Star Wars The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire

g CONTENTS

Part One

RISE AND CONSOLIDATION

Star Wars The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire | Rise and Consolidation

Chapter 1 Emperor Palpatine

Chapter 2 The Clone Wars

Chapter 3 The Imperial Senate

Chapter 4 The New Order

Chapter 5 Imperial Society

Chapter 6 Economy and Industry

g RISE AND CONSOLIDATION g CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Emperor Palpatine

To begin to unravel the intricacies and details of the Galactic Empire it is impossible to begin anywhere but with the Emperor himself. It is difficult to think of any single figure who has had more of an impact on the entire galaxy than Sheev Palpatine but, despite this, so much of what we know about him is open to question, interpretation, or doubt. His recent apparent resurrection and return on Exegol immediately forces us to reconsider much of what is known about Palpatine and the powers supposedly granted to him by the dark side of the Force. As we continue the excavation of Exegol and the interrogation of captured First Order officers we may yet uncover more details of Palpatine’s return. But beyond this, even re-examining what has been collectively known about him, there are many questions and concerns that need to be confronted. Palpatine existed in many guises and identities and trying to decipher which of them was really him is a challenge. Was he Sheev Palpatine the senator for Naboo and later supreme chancellor? Was he the Emperor—a man who tyrannically ruled the galaxy for a generation? Was he Darth Sidious the manipulative Sith Lord? Which of these aspects of his character was truly him?

Answering these questions is not easy. In the Galactic Republic, following the Naboo Crisis, Palpatine was one of the most prominent and publicly recognizable individuals in the galaxy. As the supreme chancellor he was beloved by the people and seemingly every movement he made outside of the Senate was broadcast by HoloNet News channels.¹ As Emperor he became a far more secretive and secluded figure. Various Imperial agencies then either rewrote or removed huge numbers of records that related to Palpatine’s early life, to such an extent that there are now serious issues regarding the veracity of much that has previously been written or accepted about him. How do we go about understanding the background, the life, and the motivations of a man like Palpatine when there is so much contradictory information available? I would suggest that, for understandable reasons, previous studies of Palpatine have often contained the same flaw. They have looked back at specific moments in his life—the decisions and actions that he took and the way he ruled the galaxy—and from there tried to draw conclusions about his personality and character. Ordinarily this approach makes a great deal of sense. But given the issues with the archival records relating to Palpatine, the concern remains that since much of the publicly available material from the years of the Galactic Empire is compromised, the surviving items exist for a reason—presumably to paint an acceptable image of the Emperor. I have no interest in creating a biography of a man with the materials he handpicked.

So, I am suggesting a different approach. One that has not been fully attempted before. Instead of looking at these past events and establishing Palpatine’s character from them, we reverse the process. We take what is apparent about Palpatine’s character and then consider how these impacted key moments in his rise to power. The difficulty of this is that many people have been distracted or blinded by Palpatine’s abilities. The dark side apparently gave him powers that are beyond the reckoning of most of us, and will be discussed in greater detail shortly. The ability to see at least elements of future events allowed him to lay out a grand plan of manipulation, subterfuge, and domination. As Emperor he appears to have, in some way, cheated death, suggesting Palpatine may be the most powerful Force-user to have ever existed. But these are not character traits. The dark side did not create the ambition or desires within Palpatine, they just provided him with the tools to achieve them. Palpatine, for all his power, all his ability to pull the strings of government, his charisma as a senator, and his scheming as Emperor was not a flawless or insurmountable genius. If you strip away all these aspects and all his mystical powers, what you are left with is the real Palpatine. An arrogant, vicious, petty man. A man so utterly determined to rule the galaxy in as oppressive a manner as possible and yet, simultaneously, so full of wounded pride that even the smallest acts of rebellion or rejection produced violent responses. A man who, for all his power, was so terrified of death that he effectively burned the galaxy to the ground to avoid it. With this in mind, we can now examine Palpatine’s rise to power as a senator and supreme chancellor, his reign as Emperor, and his activities as Sith Lord through the lens of what we can already establish about his personality. Taking these aspects as the starting point we can begin to see things differently.

Rise to Power

Many of the details of Sheev Palpatine’s early life are sketchy at best. Some records do remain and are useful for us, but either due to the general passage of time or, more probably, the actions of Imperial censors there are notable gaps. Despite this it is important to work with what is available and present educated theories regarding absences.

The Palpatine family was a reasonably notable—but not excessively so—wealthy house on the planet of Naboo. Records, backed up with surviving media reports from the time, suggest that Sheev Palpatine was born around 65 years before becoming Emperor.² Given the tendency of the Naboo nobility at the time, he was likely the beneficiary of a private education at one of the various elite colleges on the planet. Surviving information from the Naboo Planetary Tourist Bureau highlight the fact that Dee’ja Peak had a notable theatre and was a major center for the arts at the time of Palpatine’s youth.³ Given that Palpatine nurtured a love of opera and ballet throughout his adult life, it is plausible that he spent some time around Dee’ja Peak during his formative years.

Little information now survives about the fate of Palpatine’s family. By the time he was elected as a senator he did not appear to have any remaining relatives, but what happened to them is a mystery. It is entirely possible that they had simply passed on from old age but the complete absence of even an obituary for them in Naboo’s records leads me to be suspicious as to their fate. It also presents perhaps the first example of Palpatine’s underlying insecurities. What was he trying to hide regarding the eventual deaths of his family? If they were through natural causes then why hide them? Why continue to devote Imperial resources to maintaining this censorship? If he was already Emperor then what did it matter what people knew of his family? Unless perhaps they had rejected him on some level and his ultimate revenge was to remove all traces of them.

This is not the only notable gap in Palpatine’s life before becoming a senator. In the years following his education Palpatine appears to have spent a great deal of time traveling the galaxy. It was a topic he would sometimes reference during political speeches.⁴ The purpose of these travels is somewhat unclear. Ostensibly, Palpatine developed an interest in various forms of art and sculpture and became somewhat of a collector. Many of the pieces that would later decorate his political offices were supposedly collected in this period. But we also know that Palpatine was a master of hiding his real intentions behind plain-sight activity. It is not clear at what point in his life Palpatine first became aware of the Sith. It is only through material recently uncovered on Exegol that we even have an indication that the individual who would become his master was named Darth Plagueis.⁵ According to scrolls and writings that appear to have been dictated by Palpatine shortly before his most recent death, Plagueis had spent much of his life as a Sith Lord attempting to discover the secrets of eternal life. Such power appears to have greatly interested Palpatine himself.

But it seems fair to suggest that many of these lost years provided him ample cover to travel the galaxy either with Plagueis, or under his orders, while building his skills in the Force. Similarly, we can also wonder to what extent his collection of art provided Palpatine with cover to accrue ancient Sith artifacts. While serving as supreme chancellor, Palpatine was known to display in his office a carved bas-relief of a battle between Jedi and Sith forces which, given what we now know of his Force alignment, is an unsubtle display of allegiance that was seemingly completely missed by the Jedi of the time.⁶

When Palpatine became the senator for Naboo, around the age of 32 or 33, we must consider it likely he was already a Sith apprentice. However, certainly in the years before the Naboo Crisis, Palpatine exhibited what might have been one of the truly defining characteristics of this phase of his life: patience. Whether it was at the urging of his Sith master or just an innate part of his younger character is unclear, but Palpatine fostered an identity for himself over many years as an amiable, pleasingly charismatic, and yet ultimately irrelevant political figure for a Mid Rim world. In the years to come, Palpatine would need to become a master at hiding in plain sight and his time as Naboo’s senator allowed him to hone his craft. The Senate of the Republic was populated by more than its fair share of careerists and bureaucrats, corrupt figures, and mediocre minds. There were noble senators among them. Those who truly wanted to serve their constituents and the wider galaxy. Some of these played crucial roles in the founding of what would become the early political wing of the Rebel Alliance. But the unfolding rot of the Galactic Republic and the bureaucracy that kept the system in permanent cycles of stasis, best served the corrupt and the complacent.

In such company the best camouflage was not to appear as an honest man—who might be perceived as a danger—but rather as an unthreatening and unassuming one. Many looked at Palpatine and, seemingly seeing nothing in him, looked away again. This was an error that Palpatine seized upon. Because he was widely dismissed as an irrelevance, he fostered a position of counsellor and confidante for other senators in the Mid Rim. Many of whom—before taking a position on the political issues of the day, making speeches, or supporting bills—would seek out Palpatine for his calm, neutral, and unbiased opinion.⁷ Opinions that it appears he readily gave and asked for nothing in return.

By the time of the Naboo Crisis—where the forces of the Trade Federation blockaded the planet of Naboo in protest at a proposed taxation bill—Palpatine had been a senator for twenty years.⁸ He had spent more than two decades carefully building his public persona, all to then cash it in at this moment. Many, including officials in the Empire, have claimed that the Senate turned to Palpatine at this point out of recognition of his skills and sympathy with Naboo. This is probably, at best, only partially true. While it is hard to authoritatively declare each senator’s agenda, given the way they rose to oust his predecessor Finis Valorum it is arguable that Palpatine was not so much elected but that the previous supreme chancellor was ejected. While Valorum came to be looked back upon fondly by some senators in the Empire there is little to be gained in overlooking the fact that he had long lost control over the actual running of the Republic and that the state had indeed become bloated and corrupt. Some of that rot was likely the work of Palpatine and his Sith master, but they did not create the issues of the Republic. They manipulated them to their own ends. There is a difference.

Regardless of the motivations of those who lifted him to the position of supreme chancellor, Palpatine took on the role largely safe in the knowledge that, should his plans come to pass, he would never leave it.

The Naboo Crisis should not be overly detached from the Clone Wars that eventually followed. The defeat of the Trade Federation—a major company that had foolishly been elevated to the same level of power as entire star systems—pushed it and other conglomerates into seeking alternative pathways to even greater power. Systems in the Outer Rim had long chafed under the control of Coruscant and a Republic that appeared happy to take their money but not recognize their concerns. The Separatist movement had bubbled under the surface within the Senate. Perhaps this too was a reason people were happy to drop Palpatine into the seat of supreme chancellor—it would be his problem to deal with. Palpatine’s solution was Count Dooku—previously a Jedi Master and now, as has become apparent from the records on Exegol, a Sith Lord by the name of Darth Tyranus and Palpatine’s apprentice.⁹ Dooku would tip the galaxy into war and lead the Separatists, Palpatine would fight back as the Republic. The two men would play both sides of the same war. In desperation and fear of what this conflict would mean, senators willingly gave Palpatine ever increasing amounts of power and control without him ever having to request it. In this sense Palpatine did not take control of the Republic—it was presented to him.

While the Clone Wars will be covered in a subsequent chapter it is important to note that as supreme chancellor, even as he made changes to the constitution and begrudgingly—at least in public—accepted additional executive powers from the Senate, Palpatine’s mask of civility was already beginning to slip. Various political figures from the time describe Palpatine as becoming testier and possessing an increasingly brittle temper during the Clone Wars. Members of the Delegation of the 2,000—before their subsequent arrests—told Mon Mothma and Bail Organa that Palpatine had come remarkably close to threatening them in a meeting when they attempted to present their petition.¹⁰ At the time some of his detractors wondered if it was just the stresses of the war effort but, as we now know, there was no such stress. Palpatine already knew who was going to win. Instead, I would suggest that what they were seeing—as some like Mon Mothma suspected—was the real Palpatine shining through the façade. There was clearly only so long that even Palpatine could maintain the act and cloak his real nature.

For a man who we have already noted was clearly patient, that aspect of his character seems to have begun to run out in the final years of the Republic. One of the curiosities about Palpatine’s position as supreme chancellor is that it also kept him safe from the Jedi’s scrutiny until it was too late—the Jedi had believed that the Sith Lord they were searching for was someone who wanted to assume control of the galaxy, not someone who already had. But Palpatine did not just want this power and control. He wanted it to be unquestioned and unchallenged. As supreme chancellor he seemed to find it increasingly difficult, or perhaps even tedious, to welcome those who would not automatically accept his wishes and commands. The unwillingness of others to bow to his rule had begun to grate upon him. It would evaporate as Emperor.

Galactic Emperor

For a plan as long-sighted as Palpatine’s, timing was everything. The end of the Clone Wars was a messy, confused, and chaotic affair. There are parts of it we still do not adequately understand, but clearly Palpatine decided the time to act had come. His first step was to dispense with his existing apprentice, Count Dooku, and target the Jedi prodigy Anakin Skywalker as his replacement.¹¹ With Skywalker’s assistance secured, Palpatine moved to eliminate the Jedi Order as the primary obstacle to his ambitions. We may never know what actually happened in Palpatine’s office when representatives from the Jedi Council attempted to arrest him. The version recounted by Palpatine is obviously not remotely reliable.¹² What is clear, however, is that the man who emerged from that room appeared to most observers to be very different from the one who had previously entered it.

Palpatine was, in his own words, scarred and deformed by the Jedi. In immediate response he gave the command to the clone army, codenamed Order 66, to turn upon their Jedi commanders. The outcome was the extermination of almost the entirety of the Jedi Order.¹³ This would be the first mass killing of Palpatine’s rule. It would not be the last.

Palpatine’s declaration of Empire was perhaps the most important and horrifying moment of recent history. Not just because of what it meant; the dissolution of the Republic and the rise of the Galactic Empire, but because of how it was received in the Senate and on many of the Core Worlds. Palpatine had been a beloved wartime leader. His life had been threatened repeatedly during the Clone Wars—he had only recently survived an abduction by General Grievous and an apparent assassination attempt by the Jedi. He was now a man who had won a war and, by his own statements, brought peace to the galaxy. Many in the Senate made the exact same assumption that had recently doomed the Jedi; Palpatine was already running the galaxy, how serious could a reorganization with him as Emperor really be? So, they cheered and broke into spontaneous applause. Princess Leia Organa would note years later that her adoptive father Senator Bail Organa had once, sadly, recounted a story to her where an unnamed senator—one whom he implied was a close friend—had noted that the jubilant acclaim was how liberty died.¹⁴

Interestingly, having now apparently achieved everything that he had schemed so long for, it appears that the end result was not exactly what Palpatine was aiming for. As supreme chancellor he was one of the most public and recognizable figures in the galaxy. He was feted for the long hours he worked, the many committees that he met with, and the energy and vigor with which he threw himself into maintaining the Republic war effort.¹⁵ Yet effectively overnight after declaring himself Emperor, he became a recluse. The public explanation was that he needed time to recover from the apparently horrific wounds he had suffered at the hands of would-be Jedi assassins. While there may be some truth in that, it is unlikely to be the real reason. I believe that another underlying assumption about Palpatine has obscured our understanding of him. For too long we have accepted at face value that his quest to be Emperor was one motivated by the desire for absolute control. And, again, there is a large element of truth to this, but it misses a crucial aspect: Palpatine wanted to rule the galaxy, but he had no interest in running it.

Even in the latter stages of being supreme chancellor, Palpatine had set in motion a process whereby power would be centralized under him, but the actual responsibility for the administration of the galaxy would be placed under the control of various regional governors and, under the Empire, Moffs. The most important of these was Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin—a man who we will be dealing with a great deal in this study. Political operations on Coruscant were effectively handed over to the likes of Mas Amedda, Pollux Hax, and Sate Pestage. How these different figures would run sectors and systems was, as will be discussed in a forthcoming chapter, largely up to them. As long as order and Imperial authority was maintained, Palpatine had no interest in the minutiae. However, that is not to say that Palpatine was entirely oblivious or uninterested in the state of his Empire.

In the Imperial Senate a common joke about Mon Mothma, as she would later recount, was that she was obsessed with trying to save the Empire from the Emperor.¹⁶ Others within Palpatine’s administration seemingly shared similar thoughts. In imagery that was, briefly, broadcast on the holonet in 2 BBY, Minister Pitina Mar-Mas Voor who led the Coalition for Progress—a propaganda ministry—declared that Palpatine himself was ruining everything when it came to trying to convince the galaxy of the benevolence of the Empire. She described the Emperor as unlovable and someone who feels no need to promote the myth of prosperity because he has no interest in it coming true. Instead Palpatine’s only joy is watching his pet cyborg snap throats. Such treasonous statements immediately led to her execution by Darth Vader, but they do provide an insight into the transformation Palpatine had undergone now that he no longer felt any compunction to pretend to be a diligent and devoted civil servant.¹⁷ However, despite this there still appears to be a significant part of Palpatine that wanted those who feared him to also—on some level—love him. Princess Leia has recounted how Mon Mothma had once explained to her that the people of the galaxy know Palpatine is corrupt and cruel. They’ve known that for a generation, but despite this it didn’t stop Palpatine from attempting to rewrite history to present a more acceptable version of himself.¹⁸ Why did it matter so much to him?

Presumably Palpatine enjoyed the power of ruling the galaxy. Firsthand accounts from former Imperials, such as Mas Amedda—though these should be treated with some caution given the circumstances in which they were offered—suggest that he reveled in watching Darth Vader carry out his orders and executions, and took joy in the death and misery of others.¹⁹ But he also took any attempted resistance to his rule or act of rebellion incredibly personally. Fourteen years into his rule, in 5 BBY, a small group of rebels staged a successful heist in the Aldhani system and escaped with a considerable chunk of Imperial payroll. The Emperor was, apparently, furious. Records of meeting minutes and communications transcripts from the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) show that Colonel Wullf Yularen met with Palpatine personally in the aftermath and took the lead in a series of sweeping and brutal galaxy-wide legal responses.²⁰ Shortly afterward an attack by the Neo-Separatist Anto Kreegyr was defeated on Spellhaus. There were no prisoners taken from Kreegyr’s group in order to wipe the taste of Aldhani from the Emperor’s mouth.²¹ How brittle and bruised was Palpatine’s ego that such an event could cause this sort of response? It makes sense for the Empire to strike back in order to meet rebellion with further oppression, but Palpatine appeared to take such acts of resistance to heart. For an unlovable man a significant part of Palpatine appeared to want people to bow and suffer under him and to do so willingly and with gratitude.

If this was Palpatine’s aim, then his reclusiveness did not help matters. In the Core Worlds Palpatine remained an ongoing figure even if he only ever made rare appearances in the Senate. But further out in the galaxy, beyond the Mid Rim and on the Outer Rim, the Emperor himself was almost an irrelevance. He barely even existed as a symbol, replaced instead by stormtroopers, TIE fighters, and Star Destroyers. As peculiar as it sounds there are serious questions over whether or not some people on these planets even knew what the Emperor looked like. While his Declaration of Empire was broadcast widely on the holonet and, as a result, showed Palpatine’s new physical form after his battle with the Jedi, elements of his old appearance still proliferated. The propaganda poster Leadership, Order, Power that was displayed on multiple worlds such as Naboo and Vardos did not use the Emperor’s current appearance but instead reverted to how he had looked as supreme chancellor.²² Similar images were regularly displayed on the walkways of Coruscant and they too showed a much younger version of Palpatine, as did the Emperor’s museum on Coruscant. The docent in charge of that institution would regularly take guests on tours through the exhibitions outlining Palpatine’s rise from humble beginnings to becoming one of the heroes we need.²³ There are also indications from within old Imperial records that, at times, Palpatine would use a filter on his hologram projections to appear as he once had rather than how he currently did.²⁴ Perhaps the reason for this was ego, but again it makes us wonder why Palpatine cared at all about what people thought of him when he was already Emperor. Maybe he realized the issues his current appearance caused, and feared his mutilated visage would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, but I’m not convinced. Given Palpatine’s ongoing arrogance I think it is reasonable to suggest he wanted people to buy into the propaganda images for more personal reasons. Regardless though, for the most important figure in the galaxy to have no clear visual recognition on some worlds is staggering, though interestingly the previously mentioned busts of Palpatine currently available on Batuu depict his face after the injuries inflicted by the Jedi.

There also exist further questions regarding what exactly Palpatine did with his time, having essentially become a malleable figure rather than something present in people’s lives. His appearances in the Senate were so rare as to become notable events in themselves. His public appearances were even scarcer than that. He maintained a private box at the Grand Imperial Opera House but it is unclear how often he visited. Other guests sometimes noted the appearance of the red-robed Royal Guards within the building but that is not definitive proof that Palpatine himself was in attendance.²⁵ It could just as easily have served his purposes to make people believe he moved around. Having become Emperor he had relocated himself to the old Jedi Temple, rebranding it as the Imperial Palace so that he could rule the galaxy from the home of his defeated foes. He also had a small retreat in the countryside of Naboo, but whatever he did there is not clear. The building was stripped of all equipment and material before it could be explored by the New Republic following the planet’s liberation.

Having acquired all of this power, the Emperor did not seem inclined to directly wield it himself or to ever interact with outsiders again. If he had no interest in seeing the lies and promises of prosperity come to pass and he was not actively involved with the running of the Empire, what was he doing?

Sith Lord

It is possible that an additional assumption about Palpatine’s long-running plan has blinded us to an extra-important element. The notion that Palpatine rose to power, then destroyed the Jedi Order and the Republic, simply in order to become Emperor and rule the galaxy, makes a great deal of sense but it also suffers from the supposition that this form of recognizable power was all that Palpatine wanted. But this power was not eternal. Palpatine could sit upon the throne for decades but eventually he would die and the Empire would pass to another. It is here that we must understand the potential underlying element to his Sith studies. Palpatine did not simply want to rule the galaxy, he wanted to rule it forever. He had no interest in having a reign that expired at the end of his life and he does not strike me as the sort of person who was interested in retirement or succession. Should we now perhaps be wondering if everything Palpatine did as senator, supreme chancellor, and Emperor was designed to provide him with the time, safety, security, and resources to pursue his actual goal: discovering the secrets of immortality? If we consider the enemies removed along the way and the ability to now spend the wealth of the galaxy in whatever ways he wanted, we must wonder if Palpatine saw the Empire as a means to an end—the swiftest and easiest way to ensure that his will was enforced upon the galaxy so absolutely that he would be free to uncover the solution to eternal life without challenge or distraction.

The knowledge that Palpatine was also a Sith Lord going by the name of Darth Sidious was probably one of the most closely guarded secrets in history. At some point in his time as supreme chancellor he must have revealed his identity to the likes of Mas Amedda and other bureaucrats and officials who would later go on to effectively run the Empire. We can only be sure that those who continued to serve accepted this information and kept the secret. Any who were repulsed by it likely did not live much longer, and it may be worth a more detailed examination of officials who worked with Palpatine over the years but then either faded into obscurity or unexpectedly passed away.

I am aware the extent to which discussions about the Force, the Jedi, and the Sith can come to sound increasingly implausible. Even before the recent war, I had spent years researching and uncovering the historical ruins and material left behind by generations of Sith. Among these remains I have encountered stories of powers and prophecies that stretch the very limit of credulity. But I have also seen things that I cannot rationally explain without accounting for the existence of the Force. During an archaeological dig on Yoturba I believe I saw the remnant of a long dead Sith Lord take control of one of my colleagues. I saw Luke Skywalker use the Force to levitate him clean off the ground. Both Luke Skywalker and Rey have given detailed accounts of their own encounters with Emperor Palpatine. Both mentioned how he could shoot lightning from his fingertips. How he could move things with his mind. How he claimed to be able to view the future. Many of these stories are supported by testimonials from ex-Imperials. And if these stories about Palpatine are true, if he could do these things, then the tales of the ancient Sith must also be reconsidered.

I spent years chasing around the galaxy searching for sites of Sith activity or temples, where some few scant clues could be dug from the ground to illuminate a fraction of the mystery. This was all before Exegol. Excavating the temple here may take an entire generation. Never before have we found so much material relating to the Sith in a single place. It appears, given our preliminary surveys, that Palpatine had spent years, either before or after his death at Endor, gathering up relics from worlds that had previously been thought to be myths like Moraband (or Korriban as it is referred to in Sith texts) and Dromund Kaas. This wealth of material could prove to be revelatory to our understanding of the Sith and of Palpatine’s life as a Sith Lord. As a historian this is hugely exciting; we now stand on the verge of knowing more than we ever have on these topics. But we must also exercise caution. I have seen enough of Sith relics to know that they can be tremendously dangerous. Most forms of historical and archaeological research cannot be rushed, but that is particularly true in this case. There are plenty of Sith legends which speak of ancient relics or weapons that will not just take a victim’s life but also their soul.

At present we know precious little about Palpatine’s time learning under Darth Plagueis and barely any more about how he trained his own apprentices, but there is a clear hope that this will soon be expanded upon. It appears clear from the earliest results of our survey on Exegol that at various points Palpatine had at least three Sith students: Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and Darth Vader.²⁶ It is also clear that Palpatine had no qualms in dispensing with his students should circumstances dictate or better opportunities arise. According to these records Maul was taken from his people on Dathomir at a young age and spent years learning from Palpatine but, following his defeat on Naboo, he was—although presumed dead for some time—discarded. Maul had been a ferocious warrior but he did not have the charisma or leadership skills that would be necessary to lead the Separatists. Dooku was a much better fit for that role. However, Dooku would also be tossed aside once he had fulfilled his purpose in favor of Anakin Skywalker who was both younger and possessed significantly more power potential. What did Palpatine want to use that power for? Vader, as will be discussed, would often operate as the Emperor’s roving enforcer. But this was after the severe injuries that left him encased in foreboding armor and dramatically weakened as a result. Palpatine may have nominally adhered to the Sith Rule of Two—a directive which ensured that there could only ever be a pair of Sith Lords in existence; a master and an apprentice—but I find it unlikely he wanted to train Skywalker so he could be overthrown.²⁷

My previous research into the ancient lore of both the Jedi and the Sith often found references to a prophesied individual. The Jedi called them the Chosen One while fragments of Sith writings make mention of the coming of the Sith’ari. Both of these legends share certain aspects and details regarding the coming of one who was born of the Force itself and who would wield tremendous power. The Jedi believed this individual would bring balance to the Force, the Sith that they would lead them to glory. Prophesies are difficult things to decipher and are often more a matter of faith than of destiny. But it appears, both from tales within the Jedi Order in the last days of the Republic and from scrolls retrieved from Exegol, that both sides believed the individual in question to be Anakin Skywalker.²⁸ Anakin was trained as a Jedi before falling to the dark side of the Force and adopting the identity of Darth Vader. If, as the stories suggest, Anakin Skywalker was conceived purely by the Force, it seems plausible that Palpatine believed Anakin may have held the solution to a way of unnaturally extending his own life.

While others ran the galaxy for him, Palpatine may well have spent his time and energies in communing with the dark side of the Force and undertaking a variety of Sith experiments. The facility that was constructed on Exegol and that appeared to bring him back from the dead was not constructed overnight. Palpatine must have been funneling incredible quantities of resources and trusted personnel into the operation. Such long-standing investment must have been coming from a place of fear that he may not crack the pathway to immortality in time. Palpatine had good cause to be afraid. No sooner had he declared himself Emperor, than the same day he was attacked by Grandmaster Yoda—the head of the recently destroyed Jedi Order—in the Senate building.²⁹ Though the two fought each other to a standstill, Palpatine must have realized how close to defeat he had come. This may also account for some of Palpatine’s reclusiveness: a desire to never be that vulnerable again unless he was able to pick the battlefield.

Which produces another strange quirk of Palpatine’s personality—he was remarkably willing to risk his own life at points if he deemed the potential rewards great enough or had foreseen that he would be successful. He allowed himself to be captured by General Grievous at the end of the Clone Wars, almost dying when the Invisible Hand crash-landed on Coruscant, and, while Emperor, he used himself as bait during a visit to Ryloth that brought a rebel group out of hiding. When each of these gambits worked, it helped shore up Palpatine’s power. When one finally did not, it cost him everything. His plan to try and convert Luke Skywalker on the second Death Star while fighting ensued on Endor must rank as one of his most arrogant and foolhardy. The dark side had given Palpatine significant power—both Luke Skywalker and Rey reflected upon their encounters with the Emperor and described him as terrifying. But, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, the dark side did not create Palpatine’s ideas and persona, it just empowered him. Having already succeeded with Anakin Skywalker, Palpatine could not conceive of failing with Luke. Here again we see signs of the man who would