Saga How Long Did Palpatine Intend to Live and Rule?

I think he planned to rule tell he died or forever if he found a way to cheat death.

 

That comes up occasionally - Vader did a fair bit of groundwork first, in terms of messing with Luke's mind so as to lure him to the Dark Side (beginning roughly 6-9 months before the events of ROTJ). Still a totally different timeframe, but it was also a different scenario, and there was the trump card of Vader being Luke's father, which Palpatine didn't have with Anakin.

 

On the contrary, Palpatine displays obsession with learning the secret to cheating death. "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together I know we can discover the secret." Sure, this might all be trickery to secure Vader's loyalty, but that interpretation is unlikely in light of Yoda's statement: "Eternal life... the ultimate goal of the Sith..."

Sith are not selfless. Ignoring EU intentions, it is easy to assume Palpatine had no intention of spending his life building an Empire for a successor to inherit. The films heavily imply he planned on reigning forever.

 

MOC Yak Face Brain fart. I'm so used to the abbreviation 'OT' I was struggling to think of what CT could mean and settled on 'canon trilogy.'

Still, the fact Jedi could return as spirits (and even embody themselves in the original ROTJ draft), coupled with Palpatine's unnaturally ancient appearance, was suggestive of the Force certainly being capable of extending one's life in some form. Nothing directly suggestive of Palpatine's desires, but Star Wars technology (e.g. Vader's cybernetics) coupled with Palpatine's mastery of the Force in spite of his age, and just the general cliches of the 'evil old wizard who wants to live forever,' made little Dreadwar think Palpatine was planning on sticking around for a long time.

Okay, I should probably stop trying to rescue my original post's failed point now.

 

I thought it was obvious in the OT that Palpatine had no intention of ever dying. He's clearly very old yet doesn't seem to be preparing for anything and doesn't seem worried about dying of old age. He seems to be looking forward to having Luke by his side for many years to come.

 

Darth_Dreadwar Lol. No worries, I have them often!

 

Spoiler

The novel Tarkin has a passage of Sidious' thoughts that suggests he was making plans to rule for the next ten thousand years.

Spoiler

From page 101: "Such perilous machinations required two Sith, one to serve as bait for the dark side, the other to be the vessel. Success would grant them the power to harness the full powers of the dark side, and allow them to rule for ten thousand years."

(The presumption is that Sidious is talking about himself and Vader here.)

Sorry for the excessive spoilers, but I thought that Tarkin was still new enough to potentially warrant them.

 

This is nothing new. From 2005's "Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader":

Then he and his crippled apprentice might hold sway over the galaxy for ten thousand years, and live eternally.

If they didn't kill each other first.

Ha!

 

IIRC, one of the Republic Commando books had a line about Palpatine asking the Kaminoans to make him physically immortal by cell engineering.

(They refused, though, and called him "racially inferior" and "genetic waste". They had a really low opinion of the human species.)

The Tarkin book, which IIRC is movie-canon, says that Palpatine's life goal was to create his own universe.

He doesn't care what happens to the Empire after he reaches godhood and UNLIMITED POWAAAH. There's no need for a successor.

 

Wasn't the original intention that he had already extended his lifespan through dark powers? It's a good bet that if there was no interference, he could continue to rule indefinitely.

It doesn't seem like a very Sith thing to care about a legacy or people carrying on after they die. They only care about themselves.

 

I think The Making of Return of the Jedi hinted at that - suggesting that the head wrinkles was originally not scars, but signs of his being changed over a very long time - evolving toward something new.

 

That was what I used to think as well, that he's so immersed in the Dark Side that he's slowly mutating into something inhuman, sorta like Tetsuo from "Akira" but over a really slow timespan.

I like this idea a lot more than the boring "Palpatine's deformities are burn scars" that we got in ROTS.

 

A few of the books - including the novelizations of ROTS, hinted that they weren't scars, but the warping of the Dark Side, which he'd concealed for years under some kind of masking power.

 

The idea was him to become like the Sith Emperor during the Old Republic era

 

I like the original idea as well, and while this is going into another topic, I believe that the two can be consolidated. Even at this time, it's still debated as to whether those were actual scars, or Palpatine's facade wearing off. In my mind, he could still be as old as Yoda, just under the guise of a middle aged senator.

 

We don't see scars in ROTS. We see oddly symmetrical grooves. We also see changes to the eyes and fingernails.

 

How long did Palpatine intend to live and rule? For as long as humanly or inhumanly possible.