Lit FOTJ Apocalypse: So who really is the Chosen One?

You could say the exact same thing about the Yuuzhan Vong. Except everything would be a lot worse, and a wider population of the galaxy would be affected.

 

Nope. The very worst the Yuuzhan Vong could do was kill you. Palpatine's endgame involved him feasting on the souls of the galaxy for eternity.

 

Is that from Dark Empire or something? Cause yeah I haven't read that and if it involves "feasting on the souls of the galaxy" then I'm glad I haven't. That just sounds ridiculous.

 

Uli's point doesn't have to even draw on the EU, look at ROTJ or ROTS - Sidious loves watching people willingly corrupt themselves. Of course he wants people's souls, he wants to set it up so that every day people willingly walk into the dark side, look after themselves, screw everyone else over in banal, tedious ways.

 

Completely agree.

The only way Anakin's destiny is called into question is if you look at it as him being supposed to rid the galaxy of evil forever. For everything after ROTJ to be all hunky dory and in balance. Personally this is never the way I viewed the prophecy as something like that is quite simply unnatural.

 

Yes i understand the point. The problem is that it relies very heavily on assumption, opinion and source dependence. As such there would be no point carrying the discussion any further. But just for lols here goes

The way I see it, if palpatine's empire had remained he would have probably lived for, what, 100 years at most? (Following the film canon), a lot of people would have been repressed, killed even, lack of freedom etc. No where near as bad Yuuzhan Vong enslaving/destroying the entire galaxy.

If you do assume that Palpatine literally wants to "suck the souls out of everyone", then i guess that would be worse, maybe, but that's just ridiculous and doesn't fit with the films at all.

 

We already know from the RoTS movie that he is seeking to "cheat death".

 

You missed the whole "give yourself to the dark side" bit of ROTJ then FatSmel?

 

I'll concede there's a possibility that he could find a way to significantly extend his life but even then, there is no way he would actually "live forever". And even if he did, it doesn't seem as though the majority of the galaxy would even notice the difference between being ruled by palpatine and life under the republic. Most sources fully support that assumption.

Whereas once the Yuuzhan Vong purge the galaxy, well, that's pretty much the end of that.

 

What do you mean?

 

Seriously? You watched the entirety of the scenes on Death Star 2 and at no point when the Emperor is repeatedly trying to get Luke to join the dark side you didn't actually notice that aspect?

 

While technically FotJ doesn't outright upset the Chosen One prophecy, the way it plays up Abeloth as a sign of the end-times, who cleanses the galaxy of all civilization every 50,000 years or so (give or take), that only the Son and Daughter working together can trap her again, the novel seems to imply that she's a bigger imbalance than the Banite Sith were. Which is just a stupid interpretation, but considering how FotJ was plotted out, it seems exactly like something the novels would do. Not to mention that considering how chaotic the last five thousand years have been, for Abeloth to only show up now seems silly, but that's normal for the novels.

Obviously evil didn't die with Palpatine, but I still prefer to think that even with Palpatine returning in Dark Empire, that his death at Endor took away a lot of the momentum of the Empire and gave the New Republic years to expand. And perhaps most importantly, time for Luke and Leia to grow in power and skill as well, so Anakin sacrificing himself to stop Palpatine at Endor did have a huge effect. Heck, the following chaos for the next century (the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Sith-Imperial War) could be attributed to all the damage Palpatine did, after how bad the Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War was.

Also Palpatine was also far smarter than the Vong ever could hope for. And that's not even going into his prophetic visions or his political skills. Though I'm still not happy with all those what-if threads that imply the Empire would have handled the Vong better.

Assuming we still have a post-RotJ EU in a few years, I don't mind the Mortis episodes that much relatively since at least the whole trilogy could be waved off as a dream, a vision, a metaphor, etc. I hope they never say outright that Anakin not taking up the Father's place on Mortis was failing his destiny, but you never know what damage TCW will do next. But otherwise I don't see the novels ever overriding the movies or TCW though.

 

I fail to see how it relates in any way?

 

We must have watched very different films then!

I mean what meaning do you take from lines like:

"You, like your father, are now.... mine!"

 

My mistake, then. That's the problem with commenting on these things with only second hand knowledge.

 

But then couldn't you say that about other major crises that happened before Palpatine? For instance, if the Jedi Exile and Kreia wouldn't have brought him down, Nihilus(and to a lesser extent Sion) would have doomed the galaxy forever.

 

they actually don't. life didn't change much under the empire because the empire as we know it was not palpatine's end goal, it was a transitional phase toward his final vision of a galaxy wherein all beings are basically well-tended cattle upon which he can feed. fortunately vader offed him before any of it could be put into effect outside of his test tube on Byss, but his long terms plans were definitely just not business as usual forever (except with an immortal emperor).

the yuuzhan vong didn't plan on purging the galaxy. they planned on taking it over and replacing the government with theirs and converting people to their religion yes, but they would have in the end been a temporal government and society like any other, with factions and infighting and compromises and the potential for change. whereas palpatine's plans involved making every last sapient in the galaxy literally an extension of himself.

plus the vong never had a chance of actually conquering the galaxy anyway. their successes in the first few years were due to the galaxy's instability after half a century of civil war and that the overwhelming force they used in their initial assaults hid the fact that their society was rotting from the inside out. in the end their invasion was an act of desperation by a dying people, doomed to failure from the outset.

palpatine on the other hand actually did have a very real chance of becoming god-emperor of the galaxy for all eternity.

 

Nah, I'm not convinced. The "true" Sith Empire waiting in the wings would have had a vested interest in Nihilus not consuming everything. Once they'd taken control of the galaxy, we'd have probably ended up with the inverse of a typical great schism a few centuries down the line to set everything right again.

Palpatine is the only guy whose threat was so great it necessitated the direct intervention of the Force. I imagine every other "villain triumphant" scenario throughout galactic history still had hope spots.

 

Especially since Ghosts of Mortis implied precisely the opposite. Basically, with the Force Wielders dead, there are no more Son and Daughter for Anakin to control, and no associated threat to the balance of the Force and/or the normal galaxy. All that is left is the question of whether someone is needed to sit on the throne in Mortis to help preserve the balance of the Force in the future, someone sufficiently powerful and not supposedly weakening due to age like the Father. But the end of the arc only reinforced the assumed significance of ROTJ in this context, as it indicated that Anakin was to bring balance in the temporal universe. And as far as helping to preserve the balance is concerned, don't we have the new Jedi Order and the Force Ghosts for that?

I wouldn't be so sure.

 

This is precisely why the Sith Emperor's storyline in TOR is so hackneyed. They ripped off the DESB wholesale.

 

Have you read NJO? The YV made you a slave and tortured you to death. I'd much rather live in a safe oppressive Empire thank you very much.

 

I miss Publius and the Domus Publica. GrandAdmiralJello, what's the status on the internet's supreme Palpatine expert?

 

***WARNING: HEADCANON INCOMING***

My theory is that the Dark Side is not inherently evil, but rather the Red Oni half of a Red Oni, Blue Oni pairing (look it up on tv tropes if you don't know what it is.) It represents things like night, passion, war and death, but those things are essential to the universe and not always malicious. But thousands of years ago, the Son turned to villainy for unknown regions (my guess is everyone hated him already for his lightning powers and glowing red eyes, plus his mother's turn to evil and him locking her away). Since the Ones control the Force, because of the Son's actions, the Dark Side was forevermore a force for pure evil.

The true Chosen One will redeem the Son, thereby bringing balance to the Force.