Saga People use Darth Sidious more than Emperor Palpatine lately?.

The name Darth Sidious has always seemed to take a back burner to The Emperor.

I was at Star Wars trivia the other night, and they asked a question. Instead of using the Emperor, they used Darth Sidious.

It got me thinking about how I've read a lot of casual stuff using Darth Sidious in it lately as well.

Anyone else notice this?.

 

I haven't noticed that. I loved when Luke referred to "Darth Sidious" in The Last Jedi and I think it was a missed opportunity not to refer to him as that in The Rise of Skywalker.

 

It seems the Darth Sidious title was mostly used just by the few Jedi who know who that actually was. IIRC there weren't all that many people galaxy-wide who were aware Palpatine was a Sith. Also, the Jedi had been looking for this elusive Darth Sidious for years, after Obi-Wan heard the name from Dooku, so naturally that name was heavy on their minds all that time.

As far as outside of the GFFA, I haven't really noticed anything different.

 

he was known as Frank to his friends, Sheev to his parents, Sidious to Sith colleagues and Emperor to everyone else.

 

I've always called him The Emperor, and I'm not changing for anyone.

 

"Yo, Sheevarino!"

 

Except his horse, which called him Loretta. Nobody knows why, or for that matter why Loretta Sheev had a talking horse.

 

Even after Episode III came out, the majority of his screen time and references in external material had been as Palpatine - Emperor, Chancellor, and Senator. Sidious wasn't even a name until the prequels. Now that we've had shows like The Clone Wars that have given him a lot more time on screen as Sidious, as well as Rise of Skywalker where is exclusively a Sith (not a politician), people are more accustomed to his Sith identity than they were in the past.

 

I think “Palpatine” is still most common among fans and “the Emperor” among more casual viewers of the franchise. Not that these are absolutes, just what I’ve observed. I do personally think “Darth Sidious” is the best term to refer to him, just as we do with Darth Vader. Arguably Episodes 2 and 3 don’t use that name enough, though, so I get why it may not have stuck as much in a wider cultural sense. But TPM left a strong mark on me, so I have since always felt like “Darth Sidious” was the perfect name for the character, at least if I’m talking about the Lucas movies as a saga.

 

But I think the absence of "Sidious" in common use plays to the secrecy of that identity.

His face to the galaxy was Palpatine, and then the Emperor. Both in and out of universe, most people would know him and speak of him as such. Darth Vader, by contrast, front-faced the Sith identity to the galaxy, obscuring his jedi heritage.

Sidious is like the name of the unknown. If Dooku hadn't blabbed, no one may have ever known that name.

So even if it is coming into more common use, it still feels uncomfortable. It also distances the character from his greatest achievement.

This dude was the Emperor of the Galaxy. Whether they despised him on not, everyone called him the Emperor.

Emperor or Emperor Palpatine or Palpatine is my normal parlance. Darth Sidious is only used in rare circumstance of referencing amongst other Sith.

 

I think people who grew up with the OT would be used to calling him The Emperor since his name wasn't revealed there.

I watched in Machete Order and call him Sidious because the Sith aspect is his core as a person. Palpatine is just his fake persona. Emperor is just the title he achieved when he won. But regardless of whether he wins or loses, he will always be a Sith.

 

That’s how it should be IMO. Darth Sidious was who he really was; everything else was just a mask.

And it’s just a cool-as-hell Sith name.

 

I haven’t really thought of him as “The Emperor” since before TPM.

 

He will always be Frank to me

 

Agreed. We constantly have the term "Sith" and "Emperor" in IX, as well as his last name.
Who would've thought that the only Sidious name drop in the sequels would come in VIII and said by Luke?
I'm not noticing a rise in Sidious usage by official material or discourse. Once the prequels released (especially III), people started referring to him as Darth Sidious or Sidious pretty interchangeably with Palpatine or The Emperor.

"Ian McDiarmid interview:
How did you approach the transition of going from Palpatine to Sidious?
I think you'd probably be a very strange person indeed if you didn't know that I play Darth Sidious and Palpatine, although of course I never admitted it onscreen. There are no credits for Darth Sidious. But for anyone who has seen Return of the Jedi and heard that voice, seen the nose (laughing) - all those things - they knew it was me. But putting the two together is always problematic: Is it the same person, or is there another person who looks like him? All sorts of complicated reasons could be evinced for me playing two characters. But, of course, he was always the one person."