Lit I think Palpatine is not a "good" Sith Teacher

Also can we stop the "he never intended to let others surpass him"? I never mentioned it in the thread.

Even those who were made into a personal spy/assassin, should not have any good/mercy otherwise it would backfire, I don't know why didn't he do well on that. Especially Mara, who was raised by him, trained to be his assassin, was way too good to be an imperial assassin.

 

Philip J Fry

 

Yeah, but it's like, extremely relevant. If he never intended to let others surpass him, then obviously he's intentionally not teaching to the best of his ability, in fact he may be intentionally sabotaging his apprentices, or at least not correcting weaknesses that he sees.

Personally, I think his line to Yoda in ROTS was actually one last barb just in case Yoda actually killed him. It was very much motivated by "if I die", which he didn't.

I'll respond to your points, though.

I agree, but honestly I think he didn't really care. Who is Mara? Why is she worth his time?

Part of this may be on Zahn, and not Palpatine.

Agreed, but Maul mostly kept their Master-Apprentice relationship professional. Mostly.

You know, maybe it's a lot harder, perhaps impossible, to train the goodness out of people. Maybe Palpatine is a special kind of evil that almost no one can be reasonably compared to. Maybe almost everyone has good, or at least the potential for good, inside them that cannot be removed.

What more could he have done with Maul? Maul's training was as brutal, painful, hateful and as merciless as possible. There was no love (tough love, maybe?) in Maul's training, but maybe Maul loved/cared about Palpatine anyway, like an abused dog that still loves his master, or an abused child that still loves his parents.

Maybe everyone can learn to love, regardless of what you do to them.

Maybe what you're asking isn't fair.

Dooku was a Jedi for like seven decades or so. Can't be easy to counter, especially with the kind of necessary distance between Dooku and Palpatine.

Plus, this very well may one of the apprentices that Palpatine doesn't care to work on, a placeholder.

Part of that good that can't be removed? Shrug. Maybe Vader was an obvious poor choice for a Sith, too much love in him from the start.


Personally, I don't care if Palpatine was a good teacher or not, and it's not particularly....interesting? Important? It's like saying Magic Johnson wasn't a good coach.

There are just so many other thoughts and questions that are more fitting the character.

 

Yeah, Palpatine wasn't a good teacher, and look what it got him. Who was a good teacher?

 

Tenebrous and Plagueis, especially Plagueis.

Darth Traya is probably the best teacher in SW, trained 2 great Jedi and 2 terrifying Sith Lords.

 

Because he was probably the most evil person in SW, only a few could compete, and he was so good at play with other's emotion and lure them to the Dark Side. So I would not be surprised if he could not train his apprentices to be powerful or smart enough, but it's a bit weird that he couldn't remove their good, unlike his master Plagueis and Tenebrous, neither of them really intended to follow Darth Bane's rule.

Out of the universe, I think it's mostly TCW(Maul) and Zahn's fault.

 

So, between Sidious, Tenebrous, and Plagueis, who would a Sith rather be?

 

It has little to do with his teaching, actually his teaching on Vader cost him his empire.

 

"Three Sith apprentices over the course of forty years and not a single apple on my desk at the end of the day. Why do I bother? The salary? *snort*"

 

Huh, a debate in a slowpokeking thread...about a weird slowpokeking theory...yeah...only one thing to do with that.

 

Great movie btw...

 

Not sure if this was what you meant, but did Tenebrous remove the good from Plagueis, did Plagueis remove the good from Palpatine?

Or did they choose to cast it aside themselves? Is it what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns?

Was Palpatine ever good? Doesn't really seem that way in the Plagueis novel.

Think of it this way. If Palpatine teaches Vader too well, the result is probably the same, Vader kills him.

lol, amusing though, right? In it's own Slowpokeking way? Gotta give him credit, or at least I do.

Slowpoke, don't ever change, keep doing what you do. Love having you around.

 

Plagueis's assessment him before he joins the Sith Order:


"You're heartless, ambitious, arrogant, insidious, and without shame or empathy. More, you're a murderer."

 

She is the one with the unique connection to Palpatine who even Darth Vader is jealous off that's who:

Vader had always been polite enough, but even without Mara's Force sensitivity it would have been abundantly clear that he didn't like her. She'd never figured out why that was. Certainly their goals were the same: service to the Emperor and his New Order.Perhaps he thought her training had taken too much of the Emperor's time and attention, or perhaps he suspected her of trying to supplant him in the great man's eyes. Both thoughts were ridiculous, of course. Mara had her work to do, and Vader had his, and there was no point trying to second-guess the Emperor's wisdom in the way he employed either of them. But she had yet to find a way to get that message through to Vader.


You can't blame Palpatine for this. A pyschotic who has killed women and children, who is into fascism and gives meglomaniacal rants all by the age of 19 would seem prime material by anyone's estimate.

 

Might be interesting to see a Vader & Mara story, written by someone else, showing Mara from Vader's point of view.

While not Mara per se, we did get to see Vader's attitude to other Emperor's Hands in Traviss short stories. It was more contempt than jealousy.

Mara might think that jealousy is a possible reason for Vader disliking her (a Zahn hint rather than an outright statement) - doesn't mean she's right though. Mara's been wrong in Zahn books a few times.

When Vader is strongly jealous and paranoid of another Force-sensitive in the Emperor's service- he tends to murder them - as demonstrated by Darth Vader & the Ghost Prison.

 

The use of the language in the above quote and rest of the book, show's that while Mara herself dismisses the idea of Vader being jealous, we the reader are left in no doubt that is indeed the case.

And Zahn does give an outright statement:

And how do you figure Vader would have viewed Mara?
TZ I don't think he would have trusted her at all. I don't think that he would have particularly liked her. Simply because he was steeped in the Dark Side, and the Dark Side is ultimately one of selfishness. "Me first." Mara, for all of her service to the Emperor, was not in the Dark Side. And I think that would have bothered Vader. He would not have seen Palpatine as having the same hold over Mara as he did over Vader himself, and Vader would not have liked that.

 

Which is not canon in-universe - leaving it entirely up to individual authors as to what's the truth and what's not.

Could be a case of "If Palpatine doesn't have a proper hold on her, there's a risk she'll mess up our Cunning Plans".

Might be interesting to hear from other readers on this.

Maybe it's raised in the Allegiance review thread- with some people interpreting it as "Vader is clearly jealous" and others not.

Stackpole's immediate comment- in the very same interview that was being quoted:

MS: I think ultimately, Vader would have seen the fact that she was never of the Dark Side as her naivety, and a weakness. Just as he did with Luke, and that would have been something he would have exploited if ever necessary.

Going back to the original topic- it would be interesting to look at what the Emperor taught who - lightsaber techniques and "drawing on anger" to some - Sith philosophy to others.

 

By himself are you saying Vader to surpass his own limitations? Certainly not to surpass him. In fact, in Dark Lord, Vader secretly wonders if Palpatine knew what was going to happen to him when he went to Mustafar and sent him there with the purpose of keeping that from happening.

Palpatine's actions in the EU shows that he never had any intentions of letting anyone, even Vader surpass him or taking the mantle from him. Like I said before, he just paid it lip service. If he thought it was a possibility, he took steps to make sure it didn't happen.

 

He says "Darth Vader will become more powerful than both of us" to Yoda - but that's it.

Not "Darth Vader will replace me".

What he's thinking in Dark Lord- was that awakening Vader's ambition is a risk - but he needs to do it anyway:

The idea of a Sith order was a corruption of the intent of the ancient Dark Lords. Fortunately, Darth Bane had understood that, and had insisted that only in rare instances should there exist more than two lords, Master and apprentice, at any given time.

But two were necessary for the perpetuation of the Sith order.

And so it fell to Sidious to complete Vader's convalescence.
...
Fundamental to Vader's growth was the desire to overthrow his Master.

Had Vader killed Obi-Wan on Mustafar, he might gave attempted to kill Sidious, as well. In fact, Sidious would have been surprised if Anakin hadn't made an attempt. Now, however, incapable of so much as breathing on his own, Vader could not rise to the challenge, and Sidious understood that he would need to do everything in his power to shake Vader out of his despair, and reawaken the incredible power within him.

Even at Sidious's own peril...

 

That's what I thought, that Palpatine intentionally didn't train his apprentices as well as he could have because he didn't want any of them to surpass him, and thus kill him.

 

Jedi Merkurian said it best:

While he hoped to rule eternally- he was smart enough to at least consider the possibility that he would not.

He created the Telos Holocron for other prospective Sith Lords, in the event of him having died.

​

Palpatine Gatekeeper of Holocron: "because the Holocron is now in your hands, I must assume that I am but a whisper from the past."​

 

Iron_lord

For other readers perspectives, if you go on the customer reviews on Amazon, even those who like the book feel that it was a bit ridicolous having Darth Vader be beaten and outsmarted by an 18 year old girl.

 

She gets out of his way, rather than out-duelling him.

The original topic was the quality (or lack thereof) of Palpatine's teaching- maybe we should focus on that, rather than Zahn?

 

I believe so, Palpatine was a really ambitious and rebellious teenager before he met Plagueis, but not totally heartless. Plagueis was raised by his parents until he became a teenager.

 

And then he lost his temper and murdered them.

He'd already killed people before that, through "dangerous driving" but his father ensured he didn't serve time for it.