From being a spoiled child of a wealthy family on naboo to becoming Emperor of the Galaxy,
Palpatine achieved what no other Sith Lord before him had, which was wiping out the Jedi
Order and ruling the entire galaxy.
So when he wasn’t scheming to achieve power or later flexing said power as emperor, what
did Palpatine do in his free time?
Well as a child Palpatine mainly spent his free time alone.
He didn’t have many friends and his family treated him like an outcast.
As he grew older and became a teenager, he used his family’s wealth to purchase forbidden
texts on Sith lore.
He read these texts on his own time outside of school and his other responsibilities.
It was from these books that he realized how he was going to achieve the power he so craved.
He kept his knowledge of the Sith a complete secret, even to his soon to be Sith Master
Darth Plagueis, initially telling the Muun that he barely knew much about the dark side
order.
The one thing he really enjoyed doing as a teenager was speeder bike racing.
He actually desired to become a professional racer at one point in his life.
He loved the thrill and the sense of danger the races gave him.
The rush they gave him was unlike anything else.
Once he became a senator and later the supreme chancellor, his tastes in entertainment changed
quite a bit.
Instead of speeding down a track at a hundred miles an hour, Palpatine now enjoyed the simple
pleasures of the opera, frequently attending the famous Galaxies Opera House and owning
his own private viewing chamber within the theater.
He found himself appreciating fine artwork and sculptures, going out of his way to surrounding
his offices and apartments with antique art and statues.
He also took an interest in reading tons of literature, particularly poems.
One collection of poems he really enjoyed reading were written by a poet by the name
of Asenec, who was infamous for his poems being very dark, sickening and outright offensive.
Once he arose to the title of Emperor, Palpatine found his first few years as ruler of the
galaxy to be an extremely busy task.
The few moments of time he had for himself, Palpatine had surviving Jedi who had been
starved in their cells be brought before him and forced to fight each other just for his
mere entertainment.
The Jedi that won would be allowed to live if they submitted to him and served his will.
He also spent a ton of time training secret spies and assassins to look after his subordinates
whom he feared could betray him.
And this was done for pretty everyone, even Darth Vader.
One of the more interesting things Palpatine did in his free time was write a ton of books.
These books went over many things, including his political beliefs and how he rose to power,
to his research and experiments concerning the dark side and Sith sorcery.
Researching all the secrets of the Jedi archives and obtaining Sith artifacts from ancient
Sith Temples was another activity he did outside of his formal work as galactic emperor.
One of the things he spent much of his time studying was trying to learn the secret to
immortality.
He owned many palaces and resorts across multiple planets, from naboo to his secret fortress
world Byss.
His most famous palace was the one on Coruscant, which was the largest building on the entire
planet.
Once he created the entire structure of his new empire and appointed the appropriate moffs
and governors to rule on his behalf, he began to reduce his direct impact on the empire
and began doing the things we mentioned earlier rather than rule.
Although Palpatine craved power throughout his entire life, once he finally got it and
had no serious opposition against it, he kind of got bored.
There was nothing super thrilling of just sitting on a throne and watching your empire
expand and build itself up.
He liked being in danger, being right there in the moment where history was being made.
A natural tick in him which has been within him since his young teenager years during
his speeder bike racing days to the very moment up to his death, where he put himself right
in the front lines of the galactic civil war during the battle of Endor.
Just so he could witness the destruction of the Rebellion in his own eyes and also be
the one who turned Luke Skywalker to the dark side.
This can also be seen with Palpatine playing power games with the Black Sun leader Xizor
and Lord Vader, forcing the two into a bitter rivalry to appease him.
A rivalry that amused him but also indirectly caused chaos within the political structure
of the empire.
Even as the emperor Palpatine enjoyed scheming and creating elaborate plots to achieve his
plans, such as when he tried replacing Vader with Galen Marek, later referred to as Starkiller,
by constructing an overly complex plan of rooting out Rebellious leaders while also
forging Starkiller to take Vader’s place.
Seeing how things played out, Palpatine pretty much indirectly caused the Rebel Alliance
to be created and lead to his eventual downfall.