As opposed to mucking around for a thousand years and never building an empire, like Kaan's guys did? Not to mention that that Empire, while not Sith-ruled, outlasted the Rebellion, Alliance Of Free Planets, and New Republic governments.
Since when is anything that Palpatine does, ever that simple? Much of it all depends on who you believe more, Sidious or Plagueis....
Your babbling, is, incoherent. Either you think he failed, or, you, don't. An unfair comparison. Kaan's guys weren't around for 1,000 yrars, as Bane's rule was. In the 1,000 years before Bane, there definitely was a Sith Empire. That's of no use to the Sith.
One cannot hope to understand the great mystery if isn't willing to study all of its aspects. Read Darth Plagueis, then judge for yourself. Until you do, I'm not sure if anyone can fully understand how Sidious succeeded, yet sealed his failure @ the same time. Not that it truly matters; as an other has succinctly stated, since his demise @ Yavin was unavoidable. So yeah, I do think he failed, but he didn't.
I don't think things would have turned out necessarily better if Palpatine hadn't killed Plagueis... Sith lords don't share power easily. If you want to be fatalistic, you could say Palpatine fails the moment he sets his eyes on Anakin. Still, Palpatine did succeed where every other Sith lord failed. The Sith Empire in the years before Bane, however, never came close to being the dominant power in the galaxy. Palpatine's Empire is a product of the Sith.
Maybe we should define what it means to be successful as a Sith. If complete galactic domination is the only way the Sith can be successful, then yeah, Palpy rules. However, if I understand correctly, the New Sith Empire lasted almost 1,000 years longer than Palpy's, and was also pretty big. I think if you would define success as "number of sentients subjugated", then it looks like the Banites were less successful. And I don't know why the former definition is better than the latter.
Maybe the proportion is more relevant than the overall count, but I think that's basically how the Sith themselves would define it - certainly Plagueis and Palpatine, at least, saw their goal as complete mastery over the galaxy and its inhabitants. What they're really after is omniscience, of course, but you can't focus on developing your own Force mastery when you've got insurrections to fight off. The Old Sith don't seem to mention omniscience much, but I think that's only because they were too busy fighting the Jedi and each other to give sufficient attention to an endgame. Which I guess was Bane's point. I guess we could sum this debate up by saying - you can subjugate some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
is a product of the Sith.[/quote]Therein lies the beauty of Luceno's work, because those two dark-side-loving, Sith-idiots, did just that when they tipped the balance. 'Sith in harmony' is a perversion of all things taught by the Jedi, too bad Bane's boys were so blinded by power that they could not see past themselves.
this thread should be locked until you've all actually read the Darth Bane trilogy. I'm appalled at how wrong pretty much everyone posting is. I don't even know where to start.
Pfft, Kaan's guys were the descendants of the batcrazy Sith. You know, the ones that conquered most of the galaxy and then proceeded to devolve to the point where all they did was fight each other? There was never a galaxy-spanning Sith Empire that had completely won. Not the way Palpatine's Empire did.
Hey, the plan was for the Sith to rule the whole galaxy, which they pretty much did. So his plan worked. However, when Bane designed his Grand Plan he apparently never specified the duration of the ruling part.
Not to mention that if Palpatine had lived through Endor, then the DS2's destruction would have been as irrelevant to the overall war as the destruction of the first one was.
you are saying that bane could see into the future, and see that eventually 3000 years later palpatine would take over? yet he couldn't see that he would die or that palpatine would fail? how does that make sense?
I don't know about stupid... but Bane sure is ugly! [image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/b/be/Darth_Bane-TEA.jpg]
Ha! You may want to catch him on semantics but the guy again raises an excellent point. What use was the Rule Of Two to Darth Bane himself? Or any other Sith after him except Sidious? Do you really think the fact that Sidious achieved galactic domination was of any interest to the Sith who came before him? That they'd be happy to have added to the buildup to the moment of his glory? Sounds un-Sith-like to me. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken.
I think he raises an interesting point, but a mostly academic one - no Sith strategy will ever really win, so it's hard to compare their relative success on those terms. Like I said earlier, I think galactic domination is only of interest to any Sith as an expression of one's absolute power, and if you go by that measure - how close any one Sith came to true omniscience and omnipotence - it's hard to argue that anyone got closer than Palpatine. And hey - I thought the thread was silly way before the semantic point came up.
He saw the Sith dominating the galaxy if he followed that plan. Why would he look any further? Besides, I think the dark side shows you what can happen, only it's tainted by what you want to happen.
The Republic collapsed for four centuries. The Sith dominated the galaxy for that entire time period... just because they were not unified does not mean they weren't dominant... and the Empire of the Sith Emperor dictated the terms of the Treaty of Coruscant, which ended the Great War...
I'm assuming the the four centuries you are talking about is the time covered in Knight Errant? In that case, I'd argue heavily against the Sith being the dominant power in the galaxy. Knight Errant gives that impression, because Kerra Holt spends her time in Sith space. The Republic still stands, even though they've entered a technological dark age. I believe there were deliberate allusions to the old west in Knight Errant. Not only that, but I'd say the Sith not being unified is in itself enough reason to consider Palpatine's Empire a success over past failures. The Sith will settle for nothing less than total control. Daimen, Odion and the like only have their small segment of Sith space private armies. They may have scared the Republic away from a large part of the galaxy, but the Sith are definitely not in total control. As for TOR, the Sith maneuver the Republic into accepting their terms... key word being maneuver. Vitiate knows he can't match the Republic in a direct contest of force, so he opts to trap them in a treaty. In fact, I'd say the game makes it clear that the Sith are the ones fighting the dominant government, not the other way around. So of course, the Sith had control of segments of the galaxy at different points in time... but never total control.
