PT Count Dooku was actually good the entire time, and it was pretty obvious

I have searched the internet as thoroughly as possible and have found that very few people have come to this conclusion. It is quite surprising to me. Here I have listed the many reasons why Count Dooku actually was the good guy in the prequels.​

Reason #1: He literally told Obi Wan his plan.​

Count Dooku was planning to kill Palpatine and perhaps eliminate the sith or at least the sith as we know them. He told Obi Wan this in episode 2 and asked for Obi Wans assistance. He also told him that the senate was under the control of the sith lord. He was not wrong.​

Reason #2: He even went through with the plan.​

At the beginning of episode 3, as you know, Dooku was in the position to kill Palpatine. Enough said.​

Reason #3: He was never too keen on following the jedi order.​

Count Dooku was a realist, when he saw what the jedi had been doing and how oppressive they were becoming, he was the only one willing to take a stand. The only other jedi in the movies with these qualities was Qui Gon, who just happened to be Dooku's apprentice. ​

Reason #4: Sith are not inherently evil.​

​

I am leaving out many other points. I may remember if I jog my memory. Any opinions on this?​

​

 

Treachery is the way of the Sith. He ultimately wanted power for himself and was also testing Obi-Wan. He wanted to turn Obi-Wan in much the same way Palpatine wanted Anakin.​

​

Not following here? He didn't attempt anything against Palpatine even at the very end.​

I think you may be reading a little too much into Dooku's apparent more pathetic or sympathetic nature at his last moments. Nothing is black and white.​

I agree there was some political and moral corruption on both sides, but he loses sight of any noble intention he once held as the dark side further corrupts him.​

​

Same as the last point, Sith sometimes turn for noble reasons but the dark side has a warping power that becomes an end in itself where it was once just a means.

 

Reason 1: If Dooku was truly on the side of the Republic, he would have told Obi Wan outright that Palpatine was Darth Sidious, rather than being vague about it. All Sith plot to kill their masters, and Dooku was no different. Maybe he started with good intentions, but power clearly had become more important than anything else by the time of the Battle of Geonosis. Even if he felt a small attachment to Obi Wan (which is unlikely, given he was very wiling to sentence him to death) Dooku was definitely manipulating him.

Reason 2: When Palpatine was locked in the chair, we are given no indication that Dooku wants to kill him. Dooku doesn't say anything to Anakin to get him to turn against Palpatine. If Dooku was truly plotting against Palpatine in AOTC, that clearly seems to have faded away at this point, reducing him to Palpatine's lackey, just like Vader was in ROTJ, despite plotting against his master earlier.

Reason 3: Despite Qui Gon's maverickness, he was very loyal to the Jedi Order, if not the council. If Qui Gon had felt the pull of the dark side, we would have seen evidence of it in the movie. Dooku may have genuinely seen corruption in the Republic, but when he joined the Sith, he should definitely have realized that Palpatine and his predecessors were behind it after a decade. He wasn't a dumb person. Based on the evidence, we can only conclude that Dooku put power ahead of justice after seeing what the dark side promised, even if you only go by the films.

Sorry, I don't like to be the one to disagree, and I have no argument against Reason 4.

 

Plus doesn't the ROTS novel state he is part of Palpatine's scheme to convert the Republic into an Empire? I'm pretty sure the Separatist movement was a ploy by him from the beginning. I'm sure he had no faith in it because he helped the Republic gain an army and in Episode II, tells Darth Sidious that there plan is in motion and war has begun. Maybe he had different intentions in the beginning but by the time of AOTC, he's clearly a bad guy.

 

If we accept TCW as canon (and we should... Lucas intended that, in any case), Dooku does some pretty heinous things.

At the very least, participating in the scheme to start the Clone Wars resulted in the deaths of billions of beings.

Not good.

 

I think he wasn't beyond redemption. But he didn't redeem himself. That's it.

 

Dooku wasn't Palpatine levels of evil, but he wasn't exactly good either. He´s more of a grey character that leans more heavily to black rather than white, which is why i find him really interesting.

How exactly are the jedi oppressive? And didnt Dooku leave because he lost faith in the republic?

Being in the position to kill Palpatine doesnt mean he's a good person.

Elaborate on how being a sith is not inherently evil, and how that somehow makes Dooku a good person

 

He seems to have a been a "means justifies the ends" kind of person. He considered the Republic and the Jedi Order corrupt and decided any means were justified to defeat them. Add some dark side corruption and bad stuff ensues....

 

No, he didn't. He simply said the Sith are in control of the Republic. And that doesn't make him 'good'.

Or perhaps he was planning to kill Palpatine following the Sith way of constant quest for power. Doesn't make him 'good' either.

No, he didn't.

More like 'nothing said'.

How is that 'good'? He fell to the dark side as well, that in and on itself refutes your 'argument' (like my previous points).

What had the Jedi been doing? When were they oppressive? Since when was any of that part of the reason for why he left the Order?

Qui-Gon never left the Jedi nor did he fell to (or was consumed by) the dark side.

Yes, they are.

 

Yeah, Dooku is the exact definition of evil as the end of Attack of the Clones proves when he oversees the unlawful execution of three people. If he were a good person, he would have opened up negotiations with the Republic for their safe return.

The case can be made that Dooku thinks he is good and that he is doing a lot of evil things to achieve the ultimate good, but Dooku is bad. Bad to his core.

He later goes on to perpetuate a war where a lot of innocent people are enslaved BY HIM and lots more die.

Sent from A TRANSMISSION BEAMED ABOARD THIS SHIP--

 

Dooku is polite and refined and sees himself as civilised. Still evil though.

 

Reason 1 is not truly relevant to the character‘s moral issues in general. While lying is generally not good, sometimes it could be acceptable for moral reasons (saving someone‘s life for example). And while telling the true is generally a good thing, saying the half true is even worse than just lying and Dooku did exactly that with Obi Wan. This is widely used propaganda method from the real world and it is successful because if the people could know/prove part of the true then they could be manipulated about the other part. And Dooku is politician and very smart person. His method succeeded because he “inserted“ suspicions between the Jedi but never revealed who Darth Sidious really was.
I think in the beginning Dooku was indeed good person with some doubts but in the end of AOTC we see him obsessed by the power of the Dark Side.
By the way, I‘m not sure what do you mean by “inherently evil“ but the Sith are corrupted by the Dark Side. Only Anakin could come back to the light and it was something unthinkable till then.

 

Imo dooku is a more interesting character if what he said to obiwan was the truth. PT shows us jedi have good intent but are not all that capable of getting things done and that sith are evil, so dooku, being a person who has the same good intent as the Jedi but is willing to get his hands dirty to accomplish those goals, is the perfect link between these two states. i also always thought sidious is too OP in the saga so having someone like dooku who isnt jedi - even though he gets it in the end - infiltrate his ranks and potentially disrupt his plans adds more weight his sidious too and makes him feel less cartoony

If he was lying and just following the sidious' orders then he just becomes another of the multple lackeys we already got

 

I actually saw a video on YouTube about how Dooku May have been a double agent. I don't really remember much of what it said, but it kind of made sense to me.

 

Well in Legends I get the impression Dooku wasn't all that bad, but in TCW he was nothing but an evil lackey of Palpatine, that served him out of fear over loyalty. Even in Legends though where he seemed to be a lot more sincere about the Separatist Cause and destroying the Republic and Palpatine, he still did many evil things to try and achieve his goals. However from what we saw in the movies alone, it did look like Dooku might have been a good guy, resorting to extreme/drastic measures.

 

he was evil. he had good intentions but let himself become corrupted.

 

No he was an evil guy.

 

He definitely was just following Sidious' orders, Sidious wanted him to drop the Jedi a hint about the truth, but not reveal the whole plan. Dooku did exactly that.

 

Dooku was not duplicitous. He was called Darth Tyrannus by Sidious himself. He was a Sith

 

But obiwan was about to be put to death so what good was revealing that info to him? Does that then imply Dooku also planned for obis escape?

 

The plan, to me, wasn't necessarily to let Obi Wan escape or specifically tell him, but to allow the Jedi to sense danger within the Republic, which has evidently already happened before Obi Wan is captured. Dooku was keeping up with that plan, not telling Obi Wan the whole truth, but dropping a hint, whether he would let Obi Wan escape or not. The Jedi already suspected that something was wrong before that point.

 

I might agree with the OP except if not for this. If we look at the PT alone, I think one could read Dooku as working for the greater good. And I do quite enjoy that reading. But in Clone Wars we see that, whatever his intentions were when he left the Jedi Order, Dooku is truly vile.

 

The ROTS novelization, which was canon at the time TCW was being made, also confirmed Dooku as a monstrous and bigoted person inside. And he wasn't really "good" even before he met Sidious.

Also OP, the novelization further denies your #1 (Dooku did not plan to eliminate the Sith; his intent was "the survivors of the Jedi Order would become the Sith Army. The Fist of the Empire."), your #2 (killing Palpatine at the beginning of episode 3 would have been incredibly stupid in light of what he was hoping to accomplish in that scenario), and your #4.

The suggestion that the Jedi were "oppressive" is a little hilarious. Yes, supporting democracy and the rights of people without magic powers to make their own decisions as a society without having their culture hijacked by wizard overlords is definitely oppressive and a good justification for joining up with the Sith.

 

Dooku laughed as he tried to kill other characters. That's enough for me.

 

Actually I take it back. He was a really great guy. Yeah........no.