Lit Serving the Empire with the Light Side

People who aren't sensitive to the force can't be lightsiders or dark siders they can be good or bad but they can't have an align,en with regards to the force.

A stormtrooper or imperial officer can be a decent person, somebody who believes in the empire's cause and not in Palpatine or sith doctrine.

That doesn't make them light siders just decent people.

 

Bruh the Jedi aint light side. Malachor V. Killing billions. Never justified. /s

 

Those Jedi all became Sith afterward if you recall but one.

 

Vader believed he was bringing order to the galaxy.

There's a difference between having a REASON and having JUSTIFICATION.

 

But was the act of using the MSG what made them turn to the dark side?

 

Honestly, I think the Prequels decanonized "Magical Dark Side" as a force.

Anakin Skywalker becomes an evil person for the same reasons and motivations normal people do.

Possessiveness, jealousy, greed, and fascism.

There's no "One Ring" moment. He makes his choices, same as anyone else.

 

I always figured that it wasn't entirely unreasonable that the Empire would want his own light-sider, or at least not-dark-sider. One of the side effects of the dark side is that every Force-user he trains is someone who is spending their entire lives looking for an opportunity to stick a knife in his back. It makes sense that he would want at least one Force-trained person who didn't come with that rather major inconvenience.

Problem being that there's really no way to square the "I'm learning how to use a different power source, light side instead of dark" from I, Jedi and the "you were never in the dark side, because you weren't acting out of selfish impulse" from the Hand of Thrawn duology.

 

I think Palpatine would be inherently distrusting of lightsiders on a practical level they can't be trusted.

Why?

Because if Palpatine wants to murder a bunch of baby banthas for his girlfriend Cruella's new fur coat, he expects that job to be done with no complaints.

Part of the issue is also people keep trying to make the Empire about law and order when Palpatine is very specifically about HIS LAW and HIS ORDER which include doing horrific evil for the sake of his amusement.

 

Mind you I do think a lot of Imperials are workhorses rather than idealists. A lot of Imperial officials DON'T CARE if they're doing good or bad. It's just a job they show up to.

Moff So and So doesn't really think about bringing order to the galaxy.

He's thinking about his next PT report.

Sometimes a job is a job and a job is making sure the spice flows.

 

Somehow that notion seems to be getting harder and harder for people to understand.

 

The Empire fandom of STAR WARS was always there but I stopped being part of it when I noticed a staggering number weren't being ironic.

Like those guys who want to massacre the blue aliens on Pandora because HUMANS ARE A SUPERIOR SPECIES.

 

Yeah it's always been there but it seems like more and more people are not even remotely ironic like you said. It can get genuinely disturbing sometimes.

 

It actually is a running theme in all of my books who is the villain and who is the hero but when I wrote THE SUPERVILLAINY SAGA I actually stopped myself from making the Justice League bad to make my antihero look good because it was inherently more interesting that, "No, the villains are bad and the heroes are good. The protagonist is DEAD WRONG in his resentment of the latter."

I wonder if there is a larger cultural shift at play where audiences stopped sympathizing with the underdogs as much and more with the predominate authorities.

 

Well in Legends the Jedi did commit genocide of the sith species after all. So the Jedi were certainly capable of morally reprehensible behavior.

The Jedi involved in such acts would say the sith "were too dangerous to be left alive." though.

 

Yeah but that was always so against the Jedi code that I would just chalk that up as really really bad writing. It does not really reflect on the morality of the Empire in my mind.

 

Well it should be noted the Jedi have done acts comparable to things Imperials have done.
EDIT: Whether or not said acts count as the light side is debatable.

 

Yes and they also recruited child soldiers(albeit under very difficult circumstances) but the Jedi aren't Angels.

As for the Imperials-if we can bring up the Felpire the imperial mission I think showed the best side of the empire. While the empire was sending out scientists, doctors, healers, counsellors, and other aid the GA was being run by various triumvirs and probably showed its incompetence every other day(post crucible speculation) with crisis and instability bubbling under the surface.

Palpatine's empire was admittedly a different beast than the Felpire.

 

While the Fel empire is interesting we should probably get back to the whole lightsiders working for Palpatine thing. I think some of this comes down to how aware the Force is in your mind. I mean if you see the Force as just nature and light and dark as different parts that one can tap into depending on using different emotions and whatnot; then I think it is more possible. However if you see the Force as aware then i think it is almost impossible cause I doubt the light side of the Force would really be ok with being used by someone who is actively enslaving the galaxy. Then again we never get much of a sense that even if the force is aware, that it has a moral compass. We place ethics onto the abstract

 

I disagree. He wanted to twist Anakin into doing his bidding and he twists the Senate into doing what he wants. He does this when he needs to, he doesn't have some kind of addiction to it.

And to bring it back to the topic on hand, I'd say yes, but not exactly 'light siders'. Jedi definitely can serve the Empire though. Joruus C'Boath claimed himself one, and if the Jedi Order was more filled with Jedi Covenant types I think Sheev would've taken them along for the ride.

The Jedi ideals of peace and order ironically fit in more with the Empire. Sith ideals (not necessarily the dark side though, just specifically Sith ideals, there's many kinds of Dark siders out there) are inherently chaotic. Their code preaches staunch individualism almost alike some kind of even darker Randist objectivism. It's why the Sith Empire we see in SWTOR resembles more a feudal society of infighting lords rather than the Galactic Empire (I know the Empire also turned into this later but it happened AFTER their leader died and many of them fought for the Empire still, not themselves), even if it does use the Imperial aesthetic.

 

Palpatine would of course say he transcended the sith code(or brought it to completion). And it isn't the sort of code useful for governing in any case.

The Sith Code deals with the individual, the Jedi code is more of a general statement.

I don't believe Jedi that weren't corrupted would serve Palpatine in circumstances other than torture, brainwashing or outright mind control,

 

Yeah for a Sith empire to actually function it had to not really follow the Sith code very closely. i mean even Banite sith fumbled the ball in the end mainly cause Palpatine stuck to the Sith way more than his master. had Plagueis been emperor I wonder if the Empire may have actually functioned longer.

I agreed though I think Havoc meant they unwittingly work with Imperial ideals. The Jedi did essentially serve the an Empire for a while and where blind to that fact pretty much just cause it claimed to be a representative republic.

 

Well Palpatine was merely using the Empire in the same way he used the Republic and CIS. And yes, he also used the Sith and tossed away the ideals in Legends for his own rendition of the Rule of One. Anyone that wants a long-term Empire would have to do that because the Sith Code is inherently about liberating yourself which doesn't work when you're running a totalitarian state. Meanwhile the Jedi Code is all about dogma and precision, and when taken to the extreme (Jedi Covenant, C'Boath, some Councillors in SWTOR and KOTOR) it can fit in with the Empire extremely well. They definitely wouldn't be light as we know it though, the Covenant itself was secretly led by a Sith.

 

I think there's some inherent misunderstandings in the way people are approaching things, for example. DARTH VADER believed in the Empire as a force for order and peace in the galaxy. Darth Vader was a Dark Jedi (even though such doesn't exist in canon, it did in Legends). He was inherently more inclined to a violent ruthless interpretation of the Jedi Code instead of following the Sith Code where the idea of peace was a lie. Palpatine, by contrast, and the Empire as an inherent nature is not about creating peace but OBEDIENCE and PROPERTY.

The Galactic Empire under the Sith Code is an extension of Palpatine's ability to impress his will upon the galaxy and nothing more. Order and authority are a BYPRODUCT of the fact he is attempting to destroy any and all resistance to his rule and make the universe fall under his cult of personality and sway. Palpatine believes the galaxy is inherently violent, cruel, and socially darwinistic but that is WHY he can exert absolute authority through his use of purely violent as well as ruthless means. Peace is not the goal but power. In short, Darth Vader believes in fascism while Emperor Palpatine is running a absolute monarchy. One has order as the goal as well as militarism while the other is about divine right (through the Dark Side) with his will being the ultimate reason/purpose for his power. Both kinds of governments have a lot of examples in history.

I have mentioned I find the Fel Empire to be incredibly tone deaf and something that while I loved the idea behind, is also something that jars so incredibly with Star Wars and it's themes that it really doesn't have any place as a official creation. It's an "enlightened monarchy" which rejects democracy and places the Skywalker family's descendants as absolute rulers of the galaxy. It's based on the Platonic idea of the Philosopher King and that's so far removed from plucky rebels out to restore democracy it feels like it belongs in another universe.

I also believe in the ALTERNATE CHARACTER INTERPRETATION (see TV tropes) that the reason the Fel Empire failed was not because of Krayt or they trusted Morlish Veed but such a system DOES NOT WORK and only created an Empire which was ever bit as ruthless as well as dystopian as the original with the Light Side ultimately not able to work with said system.

Be that as it may, I am going to be an enormous hypocrite here and say I wish we did have a lot more stuff like STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC where Light Sith and Dark Jedi are not something that are impossible to have as mavericks in their orders. I like the idea the Force knows no side and you can have the Colonel Kurtz Jedi like Depa Billaba who want to use whatever methods necessary to destroy the Sith along with Sith who understand their side is EVIL but believe it's better to internally reform it (replace slavery with droids, turn from the Dark Side, and get rid of the crazies beyond them). Indeed, while they'll never canonize it, it seems pretty clear to me at least that the Outlander seems written to have been a Light Side Sith Warrior or Inquisitor given the focus on Marr and Lana as their closest allies.

 

THANK YOU!! I cannot stand the notion that the Fel Empire is a great thing. It is still inherently broken. A authoritarian regime that gives few absolute power is still against the core of SW even if they are not trying to be evil.