PT What was Palpatine's actual plan?

I find it quite hard to believe that even Palpatine would have managed to get two Jedi to Tatooine and run into Anakin.

Was Palapatine aware of Anakin, and if so, how was he planning to get to him?

 

No. Only at the end of TPM. Sidious' plan was to conquer the galaxy, with Maul as his apprentice (unless a better candidate appears).

 

This is a very subjective topic.

As far as i can tell, whether Palpatine or Plagueis were responsible for Anakin's creation or not, Palpatine was mostly unaware of Anakin until the end of TPM.

That moment "we will watch your career with great interest" seems in-universe to be the first time Palpatine takes an interest in Anakin.

Symbolically, it is significant that Anakin loses master Qui-Gon and Palpatine loses apprentice Maul at the same time. Palpatine and Obi-Wan kind of battle for the role of Anakin's "father" from here on.

 

The plan had nothing to do with Anakin. He was just an unexpected bonus.

 

Perfect time to post gifs like this:

 

I assume he didn't plan to take Anakin as his apprentice until after he was found. If the jedi had never found Anakin, his plan would have stayed the same, except Dooku instead.

But now I'm wondering, what would happen to the Separatist leaders on Mustafar without Anakin? Dooku was also a separatist leader, so was killing them not part of the plan originally ? And would Dooku have joined the empire, even being known as a Separatist leader? I'm really confused about what would have happened to Dooku now, so maybe he was always planning to turn a jedi?

 

That is a good question. I mentioned in another thread that it would be strange for Dooku, a leader of the rebel movement, to be a player in the successor of the government he was fighting against. It's like if America became an dictatorship and a North Korean general became the Second In Command. It really wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. I always preferred to see Dooku believed the "New Order" that Palpatine was cooking up was a result of the CIS "winning" and not the Republic.

I think Palpatine was planning to kill Dooku and the Separatists for at least awhile. I assume he sent them to Mustafar so he could execute them one way or another. His plan was definitely to create an Empire, so if Anakin didn't join him, he probably would of sent a clone strike team or Republic forces to kill them.

 

The part of Palpatine's plan that interests me is what transpires in AotC. Everything plays out a little too conveniently for Palps. At the end, he claims everything is going as he planned, but it's seemingly a series of coincidences.

 

Indeed. It's possible that he had a big plan but everything that happened in AOTC were an added bonus.

 

I have no doubt killing off the Separatist leadership would've been a notch on the checklist for Dooku if Anakin hadn't been in the picture. Like Palpatine recently revealed in the Darth Vader comic, Dooku was useful until he wasn't. But, the ROTS novel does make mention that the Empire would've basically been the impasse between Republic and Confederacy...to the public at least. It removed the "corruption and bureaucracy" that had stifled the worlds of the Separatists and Dooku was to have been captured, then later released to a position at Palpatine's side. So it would be like releasing a freedom fighter that fought against "the system" until it was broken and rebuilt..in a Star Wars Cham Syndulla sorta way?
And as for ATOC...everything fell into place because why use the bounty hunter that would lead back to your ultimate secret unless you were ready to unleash it?

 

Yeah that is true. I could understand Dooku being part of the final Empire we got as the "one who fought against the Jedi and the corrupt ideals of the former Republic" but there is something kinda fishy that he is okay with Palpatine still being leader from a public's point of view. It would also be strange that the CIS wanted freedom from the Republic but are okay with an even more oppressive government. At least, at first. Obviously, old Palps didn't give a crap if his government was legitimate by the time of the OT but he wanted it to feel like a legitimate "new order" in ROTS. It certainly works out that his new regime consists of the Republic military and a Jedi who was a member of the Republic. It makes sense Palpatine corrupted the legit government and made it an Empire instead of the CIS. He was able to dissolve the Separatists since they were an insurrection movement , even thought here would be some insurgency but he would be able to keep hold of the Republic and wipe out the Jedi easier by saying their was "a rebellion" from within and he is bringing "peace."

 

Conquer the Galaxy, period.

His overarching plan changed with each film. Things came in his way, and he was flexible with it.

Become supreme Chancellor, start a war, kill Jedi were probably the only three tenants that stayed the same the whole time. With the Discovery of Anakin, and the loss of Maul, Palpy had to change some things up, but it was the same solution in the long run.

 

As long as everything looked legitimate beforehand...nothing else that happened afterwards mattered.

 

When you have the ability to see the future, it isn't difficult to manipulate people and events to go as you want them to. But that said, not every event goes exactly as planned. Jango wasn't supposed to die. The precise chain of events leading the Jedi to Kamino and Geonosis were probably altered slightly from what was initially planned. The overall plan still works out as the Sith instigated.

 

I personally believe that Anakin was Plagueis' most significant attempt to create life. To force the force (sounds weird) to do something so unnatural: to create a Sith super weapon. Then I think the force retaliated by determining Anakin's destiny to destroy the Sith. From George Lucas' original script, Palpatine was supposed to help in the creation of Anakin as well.

But I do believe Palpatine only came to the realisation that Anakin was the Sith creation at the end of TPM. Perhaps a current in the dark side led him to believe this. Only to be reaffirmed by his credentials of destroying the droid control ship at his tender age and the Jedi's feeble 'chosen one' malarkey.

I do think it's a shame that George Lucas left this ambiguous due to practical considerations and timing constraints, it would've been a crucial aspect of the story.

 

It had nothing to with considerations and timing. He just wanted it to be up to the audience to decide.

 

It's nice to write it off so easily but it doesn't add up. The entire thing hinges of Obi-Wan just happening to know someone who knows about Kamino. Furthermore, what would have happened had Jango killed Obi-Wan above Geonosis? The plan would have been over. The goal was to start a war of ambiguous origin so that both sides could claim the role of defender. Everything played out very specifically to serve that end. Change a single element in the compound and the entire result changes. Most people really believe that everything was a coincidence and that since Palpatine got what he wanted he could state his plan came to fruition. That doesn't hold water for me. A man doesn't state the success of a plan after a bumbling series of coincidences goes his way. I feel this part of the story deserves more attention.

 

The Jedi and the Sith don't believe in chance. In coincidence. Sure, there are risks there. There was risks that the Invisible Hand could have been blown completely up, or Anakin fails to land the ship right. But Palpatine still took the risk to have himself kidnapped and made sure that the Invisible Hand waited for Anakin and Obi-wan to rescue him. There's risks at Endor as well and we saw it come to a head.

Palpatine states success because of his arrogance and contempt for fate.

 

No, Palpatine controlled those situations. There was no risk.

 

Palpatine definitely didn't control what ended up happening with Grievous' cruiser.

 

He controlled Dooku not killing him and Dooku had Grievous manipulate Anakin and Obi-wan into this quarters, but that's about it. There was all kinds of risk. The fact that the Invisible Hand is blown apart shows that he wasn't in control. That Anakin and Obi-wan couldn't get to the hangar in order to get off the ship, was showing that he had no control. Dooku was supposed to kill Obi-wan, but he failed and that was another case of not being in control. Especially since Anakin insists on taking him along.

 

Did Palpatine's plan to lure the Jedi to Kamino to pick up "their" clone army really have to be that complicated?

It required

1. Padme's assasin to be captured
2. the Jedi figuring out where that lethal dart came from (they would have been unable, had Kenobi not had some extra sources)
3. find the planet which had been erased from the Jedi Archives files

 

Those were unexpected developments but much like Grievous' whereabouts in ROTS being found out it was simply a question of when Sidious was going to plant things for the Jedi to "find". That Obi-Wan through Qui-Gon's influence had a wider scope than only checking the Jedi Archives was something that couldn't be foreseen.

All that really happened is much like in TPM where Sidious got things to go his way despite the timeline being pushed by others.

 

1. It didn't matter if Zam was successful, much less captured. She was going to be killed by Jango. First rule of assassination, kill the assassin. That's why Jango didn't do it.

2. The Sith know that the Jedi have resources outside the Archives. Dooku was a Jedi and Palpatine's been keeping watch for years. Obi-wan would find out where the saber dart came from and thus go in search of Kamino.

 

darth-sinister

So Dooku was probably eating at Dex's Diner's, too? Interesting thought.