Saga Lucas’s vision of the Sith and galactic history over time

Because he sees emotion as power.

He doesn't want his slaves to have power, he just wants them to be tools to execute his will.

 

I always saw the sith and jedi as two sides of the one coin. Jedi use the force, which binds all living things, for good while the Sith use it for destruction and carnage and death. Its based on philosophy.

In TPM Maul says to Sidious at at last we will have our revenge implying that the Jedi destroyed them over a thousand generations ago and they were biding their time before striking back. They at least must have done something to make Sidious hate them so much.

As a side note in the old EU jedi Vergere says there is no such thing as light and dark, its just the force.

 

@Jid123Sheeve

I don’t think Disney canon will do what TOR did and replicate Palpatine’s Empire in the distant past. KOTOR is probably a good rough model of what they’d do: Sith Lords leading armies and fleets from different systems as they conquer the galaxy and grow their territories.

But I do suspect they’ll stick closer to Lucas’s notes and keep each Sith pair mostly independent from one another. The galaxy would be similar to a feudal society, with Sith Lords conquering and then governing different territories. This would only last for a few decades, though, as they would eventually start competing with one another.

As other users in this thread have mentioned, it’s somewhat equivalent to having different criminal syndicates taking over the galaxy. The Sith rebellion flourishes for some time, while the first Sith Master reigns and there are worlds to conquer. But eventually that Sith Lord is killed and the Sith under him begin to fight for power, leading to their eventual apparent destruction.

As has been mentioned in this thread, there are some time ambiguities. The new canon has the Sith emerging more than 6,000 years in the past, with several millennia of wars between the different Sith empires and the Old Republic. Lucas had the Sith emerging 2,000 years in the past, with a single millennium of war before the Sith were thought extinct. And only the first century or so of that millennium would’ve featured multiple Sith empires, since Bane seemed to have reformed the Order early on.

So for most of this history of conflict, the Sith would’ve been a single pair of Sith Lords at a time, taking over fleets and armies, and waging war. I’d imagine that what we saw in Exegol might be a decent depiction of what that sort of Empire would work like, something closer to a theocracy than Palpatine’s Empire was. Moraband also seemed to have had a similarly ritualistic society.

 

@Jid123Sheeve @Sauron_18 I don’t like how the TOR Sith Empire resembles the Galactic Empire so much because according to the lore, the TOR Sith Empire is the same Sith Empire seen in Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith and Tales of the Jedi: Fall of the Sith Empire, and the Sith Empire seen in those comics doesn’t resemble the Galactic Empire at all, raising the question of why Vitiate changed it so much. Furthermore, the TOTJ/TOR Sith Empire and the Galactic Empire have no connection besides Palpatine being a secret Sith and I don’t like the idea that Palpatine was a copycat.

 

@Sauron_18

I do though like the idea i thought of (And maybe others IDK ) that during the last great Sith/Jedi War (The one Darth Bane would have partaken in) was the when the Sith united under....Something. Like one desperate push to take over the galaxy before killing each other and becoming as Bane said "Victims of their own greed"

Whoops missed this part so yeah i agree with you

But I do like the idea more of the Sith being a roaming Horde (Heh Horde, if you know me you know this is funny) compared to a weird government with a bureaucracy

 

The Sith as an army of sorts or a group reminded me a bit like the mafia. So much in fighting and backstabbing that they were always going to in some ways self destruct. No one trusts anyone in the mafia and no sith trusts any other.

 

Its really all about philosophy. The Jedi and Sith are similar in a lot of ways, they wield or use the force but its how its used and what they use it for thats the difference. Sith draw on it for raw power that usually causes destruction and death. It also eats at its user, taking a toll on the sith, palpatine being the best example. Its using this incredible power for bad while the Jedi use it for good. Sometimes lines are crossed, Rey using lighning on the transport in episode 9 and thinking she had killed Chewie. It doesnt make her a sith but its a fine line. The Jedi are more controlled in its use compared to the Sith.

In the Bane trilogy it was alluded to that Bane would die at the hands of his apprentice who would in turn take on an apprentice of their own. One to have the power, the other to desire it.

 

According to the late Gary Kurtz, one of the ideas Lucas considered for Episode I was exploring the origins of the Jedi Knights and the destruction of the Sith Lords. While that’s not what we got to see in the final version of Episode I, it implies that these events could have been covered in a single film. Kurtz further described it as a very archetypal story treatment.

Now, Lucas conceived of the Sith as having originated 2,000 years before the movies. A Jedi Knight went rogue after the Council disapproved of his desire to use the dark side. The Jedi Knight founded a rival sect that would use the Force to dominate rather than to serve: the Sith. The new order quickly grew in numbers and began to conquer the galaxy. But because Sith Lords are governed by selfishness, the apprentices of the first Sith eventually killed him in order to seize his power. Without his unifying influence, the Sith Lords began to fight among themselves, initiating a destructive civil war that eventually destroyed them.

One Sith Lord survived, Darth Bane, who took on an apprentice but forbade the existence of more than two Sith at a time. From then on, the Sith operated from the shadows. They used patience and subterfuge to plague the galaxy with war for another millennium before the Jedi finally considered them to be extinct.

That’s the general story we can reconstruct from what Lucas has revealed. But what if he actually did end up giving us a glimpse at some of what he had planned for those early events that gave rise to both the Jedi and the Sith?



In The Clone Wars TV series, Lucas came the closest to giving an origin myth for the forces of good and evil in the galaxy in the form of the Mortis arc. Our Jedi characters encounter a family of Force-wielders whose powers exceed anything seen before. The family, who live in an isolated realm, represents the light and dark sides of the Force, in the form of a Daughter and a Son respectively, as well as the balance that exists between them, represented by their Father. In the arc, these beings believe Anakin to be the Chosen One who will bring balance to their realm. They all die in the end, with the implication that what happened there will echo in the galaxy at large.

So how does this connect to the Jedi and the Sith?

We are told that the Mortis family sent out a 2,000-year-old Jedi signal to draw in the main characters. That time period is implied as the last time these characters had direct contact with the galaxy, before they went into their mysterious, timeless realm.

We also know that the Mortis lore that Lucas introduced in TCW was based on materials he’d worked on not only for Episode I but also for his first movie, Episode IV. Among the original drafts that have been published, there’s one that discusses the origin of the Jedi Knights.

This draft introduces the legend of a holy man, known as the Skywalker, who discovered how to commune with the light side of the Force many generations in the past. Fearing that other people might become seduced by the dark side of the Force, the Skywalker only taught his family these abilities. This old lineage of families became known as the Jedi Bendu. Years later, a young padawan among the Jedi became seduced by the dark side of the Force. He left the Order and trained a clan of Sith pirates in the ways of the dark side, unleashing great destruction on the galaxy.

That legend no longer fits too well with the story we know, but the similarities to some of the other origin myths we did get are hard to miss. This is speculation, but I also think it makes sense. Because this is all legend by the time of the movies, some of the “historical” details could’ve been altered.

What if Lucas sees the Mortis family as the origin of both the Jedi and the Sith? The Father fits the figure of the holy man, who in this case taught the ways of the Force to his two children. His family could then have taught the ways of the light side to others, giving rise to the Jedi Knights. But eventually, the Son would’ve been seduced by the dark side, been met with horror by his family and the Jedi, and in response would have started the rival Sith Order. The Sith would then have begun their bloody conquest of the galaxy, and then they would have descended into civil war after the Sith Lords betrayed their first master. But while they thought the Son destroyed, the truth is that the Father may have then decided to take his family into exile to avoid causing further pain to the universe.

This is a story that could’ve been covered in a movie, and that is archetypal in nature. Furthermore it contains the strong theme of family that is so essential to Star Wars. It’s interesting to consider something like this as the origin myth for the Jedi and the Sith.

 

@Sauron_18

I'm curious to get your speculation on what they might do with Darth Ruin.

Wasn't Ruin a Lucas creation that got expanded upon later on?

I even remember in some weird leaks for a TFA script that never happened that Ruin was gonna be a Palpatine descendent who founded the Sith (Although that never played through)

So I'm curious though if their are any plans for Darth Ruin in the future

 

George Lucas’ backstory for the Sith is that they were founded by a Jedi who fell to the dark side. Darth Ruin’s name and biography are all EU and changed from Lucas’ first Sith idea to being just the founder of the new Sith to not contradict the EU Sith backstory. If the first Sith Lord is used in the future it will likely not be a character named Darth Ruin

(I think it would be cool if the first Sith was actually named Darth, and the forename is used by Sith Lords to denote family lineage.)

 

No. Lucas never named the dissident Jedi who founded the Sith.

 

Also, in the Legends EU, Darth Bane was the only Sith Lord survivor of the battles of Ruusan, an ancient battleground imbued with the Force power of both Jedi and Sith who fought there. The "Valley of the Jedi" there first appeared in LucasArts' 1997 video game Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. And one of the bosses in that game was Maw, a Dark Jedi who survived being cut in half by protagonist Kyle Katarn's Jedi mentor Rahn, and uses the Force to levitate around.

It's interesting that Maw seems to foreshadow Darth Maul, in both name and surviving the loss of his lower body, despite the fact that when the game was being made, Episode I was still filming and Maul's seeming death at the end of the film was presumably permanent...

 

Here's an idea: I know that in the SW PT Archives book George Lucas says that Leia "ended up becoming the Chosen One" in his plans for the Sequel Trilogy from the early 2010s. But of course Anakin also embodied the "Chosen One" idea, as Lucas himself has suggested in the past: Anakin "balanced the Force" both as a Sith Lord who slaughtered many of the Jedi and brought their numbers down towards a level with the less numerous Sith, and as the person who killed Palpatine and restored peace to the galaxy.

This makes me wonder - what if the very word "One" is a fundamental indicator of the nature of the Jedi vs. the Sith? That is to say, the "Chosen One" is a One in spirit, a union of harmonious wills working together in concert for a greater goal - that is to say, multiple people can carry the mantle and still be part of the One. Whereas the Sith, who by their nature crave power, can only ever be Two: a master and an apprentice, feuding for dominion, with no possibility of equality or true harmony.

This idea would naturally put the oblique words of Palpatine in ROTS - "to cheat Death is a power only One has achieved" - in a much different light, but also a very interesting one: it would suggest that for all Darth Plagueis' vaunted power as reported by Palpatine, true immortality rests with the One, which is to say, a harmonious fusion of a person's self with the larger universe that the clashing egos and will to dominance of the Sith cannot achieve. Reminiscent of the fact that, way back in the 1970s, the Force was actually called "the Force of Others".

 

That is unfortunately something that's been taken out of context. Lucas says that Leia is the chosen one in the sense that she would be the one chosen as the Chancellor who managed to renew the Republic. Not the Chosen One of the Jedi prophecy, who was conceived by midi-chlorians and brought balance to the Force. That is and has always been Anakin. That's reiterated in the same book.

 

Since the term "Chosen One" with regards to Leia is printed in capital letters in the book itself, I think it being meant there in a similar sense to how it's used with Anakin is a valid potential interpretation - or, if it is an error, the error would seem to be one shared by the editors and publishers.

 

It would be, but the context clarifies what's being referred to. The capitalization is understandable due to the archetype, although I can understand the confusion.

 

I do think it would be interesting if the "Chosen One" moniker could apply to both Anakin and Leia. "One" meaning not one particular person, but rather the unity of separate beings in the Force, and the ability to work together with it for a common goal of preserving and sustaining life. Something that the Sith, who by definition are set against each other and thus separated into Two, could not understand.

 

I think Lucas originally imagined a fairly straightforward history for the Sith. Even ignoring the EU and the new canon, this history became more complicated over time, especially when his ideas were mixed with EU ideas in TCW. To summarize what I mean by that, I don't think Lucas ever really imagined anything like a Sith Empire prior to the Empire we see in the movies, much less the multiple iterations of the Sith Order that were retconned by the EU.

His basic premise was that there was a short-lived rebellion thousands of years ago in which a group of Jedi Knights fell to the dark side and founded the Sith Order. They waged a deadly but short war of conquest, taking over large portions of the galaxy. But that war eventually devolved into conflict among the Sith Lords, leaving only two survivors who then went into hiding. The Sith then planned their ultimate revenge against the galaxy from the shadows, not emerging until the time of TPM.

The main issue with this simpler story is that the Jedi knew of the Rule of Two. As we've discussed, this likely means that the Sith became a two-person Order and switched tactics early on, but that they were not actually considered extinct until many centuries later. I love that idea because it means that what we see happening in the movies, with two Sith manipulating events and causing a great deal of trouble, parallels what has happened many times in the past. But part of me wonders if this is already a mutation from Lucas's original idea, and if Lucas really just imagined the Sith to have had one big devastating rebellion in the distant past before they went into hiding.

 

So the latest Star Wars comic had a interesting tidbit about ancient Sith history

Spoiler

So it was said in the latest comic that the Jedi that defeated the Sith brought down RULE ...yes they saw RULE of Darth Bane. Not the Brotherhood of Darkness but DARTH BANE HIMSELF!

 

@Jid123Sheeve: Very interesting! I had to look it up. And this fits with where the new canon has consistently placed Darth Bane, one millennium before the events of the movies.

Spoiler

I'm glad to hear that Darth Bane was well known to the Jedi Order. That fits better with TCW than Bane being an obscure figure known only to the Sith. But it doesn't address the question of why the Jedi would consider the Rule of Two something essential about the Sith.

I get the feeling that The Acolyte will involve the Jedi somehow discovering a rumor about the Rule of Two, and that this will be why Yoda mentions it to Windu at the end of TPM. That's similar to what the EU did, except that this would be set much closer to the time of the movies.

I dislike it either way because it just doesn't seem like it's the genuine intent of the text. Of course the new canon has not specified their vision of the Sith prior to Darth Bane's time. It so far seems like they operate in pairs only, which is fine and does fit with what Lucas said. But what doesn't fit is that being something that preceded Bane, because he's specifically credited with coming up with that rule.

On a slightly unrelated note, I watched the new Scream movie last night (and really enjoyed it), and there was a quote that I'll reproduce here because it's not a spoiler so much as it is well-known observation about the horror franchise: "There's always two killers." That fits closer with the intent of the Rule of Two than some interpretations of the Sith we've seen in the EU. Essentially it's the notion that Sith Lords come in twos. If one Sith is discovered, then there will be another not far. No more, and no less. Other Sith may eventually emerge, but there are no brotherhoods of the Sith or armies of Sith Lords ready to fight the Jedi en masse. They manipulate and corrupt from the shadows, and then they strike when it's least expected.

 

Spoiler

Well i've learned that when it comes to Star Wars you gotta give up "Intent" of the text otherwise a whole lot of stuff just won't add up.

As to what happens who knows. Making or seeming to make Darth Bane a Ruler of the Sith and not just a guy part of the Sith Empire is a interesting route, how that fits with the rule of two is unclear.

Not unless it's a thing of Sith opearate in pairs, but their are lots of them but their should only be two period...No pairs of two.

 

Oh yes, I don't fool myself into thinking it's going to be a clean-cut story. The story that matters is what we already know from the movies, and the history behind that, while it is something that Lucas clearly cared about enough to delineate in some detail, is ultimately just backstory and it exists in a very flexible state where things could be reinterpreted by other creators to make things fit their stories. Hell, that even happens with the actual stories that we see in the movies and television shows, so of course this would apply to backstory.

Having said that, here's my interpretation of the reference in the recent Star Wars comics:

Spoiler

I think the rule of Darth Bane in the new canon is probably not too different from the rule of Darth Sidious. They are parallels and book-ends. Darth Bane was the ruler of an Empire, and he could have ruled for a few decades just like Sidious did. This would not have been an Empire like the ones we see in the EU comics or in TOR, but rather a very close parallel to the Empire from the movies, with only Bane and his apprentice as Sith Lords. There may even have been some kind of Jedi purge at some point in Bane's life, or at least some kind of action that drove the Jedi away enough that Bane could form an Empire for a period of time.

If the Jedi Order did go through another set of dark times during Bane's rule, that explains their familiarity with the Rule of Two. The Jedi would have lived through decades of Sith rule, Sith who followed the Rule of Two, and with Bane likely having several apprentices during his lifetime much like Sidious did. Then the Jedi eventually defeat Darth Bane, or perhaps his apprentice kills him like Vader killed Sidious, and he is destroyed as well. And another apprentice would have survived in secret.

That would make sense to me. After all, there's no reason why Darth Bane's life should be brief. His Empire could have even lasted longer than Darth Sidious's. And it's a better reason for the Jedi to know of the Rule of Two than some minor event that occurs while the Sith are in hiding.

Of course, I don't think that's what Lucas intended for Darth Bane. But it does fit rather well with his interpretation of the Sith at least, and it places Bane in a position to be a memorable historical figure.

But I think Lucas simply intended for him to be the survivor of the civil war that broke out not long after the original Sith rebellion. The Jedi knowing about the rule of two seems like a blunder, if Bane founded the secretive version of the Order. But sometimes Lucas describes the rule as simply referring to how the Sith operate in pairs and would eliminate each other if there were more of them. That doesn’t quite explain the “No more, no less” portion, but perhaps it’s not intended as a universal comment.

 

Honestly...

Spoiler

I kinda like the interpretations

For one thing, it goes with the idea of how the Ancient Sith are being portrayed in Canon and that it really focuses more on the Sith Empire of Bane which was THE BIG ONE. And the Malechore Temple Sith were so "Rule of Two" like because they were Bane Sith.

Plus there is something poetic of the thread of Bane to Sidious especially with the Revenge of the Sith line of "Once more the Sith will rule the galaxy" which in many of the sourcebooks it seems they really did rule the galaxy including Coruscant.

Also it doesn't contradict what Bane says to YODA in the TCW Arc


I would be interesting if one moved the Civil War aspect back, and then Bane took over the Galaxy because his legacy was that resilient.

Also i like because I never liked how in the OG Bane Trilogy Bane was the one who went for the whole "Lets manipulate things in the shadows ala Darth Sidious" he just never struck me as that kinda guy. Like I can get him creating the Rule of Two but I still see him as a more overt Sith Lord conqueror kinda guy. So I don't need him to be the founder of the "Grand Plan"

Also may explain why he has a tomb on Korriban.

I also have some excerpts from Secrets of the Sith regarding Bane

Spoiler

And the quote from the Comic

 

@Sauron_18

So i put this in a Headcanon section but

I have a headcanon that Bane is essentially the Sith equivalent of Tokugawa from Japanese history.

Basically my idea is Bane's Sith Empire is the New Canon Brotherhood of Darkness.

Bane grew up in the Warlord years of Sith where there was no unified rule (Granted one could say that the history of the Sith is one of several feudal kingdoms across the galaxy but whatever)

Bane evenuqtlly decides this is dumb and while the Sith kill each other, he kills some of them, unifying their forces under his Banner and then only passing down his knowledge to ONE apprentice and one only.

Thus the Bane Sith Empire is born for X amount of years.

They take Corsucant.

Jedi overthrow him eventually knowing why Bane is a thing.

Bane and apprentice either escape or just the apprentice and the rule of two continues.

 

This topic came up again in a Lit forum thread, and the discussion made me think of something @ColeFardreamer has mentioned before, which is the idea that the Sith pre-dated the Jedi. I don’t think that’s quite what Lucas had in mind, but it did make realize that may be what it looked like to the galaxy at large.

The Sith emerged from the Jedi Order two thousand years ago. But what were the Jedi like during that time period?

From what we know, there was no galaxy-spanning government until the foundation of the Republic a thousand years ago. So it wasn’t until that time that the Jedi became the defenders of peace and justice across the galaxy that we are familiar with.

Before the Republic, the Sith Lords were in power for some time. They each controlled their own separate kingdom, like medieval feudal lords, and they each had an apprentice. But eventually they began to fight among themselves, starting a galactic war that destroyed all but one of them (who survived in secret) and led to the foundation of the Republic.

Before the Sith Lords, the galaxy was not united under a single banner, and the Jedi were a secluded order of scholars. They lived apart from galactic affairs, monks who trained and lived in their own remote corner of the galaxy. The first Sith emerged from this hermetic order, spreading out into the greater galaxy like a plague.

So although the Jedi predate the Sith, it is the Sith who first became involved in galactic affairs. For the galaxy at large, the Sith Lords emerged seemingly from out of nowhere, conquering new kingdoms with their dreadful powers and armies. Only later did the Jedi spread into the greater galaxy, perhaps not until the Sith wars were well underway, to help in the defeat of the Sith and the creation of the Republic.

To me this fits well with how Lucas describes the fall of the Sith, with the Jedi appearing seemingly later to help with defeating them. The answer to what they were up to before then is that the Sith conflict would be what spurred them into action in the galaxy at large.