Palpatine first met Anakin in revenge of the Sith.
He was the chosen one for the Jedi and now, for palpatine.
Palps coerced anakin patiently into the dark side since he first met him.
Strategically planting seeds into his mind until the time came to do what must be done
and execute order 66.
Anakin was Palpatine’s protoge, he was everything to him.
He was to be more powerful than Sidious, and to rule the galaxy with his powerful apprentice.
However, when Anakin fell to Obi-Wan, or rather, to his own arrogance in thinking he could
defeat his former master atop a less favourable position, against the high ground, Sidious
was devastated.
In the film, Revenge of the Sith, we see Vader being put together in Palpatine’s medical
facility on Coruscant.
The best medical droids at her service, applying an out of date suit so Vader would live with
the pain of his failure, mentally and physically, forever.
But did you ever wonder, what was Sidous thinking while Vader was being put together?
His prize new apprentice, the one he had tried to turn to the dark side, had now just become
a fraction of the man he almost became.
How did Sidious take it?
How did he feel about it?
What did he think of Vader now?
The following excerpt comes not from Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization
of the film, but rather Patricia c Wrede’s junior novelization of revenge of the sith,
and it’s quite interesting what Palpatine’s thoughts were.
Here we go.
“Do it,” the Emperor snapped.
The droids bobbed their consent and went to work.
Darth Sidious paced.
Even an Emperor, even the Dark Lord of the Sith, with all the resources and technology
of the new Galactic Empire behind him, can do little to hurry the healing process.
Much later, a medical droid appeared.
“My lord, the construction is finished,” the droid informed him.
“He lives.”
“Good,” Darth Sidious said with something very like relief.
“Good.”
The droid brought him to the operating room.
A black figure lay on the operating table.
Black gloves and boots covered the new mechanical limbs; a mirror shiny black mask hid the scarred
face.
The table began to tilt, moving the figure to an upright position.
There was the sound of breathing.
Yes, Darth Sidious thought.
He will terrify them.
And even if he is not as powerful as I had once hoped, he will still be far more powerful
than anyone else.
“Lord Vader,” Darth Sidious said.
“You may rise.”
What blows my mind about this is that even though Sidious is as powerful as he is, and
has always been so patient, we’ve never actually really seen him worry or look stressed
out, maybe except in the early stages of his battle against Yoda, but nothing in comparison
to pacing around anxiously.
I’m sure he was worried what would happen if Vader didn’t survive, if he was merely
a shell of what Anakin could have become.
Where would Sdious have gone?
Would he have found Maul again?
Would he train his old apprentice to do his bidding?
Or would he find a new apprentice to take Vader’s place?
That’s a fan fiction for another time.
The next paragraph describes what anakin felt as he turned his head and spoke for the first
time, essentially it writes that a mechanical voice spoke for him.
And f you didn’t know, Vader’s throat was completely burned, so he whispered and
it was super raspy, so the sound modulator amplified his voice.
It had to, otherwise no one would be able to hear or understand him.
Vader then asks about padme, where is padme, is she safe, is she alright, to which Sidious
thinks this before he tells him that he, anakin, killed her.
It’s the most twisted inner monologue I’ve read in Star Wars, so buckle up.
And now, the final touch, Darth Sidious thought.
The words that will bind him forever to the dark side.
And they won’t even be a lie, not really.
“I’m afraid she died,” he said, putting a hint of gentle sorrow and reproach into
his voice.
“It seems that in your anger, you killed her.”
Vader groaned in protest.
And then he
The fact that Sidious knows this is going to destroy
Vader, and yet does it for the sole reason to trap him to Sidious’ orders for the rest
of his life, is truly, Sidious.
He knows that once Vader is left with nothing and no one, Sidious is all he has left, and
he’ll be loyal to him forever.
That is
of course until his son, the last bit of padme
comes
along
and helps him bring balance to
the force.