PT How did Anakin not suspect Palpatine earlier??

But then...once he's actually told you that, yes I am a former SS member trying to resurrect the Fourth Reich then...all the other stuff becomes clearly a front, a lie. At that point you lose deniability, don't you?

 

Well - not that I'm being a Trollinator or cooking up nonsense BUT BUT then again if one thinks the combination of shock, realization and trying to accommodate/assimilate this sudden revelation - and realizing all is not what it seemed can convince some to change their minds or initial views still eh? I mean suppose just like how Anakin mentioned 'Sith are Selfish and Care For Themselves Only...' whilst 'Jedi use their Powers for Good and they Care About Others...' and yet Palpatine subtly remarked how is it really that much of a fuss how you see a bad-guy as a bad-guy WHEN considering the bad-guy may SEE YOU AS THE BAD-GUY in return and how Palpatine remarked Jedi and Sith aren't really always that different at times ... AND the fact how Papatine in his case - well even after admitting his role and how he was no doubt behind everything - YET Palpatine in the novel and such reasoned 'words are a greater weapon of power than a lightsaber' where he was able to convince Anakin for the time being how only HE could save Padme and such ...

 

If he honestly told me that, I'd need further proof than his words. He could tell me he can change into a flying mongoose, but unless I had the evidence, I'm not going to believe him 100%.

 

But...Anakin clearly does believe him....he "would like to" kill him, Right there and then. And he decides to hand him in to the Jedi...

The thing about thise scenes is....again they don;t actually make sense. Anakin clearly at that point understands the nature of Palpatine (which is why he would like to kill him). Then, when Palpatine says 'but you don't know what the Jedi will do'...well, possibly kill you, but that's what I want to do anyway?

And then he hits him with 'use my power, I beg of you...and save the one you love from certain death'..... and Anakin is shocked that Palpatine knows that. If that were me I'd think 'you dirty old........'

For one, it would cross my mind that....maybe he's placed those visions in my head, that's what he's always intended me to fear. For two I'd say 'Tell me now how to do that' because ...I would like to kill him. I would like to kill him because he is behind the whole war, because he has been manipulating everything right from the beginning. Everything that he has 'done for me' has been a lie, playing me along with everyone else. He was in league with, in fact commanding, the people who have tried to kill my wife. I have no reason now to trust in anything he says. 'If you care for me and my wife you'll tell me that now..' because I'd feel that this was just another tag-along...another manipulation. Always you offer something that's just out of reach.... power to the Separatists, peace and a return to democracy for the Republic, a solution to the problems of taxation to the TF, a position on the Council which you knew the Jedi would not accept at face value.

Anakin acts like a true schmuck

And...to bring it back to the analogy....'go build me an extermination camp and run it, only then will you understand how to get what you want..' Eeerm, just by telling me that you've told me what it is I need to 'get'

There is no room for deniability.

 

Wow, in the case, Anakin really acted like an idiot. Palpatine basically just said, "Join the Dark Side!" and he still tagged along with Palps.

 

He should've definitely known Palpatine was tricking him. If the guy's manipulating two sides of a war, it's clear he doesn't have time for all that "saving people" bs. I would've suspected Palpatine much earlier, because the shady guy is usually the culprit in these cases, and he was making it WAY too obvious it was him from the very start.

 

I love ROTS but that whole thing makes no sense at all.

 

Why should Anakin had been quickly aware of Palpatine? He's not invincible. No one is.

 

A number of reasons:

#1- The guy tells Anakin a legend of the Sith then explains how the Dark Side leads to many unnatural abilities. Now it's possible that he is just into the study of the Sith, but wouldn't Anakin want to know where he heard that legend? Something like this could easily be verified in the records back at the Temple or in another archival place.

#2- He keeps obtaining more and more power long after his term expired.

#3- He puts Anakin on the Council and butters him with how he deserves to be on the Council. Sorry, but only the Council decides who gets to be on the Council.

These reasons alone should've had Anakin wondering what his deal was.

 

Should've, maybe, but Anakin was exhausted from having his sleep interrupted by visions and from the war, and terrified that Padme would die to the point where he wasn't thinking straight. More importantly, he trusted Palpatine. Palpatine had started spending time him when he was nine years old and telling him all the things he wanted to hear with pretty much the sole purpose of gaining his trust and friendship for this exact situation.

People are inclined to give friends the benefit of the doubt - when it comes to your numbers #2 and #3, Palpatine had given plausible excuses (the power was necessary to win the war (and it's not like Anakin has any real investment in democracy, not with his childhood), and putting Anakin on the Council was necessary to increase communication between his office and the Jedi, also for the sake of the war). Since the excuses seemed believable at the time, I doubt it occurred to Anakin to go back and rethink his conclusions with the new information that Palpatine was a Sith, not with so many other urgent things on his mind.

As for #1...well, Palpatine presented it as a legend, a myth. If we take Legends backstory as still holding true, the Sith played a significant role in the history of the galaxy, so it's not surprising that a well-educated person would have heard stories about them. And yeah, it makes sense in the long run that Anakin would have wanted to try to verify the legend back at the Temple, but Palpatine also gave Anakin the location of General Grievous in that scene. He was a little busy.

 

Because saving people takes so much time?

 

That was the only time Palpatine ever 'saved' anyone, and even then, according to the novels, he wrestled with the urge to simply leave Vader and let him die.

 

The point is that Palpatine has time for a lot of things. The argument that he doesn't have time to save someone doesn't make any sense.

 

Yeah and Luke should have realized that deceitful Old Ben was knew more than he was saying.

Under that kindly and friendly exterior he was nothing but a liar at heart.

"Oh yes I knew your father and he and I were Jedi."

"Well you've been living here all my life. Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Oh erm... I'm a hermit you see!"

 

Where else in life would the excuse "Yeah I lied to you, but it was the truth from my point of view," work?

 

Indeed...

 

Yes, saving people takes a lot of time, because look at Anakin, for example. The Vader surgery took place over a couple of days. My point was that Palpatine will only feel the need (I shouldn't have said time) to save people who're important to him, and Padme is not one of those people.

 

Sure, but Anakin didn't know that. I mean, even if he'd had a much more cynical and less trusting view of Palpatine than he obviously did, he could easily think that Palpatine would save Padme in order to keep Anakin's loyalty. He'd agreed to join Palpatine in exchange for Padme's life; if Palpatine had failed to hold up his end of the deal in a way which made it obvious that that's what he was doing (i.e. not telling Vaderkin that he was the one who'd killed Padme so oops, oh well), Vaderkin might have turned on him immediately.

 

I think Anakin at least suspected Palpatine wouldn't hold up the deal on his end because he stated that he planned to overthrow him regardless.

 

Anakin knew that Palpatine orchestrated both sides of the Clone War. He knows Palpatine does not value lives.

Then you have the fact that Gunray wanted Padme dead as a condition of signing the CIS treaty, and that Dooku agreed to this, and put Anakin and Padme in the Geonosis arena to be killed for sport. Oh yeah, and both Gunray and Dooku work for Sidious. Sidious is their boss.

So why would Anakin make a deal with Palpatine?

Oh who cares, let's go kill some kids, I'm psyched.

 

I think he assumed Palpatine would hold up his end of the deal in the short term, and then once Anakin had learned the powers he wanted, he would overthrow Palpatine regardless.

Palpatine wouldn't need to value "lives" in general in order to value Anakin's loyalty. Sure, Palpatine didn't care about Padme's life. But from Anakin's point of view, Palpatine didn't need to value Padme's life in order to save her - he just needed to value Anakin's willingness to work with him, and acknowledge that keeping Padme alive was a condition of that. Plus, for all Anakin knew, Dooku and Gunray were acting without Palpatine's permission when they tried to get Padme/Padme and Anakin killed. It's not like he didn't have other stuff on his mind when he was making that decision.

 

For all Anakin knew, Dooku and Gunray were acting under Palpatine's explicit orders. But I guess it's a trivial matter, one Anakin doesn't need the answer to before making such a casual decision, right? Throw caution to the wind. YOLO.

He needs to do more than acknowledge the condition of keeping Padme alive, he needs to actually keep Padme alive. Anakin has overwhelming reason to question Palpatine's motivation/desire and sincerity/trustworthiness. And Palpatine's ability to keep her alive, of course.

Wait, wait, wait. What the hell did Anakin have on his mind? Paying the bills? Cleaning the house? Running errands? Sports? Video games? The big meeting in the Council chambers the next day?

Nope, his mind was entirely obsessed with Padme's apparent impending death and Palpatine's offer to save Padme (which would naturally invoke memories of the attempts on Padme's life), and he had nothing to think about other than whether or not Palpatine could deliver and could be trusted to deliver. That, weighed against the betrayal and heinous acts he would have to commit if he chose Palpatine.

There was nothing on his mind other than his choice. Loyalty to the Jedi and his conscience, or embracing Sidious and the dark side in order to continue clinging to Padme.

 

Bingo. Anakin trusts Palpatine because he has nothing left to hope for. Anakin is willing to use Palpatine to further his own goals, just as he knows that Palpatine will use him. The only difference is that Anakin doesn't trust the Jedi either, that's why he begged to go with Mace and why he does show up. He knows that the Jedi will kill Palpatine and he is his last resource.

And again, Palpatine doesn't say that he knew how to cheat death. He tells him that he has knowledge of the dark side which he can pass on to Anakin and that they can work together. People keep confusing, "Use my power" and "Use my knowledge" as, "I can stop people from dying". He's not saying that. He's saying, "I know the dark side. I know everything there is to know. Together, we can become strong enough to figure out how Plagueis did it."

 

Anakin's reached the point where he doesn't even care about the war anymore, he cares only for Padme's life (or less charitably he cares only for himself and how bereft he'd be without her.) Palpatine's not ever tried to convince Anakin that the Dark Side is sunshine and rainbows, but he's made it pretty clear that he thinks he/they can potentially save Padme, the Council have maintained all along that attachments will pass - they'd tell Anakin to let her go and he just won't/can't do it. Palpatine knows Anakin doesn't trust him but his desire to save Padme overrules all else.

To go back to the 'granddad was a Nazi' analogy used earlier, it's actually more akin to claiming your kindly old grandpa was a member of something like Unit 731. They did unspeakably horrific things but the medical knowledge they gained from their evil can still be used by those who are (arguably) not so evil, as happened with the real Unit 731. Palpatine wasn't intending to flip Anakin's switch from 'Hero Of The Republic' to 'Dark Lord Of The Sith' in one go, he's been forcing him to compromise more and more without realising the depths he's going to.

 

Anakin would never suspect his pal Palpatine to be an evil Sith Lord, by the time it finally clicked Anakin was too far gone.