Evil: Is Revan evil?

Well might be a bad question for some, but I really thought about it. Darth Revan I always viewed as a good Sith trying to prepare the republic for another enemy with his war against it. choosing targets and not attacking everywhere etc. while Malak more seemed to be the monster that wrecked havok. then the notion to Revan seeking the true Sith and trying to fight them also seemed he had good motifes.

now, he certainly was a Sith and evil to some extent. like when he cut Malaks jaw off.

now comparing that to Jacen Solos descent out of good intentions and bad actions, which lead Jacen to become evil at a certain point where the measures went beyond the good outcome they were intended to bring.

what evils did Revan really commit and not just the ones of the beings under his command that might have acted on their own judgement.

after KOTOR 1 I was a "Revan was misguided but good" thinker, while now I see it different, not completely but slightly. thoughts?

 

Regardless of his motives, he did start a big war that killed a lot of people without event trying any alternatives, like, say, using his influence in the senate as a war hero to push for military expansion.

Not to mention Malachor was his idea, and deliberately frying your own soldiers, men/women/other who trust and depend on you is seriously messed up.

But why waste time debating. *Detect Evil*

 

Revan definitely became evil. The kind of evil is a different thing, of course, but he was definitely evil. He had succumbed to the lures of power and, well-intentioned or otherwise, he still became a cruel and hard man responsible for millions of deaths in the course of the war - and civilians among them, and the Republic he swore to protect his great victim. He killed or turned to the dark side every Jedi who accompanied him save the Exile, and if anything, The Sith Lords makes him a worse villain pre-fall than KotOR did. KotOR II may have had him with a noble cause, but it also saw him employing men like Atton: dark men with twisted minds and evil intentions. He employed legions of assassins to accomplish his will in the darkness. He used Malachor to corrupt men's souls and minds. He was, in some ways, far worse than Malak, whose evil was but that of external destruction and the sowing of chaos. Revan's war was one on the mind, one on the heart - and ultimately it was he and not Malak who sapped the Republic's will.

 

yeah, I see. I never really got in depth with kotor 2, not the level I did with kotor 1.

but on the case of Malak. while he was it seems less evil or different evil than Revan, is there a noble cause to his fall aside revans quest? or some cause in his betraying of Revan? even some hint of good old Alek? while he is evil, too, might he have thought Revan went too far and tried to stop him and then would have not used evil of mind, but more the outer destruction you described? I know his many evils, just looking for minor hints.


also we need more info on the turning of Bastila to the dark side short time.

 

Yes, as I've said, Bastila's sudden sharp right turn into "MWA HA HA" evil is where the tragedy of Revan/Bastila descends into farce for me. I know what they were trying to go for, but as it stands it seems like Bastila's "fall" to the Dark Side is little more than brainwashing/Stockholm Syndrome.

 

yub, brainwashing seems to be fasted and easiest to repair way...

yet if we believe they turned her, with what info would that be possible? true sith revelations? maybe that is why the jedi order of Kotor 2 tries to lure out the remaining Sith by disbanding... they wanted the true sith, not the triumphirate!

maybe Malak gave Bastila after imprisioning her the full picture of the situation of the galaxy and, despite harsh sith methods, she understood the dire threat and wanted to do something. not convinced of sithdom or the sithway she tried to play along to escape... yet when she tried to conquer the dark side from within she failed like Luke in dark empire... she had to show her allegiance through sacrifices... and every sacrifice turned her more... ignorance lead her to the dark side. yet... she was not in deep enough to not return. remember how stubborn she was? might be along her thinking maybe

 

I think the question is this.

"Was Darth Vader evil?"

Darth Vader asked Luke Skywalker to join him so they could end the Galactic Civil War and bring order to the galaxy. He also offered him a chance to overthrow the Emperor, which is ostensibly good. Darth Vader undoubtedly believed in the view that someone should make the poiliticians agree and the idea that the Emperor's games of subterfuge and setting groups against one another was inherently destruction.

Darth Revan overthrowing the True Sith Emperor is no different from Darth Vader's own intentions to overthrow Palpatine. Darth Revan is a Darth Vader EXPY and one of the reasons he's such a popular character.

 

hmm, good point.

and watching all 6 SW movies in order... the message, well one message of many, is that evil can only be destroyed from within... from evil itself. evil = selfdestructing. so Vader was evil and evil fought evil (Palpatine) thus ending itself while the good watched and fought for their lives (Luke and co)

now taking that logic further, we have 3 people, 1 good, 3 evil. evil #1 turns on evil #2 to destroy it and the good person then turns the last evil being back to the light to finally end evil forever (if we ignore EU for a second).

on a sarcastic sidenote: Jedi sit and watch while Sith selfdestruct through infighting. Then Jedi just switch out the last survivor and are done with it.

back on topic:

so maybe if Revan really walked in Vaders footsteps ahead of time, he had good intentions, got corrupted to use bad actions for good motives... and while evil fought evil waited for the one being to re-turn him to goodness in the end. hmm... since he took Alek with him towards Darkness.. who did he count on to bring him back? not bastila or anybody he did not know yet... my bets are on Exile maybe? but that plan went out of the window with Malaks betrayal and onwards?

now jumping to Dark Empire with Luke in Vaders place and Leia as the good being, we have the same scenario again.

the "How to fight darkness without turning dark" problem is solved through not fighting at all. patience after all despite dark times (like Yoda and Obi Wans waiting and sitting out the rule of the sith) and then act when the time is ripe, but not with violence but compassion and love. the true Jedi is a being of heart, not mind. he is no warrior, does not fight and needs no weapons to bring with him (aka Dark Side cave lore of Yoda!)

thx for leading my thoughts in these directions, intentionally or not

back to Revan: everyone fighting evil from within needs a constant pre-fall that might turn him/her back in the end. Exile/Revan maybe? or who else might Revan have as constant, willingly and planned or unintentionally?

 

revan was a good person but darth revan was evil. revan redeemed himself by rejecting his former personoa. i see revan as tragic if revan had never set foot on malachor he would have never went to the dark side. there is a rumor that revan's last words as sith lord was "forgive me" he knew he was evil.

 

Dragonlance, which wholesale stole elements of Star Wars, had a summary of this. "Good redeems its own and Evil turns upon itself."

In the case of Darth Revan and Darth Vader, a serious lesson to be had from them is the fact that while Good CAN fight Evil (Redeemed Revan defeats Darth Malak, Darth Maul is slain by Obi Wan Kenobi, and the Death Star is destroyed by Luke Skywalker); attempting to achieve victory at all costs is a fast track to the Dark Side.

Obi Wan and Yoda know that surviving for the Empire to turn the galaxy against itself so they can pass on the Jedi secrets to the children that will rise up and destroy Palpatine is a bit of Eastern wisdom. Jolee Bendu says something much akin to it. Basically, that Darth Malak can't defeat the good in the universe forever. Eventually, people will get sick of it and the galaxy will come around again.

So it's important for the Jedi to not lose perspective that victory IMMEDIATELY is EVERYTHING.

 

good quote... and tell that to Luke Skyguy and his New Jedi Warrior Order... seems Leia is more of the good Jedi road than Luke and Gang these days, especially Jaina is in trouble.

damn, this is one of the rare instances where I actually agree with you

with Luke and NJO as warriors and military Jedi... has the EU lost or even ever got the message of the movies right? Jacen in TUF won through not fighting but letting the Force work, f.e. but how many examples are there for the message of the movies being mirrored instead of just enemies slain by good Jedi staying good through well intentioned violence? (well for now I am not delving into Vergereism and that philosophical route I too like up to a certain point)

I repeat: Does the EU aside from great ideas of its own, get the movie message right?

especially LOTF seems to go far from it with Jaina slaying Jacen, Luke killing Lumiya and love not winning for Jacen and Tenel Ka who tries to redeem him, even through Allana. he to a certain degree got redeemed in the end because of his love (see MF and certain Invincible interpretations of his last step into the light, and I support this) but if the EU willingly strays from the movieverse message, why and what does that accomplish?

 

You don't need redemption if you sufficently establish your villain choosing evil over Good. Count Dooku and General Grevious are both "fallen heroes" who recieve death as opposed to redemption while Darth Maul and Palpatine were so utterly bent by their experiences from childhood that they never had a serious chance of redemption.

Jacen Solo also *WAS* redeemed. Jaina Solo felt her twin connection with him restored.

The biggest fall of LOTF is the fact that they redeemed Jacen Solo and made him pay the just price for his massive murders by killing him (the same price that Darth Vader paid) but they did it in such a way that neither the people who wanted him killed were satisfied nor were the people who wanted him redeemed were.

This is off topic though. I'd love to examine why it was an artistic failure though.

 

"Redemption" doesn't mean much when it happens in the last .05 seconds of the guy's conscious existence and occurs far too late for him to do anything at all to undo his crimes. (Warning his own family about the nanovirus does not count; it was well established that Jacen had carefully compartmentalized loving his own family from screwing over the whole Galaxy long before this point.)

It's like if the ending of RotJ had had Luke kill Vader, then kill the Emperor, and ended with Vader croaking out "I'm sorry" before expiring. Not that inspiring a story at all.

 

Hey, I'm back!

Anyway, in regards to "was Revan evil?", I guess I could say that he both was and he wasn't. I mean, sure he turned to the dark side and was responsible for the deaths of many people, but he WAS trying to prepare the galaxy for an attack by a much greater enemy.

And although he probably did much more than Caedus, I think that Revan was still less evil than him.

Of course, I'm probably saying that because I'm a little biased towards Revan, and I haven't been on these boards for months. So sorry if my answer seems a little thin.

 

Palpatine wanted to secure the galaxy against the coming Vong invasion - maybe he wasn't really that evil, either.

 

Palpatine wanted to secure the galaxy against the coming Vong invasion - maybe he wasn't really that evil, either.

True, but he was also described by Lumiya as a power-hingry madman. Sure, he may have wanted to secure the galaxy, but he also craved great power and perhaps the ability to control everything. That in itself is kind of evil.

 

I was being sarcastic.

 

You've successfully described Revan there, too.

This is the man who said: "You must learn to seek power above all else, without reservation and without hesitation"

I mean, if you'd like to put it another way:

Take "Anakin Skywalker" and exchange it with "Revan". Now take "Padme" and exchange it with "the Galaxy". Voila. You have what is probably a reasonably accurate summary of how Revan came to embrace the dark side.

 

'cept for the whinyness bit, hopefully. I like non-whiny Revan.

Palpatine and indeed all of the Sith that followed him seem to have at least at some level believed in the Sith not only as a means of their own power but also as legitimately the best thing for the galaxy. Krayt in particular seems to hold to this vision. That Revan seems to be one of the first to espouse it doesn't make him less evil or even more unique... it just makes him the first, at least as we know things thus far. He's still evil, through and through, and, as I noted above, he does a good many things that are arguably more evil than Malak's general kill-and-pillage routine.

 

I always view the Sith like the Shadows from Babylon Five. They believe that conflict causes the strong to grow stronger and the weak to either get stronger or die out.

I think that, in Darth Revan's case, he made the eventual shift to believe that the Jedi way was weak. In the exact same way as Darth Krayt and Jacen Solo, he decided that the Republic and the Jedi Knights were too weak to be able to repulse the True Sith. So instead, he adopted a Fascist Nazi-esque philosophy (you can see the SS uniforms for his Sith Academy) and a military dictatorship with himself at the head. Then he started kidnapping Jedi to torture and break to the Dark Side or assassinate.

Yes, Darth Revan is a BAD BAD man.

 

By the time Revan "died" his plans were probably less along the lines of "protect the Galaxy against the other Sith faction" and more akin to "make the other Sith faction bow to my will along with everything else."

Which is as it should be.

 

How is butchering any opposition he can't convince to join him, mages or populace, not evil, Ceiran?

 

I think what he was really saying was "I'm a fan of Revan to the point that I find myself rooting for him, and that makes me feel bad because he's an evil character. Please convince me otherwise."

It happens. Ask Boba Fett about it sometime.

 

It's worse because most of us who've played the game actually imagine ourselves as Revan.

 

I imagined myself as whatever I named my PC in the first play through, not Revan.

Edit: You're right though that the player identifying as Revan is probably a key part of his popularity and why so many bought into Kreia's take on his character and motives.