Saga Why was the rule of two invented?

I apologize is this has been done before, however I've been wondering:

Why did Darth Bane invent the rule of two?

Honestly, this seems like a setback for the Sith. Darth Bane was the sole survivor of the Jedi-Sith war, and he then invented this rule. Why? If I took a guess I'd say it was to take revenge on the Jedi slowly, in secrecy, however why did it continue after the Clone Wars ended, when there were no Jedi left to take their revenge on. Why didn't Sidious just recruit more force sensitive children to become Sith, and have a powerful Sith army, leading battalions of stormtroopers as very skilled and effective commanders.

 

"One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith Lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self-centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually there was only one left, and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on. But there could never be any more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies."

--George Lucas, Bill Moyers Time Magazine Interview; 1999.


The Sith are the natural enemy of the Jedi. As George Lucas describes it, the Sith were once in control of the galaxy 1000 years in the past. Unfortunately, the Sith's hunger for conquest got the better of them-so many Sith lords were vying for ultimate control that it led to infighting among their ranks. Such internecine struggles were exploited by the Jedi Knights of the era, and they were able to turn the tide and defeat the Sith.

As Ki-Adi-Mundi states in Episode I, the Sith have been extinct for a millenium; however, not all were wiped out. A surviving Sith Lord sought to rebuild the order, to retake the galaxy, and to take revenge. This Sith Lord realized the dangers of having too many in the order, so he kept his existence a secret. It would be a long time coming, but he carefully plotted revenge. There would be only two Sith Lords at a time, a master and an apprentice, working in secret, planting the seeds for their eventual rise.

--Star Wars Insider, issue 78; page 60

That said, in "Star Wars: Rebels", we learn that Vader was allowed to train a few Force sensitive individuals that were known as the Inquisitors.





Their task was to find and eliminate the last few Jedi stragglers, such as Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger and Ahsoka Tano. Any potential Jedi that was found, was either eliminated or recruited to be an Inquisitor. Said Inquisitors were powerful enough to be a threat to these Jedi, but not so much to harm the Sith. If they ever did become a threat, then the Sith eliminated them before then. It is unclear how many there were, or if they were all eliminated by the time of the Battle of Yavin 4. So far, only the Grand Inquisitor was killed during the rescue of Kanan Jarrus at Mustafar.

 

Initially is wasn't supposed to be a "rule". It was just the natural thing to happen when you have and evil master with an evil apprentice. The apprentice wants to kill the master and the master is always looking for a better apprentice.

Good supports good, so there can be many Jedi, however evil stands alone. Evil does not support evil.

 

Darth Bane: Do you know who I am?
Yoda: Yes. Darth Bane, the ancient Sith lord you are.
Darth Bane: And know why I am not forgotten?
Yoda: Created the rule of two, you did.
Darth Bane: The Sith killed each other, victims of their own greed. But from the ashes of destruction, I was the last survivor. I chose to pass my knowledge onto only one."

 

Alright, thanks for the info!

Although, one can not help to wonder what would have happened if shortly after Vader turned to the dark side, he would defeat the Emperor, and then start balancing between the light and dark side. Becoming a sort of gray jedi. Then, creating an order, much like the Sith, power hungry, but not necessarily evil. Searching for balance in the force, embracing both the light and dark side, balancing the force using both sides, eliminating evil, while keeping the good under control.

 

It was cool Lucas created some distinction with the old Sith and the new with the Bane lineage following the rule of two.

That said, it makes little sense if you want galactic conquest. How the heck are you supposed to take over the galaxy with just one apprentice that will then conspire to replace you?

It's crazy and perhaps fitting for the nutty Sith. But, you want to conquer then you train disciple after disciple and overwhelm the enemy.

But the rule of two does fit into the OT Baneite lineage very well. Lucas deserves credit for creating something years later that actually fits what we see onscreen for the OT.

 

It's always seemed the rule of 2 was one of those ideas they came up with and threw in without ever thinking it through very much

 

Yeah I think Lucas did it for the PT to try and explain what the Sith have been doing and to make Sidious' plan more undercover.

edit:
And as pointed out above, Rebel's already fudged the rule of two with the Inquisitors.

They just should have made the Sith as they always were but Bane was the sole survivor and he created the rule until the right time: when the Empire would return and then more Sith can run around under the rule of Vader, who is the dark lord of the Sith.

 

The answer is to use non-Sith troops such as Battle Droids, Clone Troopers, and Stormtroopers.

I'm under the impression that when the OT was made, Vader and Sheev weren't supposed to be part of a dark side order but rather were simply an evil sorcerer and his apprentice. It was only when writing TPM that GL decided to make Vader and Sheev part of a dark side order. Now GL was faced with the question, "If they're part of an order, where were the other members of this order?" To answer that question, GL created the Rule of Two.

 

The Sith and Vader being a dark lord of the Sith emerged in the 80s at some point. It was around pre-Episode One. I believe the old SW RPG(circa 1987) mentions Vader being a part of that order. I will have to check again.

Marvel and Dark Horse also tried to explain what the Sith were too with one being they were a race that then went extinct and the original Sith Lords ruled over them.

 

Vader has always been called "Dark Lord of the Sith," but that didn't have a definite meaning until TPM. Zahn wanted to explain it by calling the Noghri "the Sith."

 

Yeah the Sith order wasn't definitive until TPM. We just thought the Sith were the counterpart to the Jedi with similar numbers,etc. But the Sith as active opponents of the jedi predates TPM.
What Lucas did was help define more what and who they were, especially from a thousand years pre-TPM to present.

 

Early ANH screenplays described the Sith as "sinister agents of the Emperor." I feel like they were supposed to be what Rebels calls "Inquisitors."

 

Yeah earlier drafts for SW even mentioned Sith.

The funny thing is the Emperor, as far as I know, wasn't necessarily supposed to be a Sith early on. He was just the Emperor who ruled over them. Vader was a Sith but the Emperor wasn't.
I do find that odd considering Palpatine shoots lightning out of his fingertips so that implies some dark sorcery.

Yet, he also mentions in ROTJ that a lightsaber is "a jedi weapon" yet he uses one later in ROTS.



There seem to have been some missteps along the way.

 

Going by just the OT, I would say Sheev = evil sorcerer, the Sith = enforcers for the evil sorcerer.

 

True.

But now we know the PT made it so Palaptine is a Sith and one in a long line of them.

I'm not adverse to the rule of two. I just think it doesn't make much sense for galactic conquest, especially when other stories are already trying to fudge it.

 

That's not balance. Balance is doing away with the Sith and putting the dark side back on equal footing to the Jedi. If Palpatine was killed, Vader and Luke would be the two Sith and nothing would change.

You make sure to have an army of soldiers that will serve your interests, a bunch of regional governors to support you, create a super weapon that can blow up planets and make sure that said Apprentice doesn't find someone strong enough to replace you.

Lucas did think it through.

"After Darth Sidious' first apprentice is killed, he has to come up with a new apprentice, and rather than coming up with some baby that he trains from birth, which is what he should have done--well, he shouldn't have gotten himself in a position of getting his apprentice killed anyways--he's decided to make his move, so he needs somebody that was already trained. The point is to set up that he turned this one Jedi, so that he could turn another Jedi. It has to be set up that way."

--George Lucas, AOTC DVD Commentary.

"Palpatine has told Dooku. 'I have somebody who I think will be a great Sith Lord and I think we can get him to join us. But we need to test him. So we're going to setup a situation where you fight him. If he gets the best of you, then I'll stop the fight and he'll have passed the test. If you get the best of him, then we'll let him go, and we'll let him stew for a few more years until he's ready.' But behind it, obviously, is Palpatine's real intention: If Anakin is good enough, Anakin can kill Dooku and become Palpatine's new apprentice. But he didn't tell Dooku that."

--George Lucas, The Making Of ROTS; Page 41.


"Anakin, as Skywalker, as a human being, was going to be extremely powerful, but he ended up losing his arms and a leg and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there’s not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he’s maybe 20 percent less than the Emperor. So that isn’t what the Emperor had in mind. He wanted this really super guy, but that got derailed by Obi-Wan. So he finds that, with Luke, he can get a more primo version if he can turn Luke to the dark side."

--George Lucas, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the Dark Side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

"And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor -- he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stones Interview, 2005.

"The Emperor wants Luke to kill Vader so that he will have a new young Jedi. Lets face it, Vader is half mechanical and he is not half as good as he could be. He is not nearly as good as he was hoping Anakin would become because Anakin ends up in the suit. He is hoping he gets a new, better apprentice in Luke. If he kills his father then he would take his place as an apprentice; which actually there is something that in the next film is how Anakin becomes his apprentice."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

70's, actually. The novelizations for ANH and TESB call Vader a Dark Lord of the Sith. As did the merchandising.

 

In its most simple form: It was designed to prevent infighting and to create a unified Sith in which the strongest continues the Sith lineage. Result:

 

The term Sith was used early on, but I've seen no evidence that actual "Sith" were created prior to TPM

 

Cross-post from the Sith Fanclub (note that this is not my headcanon, but an interesting possibility):

"Consider the Rule of Two. It is a one-thousand-year anomaly in the history of our Order. Some would laud it for bringing an end to infighting among Sith, and credit the final domination of the Sith to its inception. But in truth we see that its single point of failure - if both Sith should kill each other - in fact makes it more particularly vulnerable than other Sith structures, and said "final domination" is hardly more than that accomplished by Galactic Emperor Darth Krayt or Sith Emperor Vitiate (who surely could have taken over the Republic if that was in line with his goals, but instead he preferred his perfect society on Zakuul to receive tribute instead, and to perpetuate war and bloodshed as part of his ostensible plan to consume all life and become a god). So why the Rule of Two? Was Bane simply mistaken; did the Rule offer little or nothing of value? No, I think more of him than that.

The Rule of Two is a lie.

An obfuscation, devised by a very clever man. Suppose that you are Darth Bane; suppose you have found the secret of essence transfer from the holocron of Darth Andeddu, and have thus achieved a sort of immortality. Do you do as Vitiate did, and rule openly as immortal Emperor for millennia? No. If anyone should know you as an immortal, Sith rivals or Jedi will seek to undo your immortality, as we see with Exar Kun, Darth Andeddu, Darth Krayt and many others. Sooner or later, they will find and destroy the artifact you bound your spirit to, or destroy the clones you are transferring your essence to, etc. Suppose you are cunning. You pretend to be mortal, give your potential enemies no clues. If you are killed, you project your spirit into a new body, and discard your old identity, pretending to be a new Sith.

But suppose you rule over a vast Order of Sith. Like Darth Marr did with Vitiate, they will sense the familiarity of your spirit in the Force, and your secret will be revealed. Suppose you are more cunning still, suppose that you recognise Vitiate's (presumably fatal, ultimately) mistake. You ensure there is never any being who co-existed with, and therefore would reveal, your previous self. You do this by creating the Rule of Two, and come up with a somewhat flimsy philosophical reason as to why there should only be two Sith at a time. You take only one apprentice who you never need fearing being truly destroyed by as most Sith did; in fact, you actively encourage them to try and kill you. When they inevitably kill you, you transfer your spirit to them, and adopt their Sith name and identity. We see Bane tried this with Zannah; regardless of Karpshyn's intent, Dynasty of Evilleaves open for interpretation whether Bane actually succeeded or not (certainly it hints at least some of his essence did succeed in infusing Zannah). My theory is that he did.

My theory - and I know something similar has been stated before, but never a satisfactory reason for why - is that Bane became Zannah, and became Cognus, and indeed became every single Sith Master in the Baneite line. When the Huntress asked, "Lord Bane?" he denied it, claiming he was Darth Zannah, because he never wanted to reveal the secret of essence transfer, he never wanted any of his many, many apprentices over that thousand years, who he essentially used as servants and then discarded (which is what we suspiciously see Palpatine did with three apprentices in the films, almost as if he never had any intent to be replaced before dying of simple old age), to try and unravel his immortality, he wanted them to believe Sith apprentices were continuously succeeding in overthrowing their Masters and taking their mantle. He gains untold knowledge and power over the millennium, until, by the time he is Palpatine, he is more than the equal of the similarly ancient Yoda. There are inconsistencies, of course - this would require Darth Plagueis to be an unreliable narrator, and that Palpatine did not learn essence transfer from Ashka Boda, but then, SkyeWalkers already heavily implies Palpatine knew essence transfer at the time of the Clone Wars years before, according to the 'public story,' he is meant to have learned it!

The Rule of Two does not actually work. It is not superior. It was a ploy by a clever Sith Lord to remain immortal and never be overthrown, and only did bad luck, in the form of a Jedi with an overly long name clasping his spirit to his and dragging him down to Chaos, finally bring to an end the reign of Darth Bane - born to the name Dessel, died known as Palpatine - the most cunning Dark Lord of the Sith."

 

Oh, no? Then who is this *******?



Darth Vader has been a Sith since the second draft of ANH.


For an eerie moment, all is deathly quiet as a huge darker figure appears in the sub-hallway. The remaining Stormtroopers bow low toward the doorway. An awesome, seven-foot BLACK KNIGHT OF THE SITH makes his way into the blinding light of the cockpit area. This is LORD DARTH VADER, right hand to the MASTER OF THE SITH. His sinister face is partially obscured by his flowing black robes and grotesque breath mask, which are in sharp contrast to the fascist white armored suits of the Imperial Stormtroopers. The troops instinctively back away from the imposing warrior.

--ADVENTURES OF THE STARKILLER (episode one) “The Star Wars” by George Lucas SECOND DRAFT January 28, 1975 LUCASFILM LIMITED.

Suddenly, there is a slight lull in the fighting, then a deathly quiet sweeps over the passageway as an awesome, seven-foot tall DARK LORD OF THE SITH makes his way into the blinding light of the main passageway. This is DARTH VADER, right hand of the Emperor. His face is obscured by his flowing black robes and grotesque breath mask which stands out next to the fascist white armored suits of the Imperial Stormtroopers. Everyone instinctively backs away from the imposing warrior.

--“THE STAR WARS” From The Adventures of Luke Starkiller By George Lucas, August 1st, 1975.

The awesome, seven-foot-tall Dark Lord of the Sith makes his way into the blinding light of the main passageway. This is Darth Vader, right hand of the Emperor. His face is obscured by his flowing black robes and grotesque breath mask, which stands out next to the fascist white armored suits of the Imperial Stormtroopers.

--Star Wars Published Script: Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, from the Journal of the Whills Public Version of Fourth Draft. Dated: “Revised Fourth Draft, January 15, 1976.” As published in The Art of Star Wars, Ballantine 1979.

 

FYI - we don't disagree... what I mean is the whole sith organization wasn't thought out back then.

The Emperor wasn't a sith, etc

 

You're right about Palpatine, but Lucas had the idea of multiple Sith in the first three drafts. The first two drafts had multiple Sith Knights and the third draft had two Sith Lords with Vader.

 

As George Lucas, and others have pointed out, the most dangerous enemy of a Sith Lord is other Sith and wannabe Sith.
The Jedi are mild in comparison. You know where they stand.

It's a pretty brutal workplace environment.

 

The third draft screenplay for ANH says, "For over a thousand years, generations of JEDI KNIGHTS were the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy. Now these legendary warriors are all but extinct. One by one they have been hunted down and destroyed by the sinister agents of the Emperor: the DARK LORDS OF THE SITH." It seems that the Inquisitors are what the Sith were supposed to be in 1977. Enforcers for the Emperor who specialize in hunting down Jedi.