Books The Official Darth Plagueis Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

So true! THIS is how the Empire fell so quickly! (unless GL has changed his mind since)

 

Same here. There are several ways to be "the fittest", and cunning is one of them.

 

I am convinced that Macan had this in mind when he wrote Jedi vs. Sith.

People think his Darth Bane posits a "finite" dark side, but... no. JvS. Bane is instead insisting that the dark side having too many powerful masters (multiple Dark Lords, no less!) -- each one trying to enforce their will upon it, pulling it in many different directions -- is as bad as it having no master at all. (Witnessed above)

 

There was one passage that I found slightly confusing, I must have read it a dozen times before proceeding with the rest.

Palpatine had 11-4D refill Plagueis' glass over and over and at this point they were on their fourth bottle.

There are a lot of ways to interpret this, with each re-read it seemed like I was getting a different flow of events.

What was Luceno going for here? He spent pages obviously having Palpatine intentionally get Plagueis drunk and sleepy for obvious reasons. Then once Plagueis falls asleep....Palpatine puts on his cloak and starts for the door? What? With the way Sidious came to a halt, the way he stretched out with the Force, one could interpret that as the thought of murder occurring to him just then and only then. Then he gets the go ahead from the dark side and only then is the decision made.

I settled on the conclusion that Palpatine did set the whole thing up, only to hesitate and decide against it when he blew out his breath. Then, for some reason, after starting for the door, he stops and forces himself to go through with it.

Despite his hesitation, he goes into his villain monologue about how he was the mastermind manipulating things from the beginning.

What a strange hitch, it just threw me off and messed up the flow, imo. Should have just went straight to business like the psychopathic killer he is.

I guess the hesitance was the cowardly streak in Palpatine and the monologue was just his massive ego...

 

CT-867-5309

I didn't really comprehend the implications of that scene either. Luceno tried too hard to be mysterious and ambiguous at certain points and just left me scratching my head. Cf. the psychic sensation Palpatine experiences in the wake of Plagueis's death.

 

That's the best I can interpret it as well. And I agree, it messed up the flow of the entire story, felt so out of place.

 

I basically had exactly the same reaction. The only other thing I could think of was that he was considering whether there was something more he could learn from Plagueis, or that he was still waiting for Plagueis to surprise him at the last moment since everything was working too smoothly.

 

What I got from it is that he's a) always looking for an opportunity to kill his master and b) acting naturally/casually, in case Plageuis is only feigning vulnerability. Once his dominant position is confirmed by the Force, he takes the opportunity (echoing the way Plagueis succeeded his master).

The hate fuelled rant is like therapy, I think, directing all his hatred towards his master. It doesn't make much sense, but a screaming violent rant rarely does (it kind of echoes Anakin's rants on Mustafar in RotS). Sid certainly planned the attack, but it was just one of many contingencies IMO.

 

I agree. To the Sith, killing their master is the most important and most dangerous thing that they can do. It's what they have to devote their life to, and yet have to be very wary of. Sidious, in that scene, strikes me as wanting to kill Plagueis, but hesitating, because he thinks that it may be an elaborate trick, meant to trap Sidious.

It's only when he reaches the door, that Sidious realizes that he may never have a better opportunity to remove his master and seize the title of Sith Master for himself. He also realizes that this is perhaps his only chance to kill Plagueis and rid himself of the Muun forever. It's in that scene that Sidious truly realizes that he doesn't need Plagueis anymore and that Darth Plagueis has finally let his guard down.

So Sidious kills him. Painfully, slowly, and once he realizes that Plagueis is incapable of fighting back, Palpatine takes the time to vent every last bit of hidden rage and resentment that he's ever harbored against Plagueis.

It's very characteristic of Palpatine, who has a cowardly streak, as show in his 'cowering' before Mace Windu and his attempt to flee from Yoda. It also shows his patience, as he waits many years to execute his Grand Plan. And it also displays Palpatine's tendency to gloat, something he derides Maul for, even though he does the same thing to Luke in ROTJ, and it's that tendency to gloat and prolong the moment that leads to Palpatine's demise.

 

What's with the "six gates" Cosinga mentioned?

 

He's referring to the six gates leading to Chaos, of which according to folklore, House Palpatine was one of these gates. My guess is that there are five other Houses on Naboo corresponding to each gate sealing off Chaos. Perhaps a reference to Tartarus in Greek mythology, the place most associated with the Christian definition of Hell in mythology.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the SW equivalent to the Antichrist came from one of these six Houses, as if a demon emerging from the depths of Chaos to assume the form of a fair and charismatic human.

 

Palpatine HAD to use that chance, as cowardly as it looks, becuase:

1) He had to execute the plan flawlessly, Plagueis has an ability that can WILL YOU TO DIE WITH NO COUNTER. In short this isn't just an assasination attempt that if fails "Oh well, I remain leader of the Galaxy while Plagueis go into a swamp like an outcast meaning no threat". He didn't just needed to succeed in the physical fight, he can't even allow Plagueis to escape.

2) Plageuis was studying true immortality, no Dark Empire "I just shoot my soul out" or "I can't die of old age" but true immortality as in "GG, you can't kill me." Think of The Ones, only that without the a plot device dagger that can kill him. If Sidious didn't kill him there and then, he may have been completely uncapable of killing him at all.

3) Plagueis was growing YOUNGER, imagine the pain in the ass a Plagueis with his prime body would be, Dark Empire would tell you how ****ing dangerous a Sith Lord with his old age abilities and young prime body can be, and unlike Palpatine, Plagueis would have a non deteriorating body that only gets better.

4) Plagueis was following the footsteps of a race implied to have trascended and guide the entirety of the Force. In short he was going to be like The Ones, or Valley of The Jedi empowered Jerec if not something even way worse, because as powerful as The Ones and Vallen of The Jedi power up is, they do not give you command over the entirety of The Force.

At first I thought "Palpatine is such a coward for killing Plagueis this way" but seeing the factors he had NO CHOICE, because if he didn't killed him there and then, it is possible he may have been unable to do it latter. Don't get me wrong Palpatine was stronger than Plagueis in combat, but Plagueis had unbounded potential for growth, had he survived he would had became a monster. Think of Phantom Menace Plagueis and Sidious like two graphs, with Sidious being higher than Plagueis but Plagueis showing signts of meteoric rising, Sidious had to kill him before Plagueis became stronger than him.

Remember Anakin was created by the Force in direct response to Plagueis's experiments, Anakin whose full potential was to become like The Ones. The Force recognized Plagueis's experiments dangerous enough to warrant a being whose full power > The Ones. I do think that had Plagueis survived, Anakin would had been forced to reach his full potential to defeat him in some sorts of Force god vs Force god battle.

 

How can a bloodline be a "gate"?

 

You're taking something that's attributed to myth far too literally. It's similar to Mount Olympus in Greek Mythology, or labors of Heracles.

 

Ok.

Anyway, the myth is definitely interesting considering what happened to the GFFA after Palpatine wiped out his family.

 

Figurative language in Star Wars?!

 

If it doesn't have physical dimensions we can quantify, it doesn't count. We need the stats for every one of those six gates for a Wookieepedia infobox.

 

Now that I think about it, if you think of the chapter "Quantum Being" as true, Palpatine may have helped albeit unwillingly to bring Balance To The Force by killing Plagueis....... that or he just helped the agenda of a bastard elite that has been pulling the string of the galaxy from some higher dimension or Force plane.

 

Taking this question far too seriously and literal mindedly, a bloodline expressed as a hierarchical diagram or family tree looks a lot like a logic diagram, so a bloodline could be an AND gate.

Haithengyew.

 

I was asking how a family of people block off Chaos, but now that I think about it, considering what happened to the galaxy for the 203 years following the death of the House of Palpatine, the myth could have some truth to it.

 

Some good theories, but they are thrown off because Luceno has stated that if Plagueis and Sidious had a duel at the time of TPM, Plagueis would have won.