Sith Related Ramblings

[4thofeleven]

When I was a kid I found an old Star Wars annual for sale at a garage sale. It’s pretty cool – it came out when the original movie did, and it’s got information on all the main actors – including David Prowse, though oddly, not James Earl Jones – and a comic book of the movie – only half of which is in colour for some reason – and a variety of bizarre comments. Example:

”It may be lying ahead of us, it may have taken place long ago – who can say? One world’s past is another world’s future…”

I’ve spent years trying to make sense of that particular comment…

Anyway, about half-way through the comic, the dialogue of which occasionally resembles that of the movie, Darth Vader curses “By the immortal gods of the Sith!”, and a helpful caption explains that Vader is the lord of the Sith. When I was a kid, I always thought it was pretty cool that I knew that, since the movies themselves never say what Lord Vader is actually lord of. I assumed Vader was pretty much the archetypal Sith Lord, that they were some sort of warrior knights, and that that’s why Vader’s always commanding from the front lines, and why he duels Obi-Wan rather than just having the storm troopers blast him – he’s following some sort of Sith code of chivalry. I even had a theory that Vader’s armour is based on ancient Sith designs, and that’s why the officers on the Death Star don’t take him seriously, any more than a modern general would take seriously a guy in plate armour who’s claiming to be a Knight Templar.

 

So it kinda surprised me when the prequels came out and revealed that Palpatine’s a Sith Lord. I’m not saying it was a bad idea, but it didn’t mesh with my personal assumptions about what a Sith is like. Vader’s a warrior; he fights with light sabre from the front lines; he personally boards Princess Leia’s ship, leads his own squadron at Yavin, leads a squad of storm troopers on Hoth. Palpatine’s practically the opposite. He stays home, sends out other people to do his work; even at Endor, he’s not giving the orders himself, he’s just a spectator. In RotS, he uses a light sabre only in an emergency, for self-defence, and he never uses one in RotJ.

Now, obviously, Vader and Palpatine are both very different men, living in very different situations, and that doesn’t mean they can’t both be members of the same sect. Vader’s an apprentice, Palpatine is the master. We see Vader in an era when the Empire rules supreme, while most of the times we see Palpatine, he has to hide his true powers and abilities. Vader/Anakin is a lot more impulsive than most people, while Palpatine is very self-controlled and looks to the big picture.

Still, I can’t help but think that Palpatine had no more attachment to the Sith order than he had to any of the other organizations he claimed to belong to or lead. Palpatine’s an opportunist; it would not be out of character for him to study the Sith and learn their skills, while viewing them with the same degree of contempt that he viewed the Jedi or the Republic. He’s very quick to sacrifice his apprentices – we see two meet their end in the PT, and I doubt Maul was his first. I also think it’s interesting that Palpatine doesn’t openly display his Sith allegiances upon taking the Imperial throne -  his goal all along was not an ideological victory of the Sith over the Jedi, or even vengeance for the ancient Sith Order, but simply the achievement of supreme power for himself, and he abandons the Darth Sidious persona as soon as he no longer needs it.

Palpatine’s not even much of a force-user; we only see him use the force twice*, both times summoning lightning, and both times arguably in self-defence. Against Mace Windu, Palpatine is defending himself, though how helpless he really was is debatable. With Luke, it’s less clear, but I think you can make an argument that once it became clear that Luke was not going to serve the Empire, Palpatine decided it would be best to eliminate him as quickly as possible before he regained his strength. Palpatine will fall back on the force in an emergency, but it’s not something he sees as his primary tool; I don’t think he identifies himself primarily as a force user.

So maybe that’s why the Jedi are so inept at identifying Palpatine as a Sith – it’s because he’s not, he’s just borrowing their reputation to instil a little fear in his underlings and to buy the allegiance of useful idiots like Maul and Dooku. The Jedi were expecting dark knights like Maul or Vader; instead, they faced a cunning politician who cares nothing for any codes of honour, even the self-serving ones of the Sith Order. If he hadn’t already recruited Vader in his Sith Lord persona, Palpatine would probably have never bothered with the Sidious identity again once the Clone Wars ended… and the Sith would have died on the same day as the Jedi. As it is, the Emperor maintains his role as Sith master apparently only to humor Darth Vader.

 

* I think. I should probably re-watch the PT someday - I haven't seen any of them since they were in cinemas... but I don't want to buy the DVDs, and the local video stores have all closed down.

 

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, this is interesting. Vader as the guy in archaic armor makes a lot of sense given some of the Imperial officers' comments in ANH. But Palpatine as an opportunist who doesn't actually care much about the Sith also makes sense.

Now, two of Palpatine's apprentices (Maul and Vader) are of the warrior-type. Dooku is more of a subtle manipulator like Palpatine, but then, he only became Palpatine's apprentice when he was seventy or so. And he can also fight (though probably not as well as when he was younger). I think you can fit this into a standard Sith-training timeline. An apprentice is first trained to be more of a warrior to support the master's schemes. But since the Sith are only two, and have to operate in secret, that's not enough: the apprentice has to learn to be a clever puppet-master to get to be master someday, and just to survive. Maul was a failure either because he died too early to get to the second stage or because he just wasn't cut out for it (we're not sure which). Dooku was already so advanced in the second stage that he was a threat to Palpatine, who knows all about apprentices killing masters, so he had to go. Anakin was a great warrior, but couldn't manipulate his way out of a paper bag, so he's more easily controlled.

And I think there's the weakness in the Sith succession process: the masters won't want an apprentice who's too good, because they'll probably off the masters, but if they're not good enough, what happens to the Sith? Plagueis must have gotten a lot more than he bargained for with Palpatine. And it sounds like Plagueis was more into the whole Sith thing, going around creating life and whatnot, so maybe Palpatine was actually the guy who really screwed things up for the Sith because he didn't care about ensuring the succession and proper Sith domination as much as the rest had. On the other hand, he managed to wipe out most of the Jedi, which none of the previous Sith had managed, so maybe not. Hmm.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Sith traditionally challenge each other in some sort of formal duel – you don’t stab your master in the back, you openly announce you think you’ve surpassed him, and then the two of you step in the arena and battle it out. Your master doesn’t mind, because he believes in the Sith ideology, and he’s prepared to give his life to ensure the Sith remain strong. A formal duel to the death as the only means of promotion ensure that only people who really believe in the Sith ideals and goals are likely to go through with apprenticeship, because you know there’s not going to be a happy ending for you once you join – unless you consider the continued strength of the Sith a cause worth dying for. Palpatine disagrees, and makes sure that none of his apprentices ever get that far...

[sunnyskywalker]

That makes sense. There must be some formal way of passing it on, analogous to the Jedi Trials. I'd bet that the master sets the apprentice a series of increasingly difficult tasks that require cunning and subtlety when he thinks the apprentice is getting close as a check against apprentices who are great at fighting (maybe better than the aging master) but not much else. Maul's task of tracking down the Jedi might be one of these - he did manage to kill them, but he didn't think of anything clever like sneaking over and sabotaging the ship on Tatooine so they couldn't fly away, so he's not good enough. (Luckily for Palpatine, Obi-Wan took out Maul for him.) But if he had been, after a few more tasks, it would have been duel time. But I think Palpatine very carefully trained Maul so he would only be good at fighting, because like you said, he's more concerned about holding on to power himself.