ST Palpatine "Gran Palpa" Discussion Thread

There’s a difference between scheming behind someone’s back without them knowing vs being expected to scheme. I get the vibe the creators themselves don’t know what to make of that aspect of the Sith.

In the comics, Palpatine pits Vader against cyborg warriors with lightsabers. Afterward Vader asks Palpatine what would have happened if he oosts and Palpatine says then he wouldn’t have been worthy of being his apprentice.

You have Palpatine putting Vader in an ambush and trying to kill him to test him.

Im not positive but in the Lords if the Sith book, I think there’s a part where it’s explaining Palpatine’s thoughts and Palpatine is aware that Vader wants to kill him and he knows the day will come when Vader will try.

It’s almost an expectation that the master sees the apprentice as expendable, while the apprentice wants to kill the master, which is not an ideology to live by if you want to maximize your lifespan.

That’s like trying to run a business where you hire only employees that will steal business documents and try to blackmail you. No. You’d rather have “yes men.”

Then in TCW, Palpatine accuses Dooku of plotting against him and orders him to have Asajj killed. In the comics Palpatine has Vader punished for plotting against him as he expects strict loyalty.

The Sith are fairy tale nonsense that we all just have to look the other way and suspend disbelief, because not only do they not make sense from the Sith goal of achieving power or immortality, but there isn’t even internal consistency in their story telling.

It’s one thing if Palpatine made Vader swear absolute loyalty to him and Vader just broke his oath. But instead we have Palpatine finding joy in the thought that Anakin wants to kill him and encourages that emotion half the time, and the other half the time treats such thoughts as treacherous

Had Palpatine surrounded himself only with Imperial yes men like Tarkin and never took an apprentice, he would have probably would have ruled longer.


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Midichlorians came up in two films, a cartoon series, and indirectly in The Mandalorian. ( Though I guess this still falls under ‘limited capacity’. )

Obi-Wan spoiler :

Spoiler

Also, the Obi-Wan series includes helicopter lightsabers and name-drops the hyperspace whales.

 

On the flip side of this, I think one of the sith's goal is to increase in power, and I think you can't do that with yes men. Sith perceive power as coming from emotions, like hatred. The more hate they're fueled by, to them, the more they gain power from, the more they may think they can achieve immortality. Vader is a pawn and Palpatine can think that Vader can't outmatch him, no matter what Vader does, in his state.

 

Unlike most rulers, Darth Sidious is a legit firm believer in Social Darwinism, to the point that he's willing to put his own life in danger just to commit to it. Most rulers want safety and security after seizing power, which is why they always hire yes-men to live this fantasy world. But Palpatine doesn't do that it because being surrounded by yes-men would weaken his ability to rule and make it him vulnerable to a coup if he makes a mistake.

In truth, he's a sociopath with a need of a challenge. He cannot live without war. He needs wars, he needs conflict, he needs rebels because it makes his life all the more fun. That's why he spent most of his years studying Sith alchemy rather than actually running an Empire. The Empire is boring to him. He only got back into the seat of command once he learns the Rebels are an actual threat and have Jedi in them, specifically one Luke Skywalker.

And the truth is, none of the Sith have found immortality. They can live as long as they like but if they die of old age, all that knowledge they gather would die with them, and they'll be forgotten forever. That's why they need apprentices and more importantly, apprentices that will do what they would do in their shoes, seizing by any means necessary including murder.

 

TPM established that Anakin had a higher midichlorian count than Yoda, which is implied to be some remarkable thing that goes hand in hand with connection to the Force.

I would assume Palpatine is aware of this and in ROTS, he even delights at the thought that Vader will become more powerful than both Yoda and himself.

Also in ROTS, when Anakin says he wants to kill Palpatine, Palpatine seems to enjoy this, sensing that it makes Anakin stronger.

Palpatine is consciously helping Anakin, who wants to kill Palpatine , become stronger than himself.

That might benefit the Sith, it does not benefit Palpatine.

@Shadao

I’m not sure I agree with that interpretation, since he tried to run from Yoda and had basically been a recluse between ROTS and ROTJ. He wasn’t constantly testing himself against opponents, rather he was putting Vader against opponents to toughen him up.

If he wants conflict and believes in social darwinism, the Jedi are the enemy he can test himself against, he need not have an apprentice.

RoS established the concept of a Sith spirit transferring to a stronger host when killed in anger, that semi-explained why Palpatine would be ok with training someone that wants to kill him, but it never sold me on the idea on how super-greedy Sith would be ok with merging with someone else

 

Depending on your view. Palpatine can think he become stronger, and it still be something he thinks he can use. By that point, I think Palpatine thinks he's got Anakin on a leash. If Vader is the most powerful and he controls Vader, I think Palpatine could see himself the most powerful. Palpatine thinks he can manipulate him.

However, this is actually a detail I like about the TROS, in the, to me, suggestion that Palpatine could, in theory, bodyjack someone if they kill him in anger. To me, that adds an interesting angle to a lot of things.

 

The reason he needs an apprentice is because he could die of old age if not outright killed in battle. Such an incident would destroy centuries' worth of Sith knowledge if they are not preserved and more importantly, practiced in spirit. Since Palpatine is not immortal, he needs Darth Vader to continue his work so that at least he would be immortalized through spirit of his teachings (and this is not counting on the possibility of body surfing on to the apprentice). Of course, that's not ideal for Palpatine, which is why he spent all those days during the Empire researching for immortality.

As for desire for conflict, note that when does visit planets like Ryloth or Endor, he has this sadistic glee on the possibility of dangers and threats to him. Almost as if he's utterly bored of ruling and just wants to get some adrenaline running from his days of secretly climbing his way to power.

 

Did palpatine kill ben solo or contribute to his death? i know ben survived the cliff fall, but then he "sacrifices himself to revive rey." my question is - does he die from the sacrifice, or was he also suffering injuries that he succumbed to? if palpatine helped kill ben, that was extremely impressive because he only used 1 finger to critically injure a very powerful force user. ben still had the force thats how he revives rey so the argument that "palp sucked all the force from ben then flicked him easily only because ben had no force left" doesnt make sense.

this is my guess: kylo was in the process of dying from his injuries but he made 1 last sacrifice to revive rey. that makes more sense to me than "transferring all your force power to sacrifice yourself to revive rey, and the fall had nothing to do with it."

i think this should count towards palpatine's kill count. if you get pushed off a cliff and you die soon after, you got killed bro.

 

If you're going to bring someone back from the dead in a Jedi manner, it has to be the ultimate sacrifice and the equilibrium price. To revive the dead, a life must be sacrificed to take its place.

 

yah Rey says when she heals the snake that she transferred a little bit of life energy to it. Rey was full on dead after taking out Palpatine (makes sense as she was funneling all the Jedi at all the Sith) so Ben gave his whole life force to her to bring her back to life.

 

Wasn't it already established that Palpatine seeks apprentices only because he's trying to create a dyad? It's another vehicle for power.

 

Is it? So the rule of two isn't actually a rule of two, but instead it's Palaptine trying to create a dyad?

 

That's what's been written since TROS. Plagueis sought to create one with Palpatine; Palpatine sought to create one with his own apprentices.

 

I'm not sure that's accurate. He became a recluse to focus his attention on mastering the Force and securing immortality. The Empire was about his own personal safety; it was meant to protect him while he conducted his research. It was a stopgap until his Sith Eternal, waiting in the wings, was fully prepared to supplant it. There's no evidence that I know of to support a narrative that he sought galactic conflict merely for amusement or in pursuit of Social Darwinism.

 

Well it's a good job I ignored whatever was written about it... that's an abysmal concept... and just one more example of where DLF are trying to **** up the existing canon.

 

The current Dyad lore is that it has happened before and resulted in beings of such power that the Sith have tried to emulate it with the Rule of Two.

This does raise the question of how this fits with the Rule of Two being necessary to ensure harmony among Sith. Writers will probably say that it was both, or perhaps point to the Dyad as predating the Sith and being the reason Jedi train in pairs only, which the Sith then emulate for multiple reasons, the primary one being survival but also never forgetting the possibility of a Dyad.

The reference books that talk about this only say that Plagueis hoped to create a Dyad with Sidious and that Sidious hoped for the same with Vader. No mention is made of the other apprentices. And it should be noted that the Dyad is never equated with the notion of Sidious housing all the spirits of the Sith or his spiritual transference to new bodies.

My guess is that they’ll connect the original Dyad to the Son and Daughter of Mortis. Those Force wielders were stronger than anyone who came after, except for Anakin possibly, so it would make sense for the Sith to cooperate so that they could obtain such godlike powers.

 

Because he doesn't house all their spirits.

 

TROS seemed to imply he does. In the novel or other ancillary material (I believe), and with “I am all the Sith!”

 

The spirits comment is something I still find hard to digest.

TROS implies that the spirits of all the Sith survive inside of Palpatine. He specifically says that he will live on in Rey just as all the Sith live on in him. Later on he claims to be all the Sith, which agrees with his previous statement. While Rey counters that she is all the Jedi, a statement that we know is less literal than Palpatine’s and has more to do with her connecting with the spirits of the Jedi who lived before her.

Reference books and other official sources have since characterized Palpatine’s statement as describing the same thing that happened with Rey, that he is drawing on the power of all the dead Sith. Besides the issues over whether Sith spirits can have any kind or afterlife (something that’s becoming more and more loosened), this still doesn’t fit with Palpatine comparing his connection with the dead Sith to his plan to possess Rey. But in the word of retcons, they can easily smudge this a bit so that he’s speaking metaphorically in one case and not in another.

So the current canonical explanation seems to be that Palpatine wanted to transfer his spirit into Rey, as he had done before with his clone body in Exegol, and that in their final battle he was drawing on the power of all the Sith, as Rey did with the power of all the Jedi. And these two different Force powers are different from whatever the Dyad is, which is something Palpatine never achieves.

Even years later, this all seems a bit much. Dark Empire and its endnotes have a more cohesive interpretation of similar Force abilities. But it’s admittedly something that doesn’t necessarily seem intuitive.

 

Right. There are no references to Palpatine containing the spirits of every prior Sith Lord outside of a particular interpretation of vague dialogue. The novelization and official databank parse these comments as a parallel to Rey's communion with Jedi past. Sidious serving as a literal vessel for all Sith spirits doesn't track with any aspect of SW lore, and with multiple extant Sith spirits such as Darth Momin and

Spoiler

Exim Panshard

mucking about, that makes it twice as unlikely unless he performed some Vitiate-tier ritual on Exegol some time in the past decade leading up to TROS.

Either way, if he's drawing power from Sith spirits, it's probably a parasitic relationship. The Jedi gave Rey their power willingly; the Sith do not operate like that.

 

How does Palpatine 'draw on a the power of all the SIth', as Rey did with the power of all the Jedi ... if there are no Sith spirits or Sith living inside of him, from which he can draw power?

It is truly vague nonsense though. Written fro the spectacle of seeing Palpatine shoot lighting at Rey, and Rey deflect it back to him. I would almost assume its based on a (somewhat popular) misinterpretation of what Balance to the Force meant, and how some thing it means equal Jedi and equal Sith, or equal sides to the force.

 

Sidious and Kylo in happier times! Awwww

 

From what I've seen of the novelization, it offers no analysis of Palpatine's claim, merely reproducing the dialogue in question as seen in the film. And I have no idea what part of the databank you're referring to, but Palpatine's own entry says nothing of this.

In terms of understanding TROS from a certain point of view, the lore which seems most relevant is material from the pre-Disney EU, namely Dark Empire and the book Dynasty of Evil, including the clarification of the book's ending by the author shortly after release.

Palpatine is "all the Sith" only in the sense that Zannah, at the end of the book, contains a fragment of Bane's consciousness, while still being Zannah for all intents and purposes and being referred to by the author as such.

When the master attempts to essence transfer into the apprentice, either the master wins - in which case the master is now in control of the apprentice's body - or the apprentice wins, in which case the apprentice is in control. But some part of the master crosses over even so. ( There is an analogy with the Dune series: do you become a standard-issue Reverend Mother, or abomination? )

Thus - if we were to assume for the sake of argument that this has been going on throughout the Banite succession - Palpatine contains a pearl of Plagueis, and that pearl of Plagueis contains a pearl of Tenebrous, which contains a pearl of Tenebrous' master, and so on, till we get to a pearl of Cognus, which contains a pearl of Zannah, which contains a pearl of Bane. But Palpatine won the battle with Plagueis which means that he is in control of the body.

Palpatine is of course being deceitful to Rey by suggesting only that they will be "one" and not admitting that he plans to be in control of her body, with her consciousness either annihilated or in the sunken place. To be fair Rey should at least suspect as much, which may be why Ben's dialogue splaining it was deleted.

 

It insinuates that he's a vessel for their power and juxtaposes that statement with the succor of the Jedi spirits. Of course, it's by no means definitive and can still be interpreted as figurative. Forgive me, I don't have my copy of the TROS novelization at hand, but it has a similar passage about drawing upon the power of the Sith. Either way, he's definitely not a gestalt entity. If he's "all the Sith," it would only be in the way that Rey is "all the Jedi."

Plagueis alone is attributed with the discovery of essence transfer in canon. Prior Sith Lords cheated death by adhering their souls to inert objects and the ones that still exist at the time of the Skywalker Saga exist as distinct from Palpatine. So again, unless he performed some sort of arcane ritual to absorb the spirits of every previous Sith Lord within the decade leading up to 32 ABY, he doesn't contain any soul but his own. "All the Sith" is either egoistic boasting or a Rey-esque power boost. I'm leaning toward boasting myself.

 

This dialogue seems to say otherwise: "Kill me and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me." He's saying outright that the Sith live in him via the same process that will allow his consciousness to enter Rey.

But how would these spirits even be accessed? Since Sith don't Force ghost, why would 'the spirits of every previous Sith lord' even be around to be absorbed in the first place?