Date Posted: 7/1 6:49am Subject: Knowledge of the Jedi and the Sith - Date Edited: 7/1 6:49am (1 edits total) Edited By: LaForzaViva
	I think one that Yodimus did comment on but that can't be stressed enough is what the Empire was and how it controlled information. In history, totalitarian states have whirring propaganda machines. Little tidbit: propaganda, prior to Stalin's Soviet Union, was actually a word with a positive connotation, simply meaning "to spread information". After Stalin's Soviet Union and the reveal of how MUCH was "propagandized", it turned into a hugely negative word, and often when we hear the word nowadays, we can't help but think of the USSR, Communist China and Communist North Korea. That said, the Empire was just like that. I remember, before I read any EU books but had watched the movies, I always assumed the Clone Wars were this thing of antiquity, an event that occured hundreds of years before ANH. Of course, that's not the case and it really should be questioned about how MUCH the general populace knew. Now, if you go to some EU books, authors (of course who have everything checked by Lucas), will mention how some planets didn't even KNOW the Palpatine had been killed. Furthermore, if you read the X-Wing series, especially Book 4, when Corran Horn escapes from the Lusankya and stumbles into the cordoned off section of a museum on Coruscant, he discovers many Jedi artifacts and even a working lightsaber. But he notes that all the statues of the Jedi are defaced and figures that Palpatine probably did it in his free time as a fun little mental break from doing all that hard work scheming and being so evil. I dunno how many people rely on EU sources as being true knowledge, but history and experience would say that a totalitarian state that controls the method of communication (the HoloNet) would have an unparalleled ability to influence and manage information. Going back to Stalinist Russia, the US ACTUALLY believed for quite some time that the USSR's economy was robust and powerful and that they had to fear being overtaken by the USSR's ability to manufacture products with such a high growth rate. In fact it can even be questioned legitimately if China's current growth rate is truly accurate or merely a pumped up number. But my point is that the amount of misinformation coming out through the OFFICIAL channels of the USSR (Pravda magazine) overruled what the many US spies inside the USSR were saying: that their economy was weak and everything was heavily inflated. I would assume the Empire would be quite similar to Stalinist Russia - repressing information that it did not approve of and disseminating information it desired its populace to know. Many people can be convinced of what they don't believe or believe in the contrary if the information is consistent and constant - misbeliefs in all sorts of politics can simply be learned by accident and once you "KNOW" something, it's VERY hard for a person to break from their shell and completely reconceive of their belief set. Once people heard enough of the "Jedi were evil and were extinct and tried to ruin the Galactic Republic", they probably started believing it, and if done correctly, good propaganda would make incorrect claims but would tie them to reasonable assumptions, without being overblown. Anyway just my two cents. -----signature----- The True Sith Return (Post KOTOR II): http://boards.theforce.net/before_the_saga/b10475/30038026/p1/?1 Wahoowa!
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