Books The Official Darth Plagueis Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I rather liked how they utilized Dooku here and how Plagueis and Sidious had different uses in mind for him and contributed to his fall off the slippery slope one way or another.

Plagueis did his subtle manipulation mostly to serve as yet another thorn in the Jedi's side, but not make him into a possible servant like what Sidious ended up doing.

 

Hail Sithis!

 

All hail Sithis, indeed!

Indeed. Plagueis planted the seed, and Sidious cultivated the situation in the direction he wanted and reaped the rewards. In every case except for the clone army, with which Sidious really had little to do in practice, the general picture looks like that.

 

It seems to me that Plagueis = Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Sidious = Saddam Hussein. Initially, Plagueis was the Master and the one with all the connections and influence in the galaxy. Gradually, Plagueis became a figurehead "Master" and Sidious became the true Master. When Plagueis made a move to regain his power, Sidious murdered him.

 

Regardless, this book was a political and psychological insert into the whole Sith, Sidious ,and Plagueis machinations that were conjured during that time period.

 

I'm glad to have a chance to weigh in on this topic, as I missed it when the book came out. I caught a little bit of the debate regarding how much either Sith Lord contributed to slamming the Sith's grand plan home. Even having read the book in the wake of being aware of this, I couldn't latch onto a conclusive answer, and I've already read it once and enjoyed it again in it's audiobook format (nice to have this one as an unabridged audio, I'm really pleased that they started going this direction).

Even with a certain amount of meta- awareness, I like that James Luceno has given us room to make up our own minds, and maybe that was his intention. For myself, I think Plagueis's extended isolation to go all mystic is telling, that feels like he got lost in his own pet project. It felt like irony that he was dismissive of his own master's faith in a precise discipline, but wasn't attentive to the possibility that he himself could loose perspective in the same way as his master by obsessing over his own chosen special interests.

I very much liked learning about the character of Plagueis, yet after he lost his way to the whole picture, his reemergence felt too little, too late. His return felt like an intrusion, and it felt very much like his time had come when Sidious took matters into his own hands. After leaving Palpatine to do the mundane work for 20 years, he returns to tell him, "Okay, so you're going to make this unprecedented move of appointing a co-Chancellor out of the blue" it struck me as highly presumptuous. He might as well have been egging Palpatine on!

It occurred to me too that Plagueis's presence all the way up to and through the events of The Phantom Menace is something of a meta-textual element to enhance the sense that Plagueis's presence is a lingering, unnatural intrusion even to the reader, it heightens that sense that we should feel like he has already live well beyond the time he was supposed to die. The will of The Force and the will of at least some of the readership would feel like it's past time for Sidious to take him out.

 

To anyone who has seen TCW season 6 and knows this book inside out,

Spoiler

how do the events in the Yoda arc stack up with Plagueis' description of the Sith ghosts?

(Not sure we need the spoiler tag but there might be one person who hasn't watched them yet.)

 

Plagueis seeked to bypass midichlorians. It would have been cool if Palpatine wasn't born Force-sensitive but rather used Plagueis's midichlorian bypassing technique, hence the Jedi didn't sense anything.

 

Also could've explained why he was so freakishly strong in the Force. Not saying an explanation is needed or that any random person can't have however much Force potential, just that it could've served as an interesting explanation to further flesh out Sidious character.

 

It would be a perfect opposite of the Chosen One. While the Chosen One is born freakishly strong in The Force, Palpatine gave himself freakish Force strength.

 

Exactly, both of them would be anomalies, and unnatural in a way. Anakin, born by the Force itself, and therefore having potential exceeding that of any other living being. Sidious, born with no Force aptitude whatsoever, but imbued with it through various experiments and rituals. Could've been kill if handled properly, and i'm sure Luceno could've done it.

 

Just read the book. I loved it. What I'm curious about is how much of the whole EU reorganization thing that's happening will affect the Darth Plagueis book? Is there any evidence of in-continuity yet with anything? Like the new TCW episodes? I haven't seen them so I'm just curious, is all.

On another note, there's so much information packed in this book that I'm most definitely going to have to re-read it in order to catch more of the details, but I'm gonna wait until I finish Cloak Of Deception and TPM novel before I read it again, to connect more of the dots.

 

The new TCW episodes don't mention Plagueis at all ( even when you'd think at least a mention of one Hego Damask might have come up, in the ones about the Banking Clan ).

 

Considering how they didn't even mention MUUNILINST, failing to mention Damask is actually not that big a deal.

 

I wonder what would have happened if the Grand Plan had been completed as Plagueis intended. Would Plagueis have declared the Empire or would he have risen to power some other way?

 

He was probably hoping he'd be co-Chancellor forever, the poor deluded bastard.

 

They probably would've ruled forever, both as immortals. Anakin, since he'd been discovered by the time Plagueis died, most likely would've either been killed, imprisoned, or seduced to the Dark Side. The Clone Wars still would've happened, and Order 66 still used to exterminate the Jedi.

 

Heddle says that even this is now "legends". I wonder whether or not things established in this novel will stay around. Will Plagueis still be a Muun? Will Palpatine still be the son of Cosinga?

 

I really hope that this novel is not effected by the new continuity decision, as this is set obviously BEFORE the new movies; this was one of the better releases of recent times, and the character of Darth Plagueis was an awesome addition to the saga.

 

Considering its release was coincided with the Maul episodes of TCW, and ties-in a little, and doesn't stretch beyond RotS, I have a feeling it will survive.

 

There's also Darth Maul: Lockdown - which has Plagueis still alive, and a Muun.

Which announcement marks the "changeover"? This one - or previous ones?

I recall Honor Among Thieves's author saying something about it.

 

Jen Heddle specifically said this novel is now Legends

 

That's not surprising. All Star Wars material outside of the 6 movies, TCW and it's related material is considered Legends.

 

Yeah, I know the official ruling, but it's an interesting question: will novels like this one, with specific references to TCW content ( in this case, references to Mortis, Mother Talzin and Dathomirian Zabrak Nightbrothers ) keep some degree of de facto canonicity by association?

 

Plus the fact that Luceno will be writing the Tarkin novel, if he makes a bunch of references to Plagueis and a bunch of other books, they might as well be considered canon because those events happened, no matter what the story group says (Which at that point they might bring those books into continuity.