After Palpatine’s rise to power and election as supreme Chancellor of the Republic, he
kept a deep, dark secret in his office that not even the Jedi could sense.
Palpatine stored the ashes of his former Master, Darth Plagueis inside of a ceremonial Sith
spirit urn to both remind himself of his monumental defeat over the Dark Lord, but also a much
darker and disturbing purpose.
I’m going to break down exactly how Palpatine stored the Ashes of Darth Plagueis inside
of his office during Revenge of the Sith, and why it clouded the vision of the Jedi
Order, eventually leading to their downfall.
So before we dive into it, make sure you hit the subscribe button for more awesome Star
Wars Lore content.
Throughout his years as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, Chancellor Palpatine welcomed
many politicians, diplomats, executives and members of the Jedi order into his sprawling
offices.
None of these people however, had any idea about the dark secret that Palpatine was hiding
right next to the entrance of his office.
As each one of these many people walked through the door to visit Palpatine, they were passing
the remains of Darth Plagueis, the Sith Master of Darth Sidious.
So why did Palpatine do this?
On the night before his election to Supreme Chancellor, Darth Plagueis invited his dark
apprentice, Palpatine, to visit his luxurious Coruscant penthouse in the Political district,
to celebrate the fact that Palpatine was about to finish their grand Sith plan, and ascend
to the position of chancellor the next day.
Palpatine told Plagueis that Once elected to the position, he would amend the Constitution
to allow him to serve as a co-chancellor with him, completing the Sith grand plan, and installing
the two most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith as the leaders of the Republic.
After many long months of contemplation and planning however, Palpatine finally decided
that he would complete the Sith’s Grand plan to rule the galaxy alone, without the
help of Plagueis, placing himself as the sole leader of the Republic, and using his own
apprentice Darth Maul to carry out his dirty work.
Once the Plagueis sat down with Sidious to begin their celebrations, he ordered his loyal
droid, 11-4D to pour glasses of Coruscant’s finest wine for the two.
Palpatine allowed the Plagueis to become extremely drunk on the fine red wine, while he himself
remained alert and ready to execute his master as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Palpatine slyly watched his master become increasingly intoxicated, patiently waiting
until Plagueis could no longer keep his eyes open.
Once the moment finally arrived, Palpatine unleashed a shocking torrent of sith force
lightning on him, devastating every inch of his body and scorching every part of his skin.
Palpatine taunted his master, bragging that he was the most powerful Sith to ever live,
much more so than Plagueis.
As Palpatine slowly tortured Darth Plagueis to death, a monumental disturbance in the
force was felt on Coruscant and throughout the Galaxy.
A mysterious dark cloud surrounded Plagueis’ lifeless body as he died, leading Palpatine
to believe that Plagueis had learned how to save himself from dying.
He was extremely worried that plagueis would return in the form of a new host body, or
even in his own old one, and because of this, he knew he had to destroy Plagueis’ body
before that could happen.
In the days following Plagueis’ death, his body was collected by members of the Intergalactic
Banking Clan, who kept his funeral service and resting place a complete secret.
At the service, the Muuns of the Banking Clan took Control of Plagueis’ banking assets
and cremated his body into ashes, keeping their final resting place a confidential secret.
It’s unclear just how Palpatine obtained the ashes after this point, but there are
a few possibilities.
The first is that Palpatine was given Plagueis’ ashes as a sign of respect by the other members
of the Intergalactic Banking clan because of the close friendship and relationship that
they displayed to the public.
Of course, Sidious had a deep hatred for his master from a very early time, but the public
and even Plagueis himself was unaware of this because Palpatine kept their public image
incredibly clean and well orchestrated.
The second possibility is that Palpatine dived deeply into the force to sense the location
of his former master’s ashes, and retrieved them from their secret hiding spot, probably
on Muunilinst.
It’s even possible that the members of the banking clan did not turn his body to ashes
themselves, but rather buried him, as Muun tradition would usually dictate.
It is certainly more in line with Sith tradition to turn one’s body to ashes, than Muun tradition,
so its possible that Sidious gathered the Muun’s body and took it to a secretive Sith
Burial site, where he burned Plagueis’ damaged body, turning it to a dark, black pile of
ashes.
Either way, once he obtained the ashes of Plagueis, he stored them in two ancient sith
Spirit urns, which held a deep significance to the Sith and a strong connection to the
dark side of the force.
The urns were often used by Sith Lords in the Darth Bane line to store important sith
artifacts and tools, and of course also, the ashes of dead Sith Lords.
As Palpatine walks with Anakin inside of his office in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin is unknowingly
surrounded by the ashes of Darth Plagueis, further symbolising that darkness surrounds
him in all directions.
As we know from an unfinished Clone Wars episode, Ahsoka was to visit an ancient Sith Shrine
beneath the Jed Temple, which was being used by Darth Sidious to cloud the Jedi Order with
the dark side and prevent them from using their Jedi foresight.
In this Clone wars episode, Ahsoka was going to come inches away from discovering the true
identity of Darth Sidious, and even held back his blue Sith force flames through a door.
These were the same blue flames that we saw in Star Wars rebels, when Sidious tried to
capture Ahsoka and Ezra Bridger in the World Between worlds.
In combination with this, Palpatine likely used the urns in his office to emanate a strong
dark aura, further clouding the minds of the Jedi Order, and strengthening his connection
to the darkside.
It’s possible that he even tapped into this dark presence during his fight with Mace Windu
and the other Jedi masters when they attempted to arrest him in his office.
Palpatine also chose keep the ashes of a Sith Lord, the arch enemies of the Jedi Order inside
of his office to taunt them, and to symbolize that they were no longer in control of the
Republic.
Palpatine knew that The republic had already begun to fall at that point, but the Jedi
were too blind to realize it.
As we know from the statues in his office, and the many instances of him subtly bragging
about being a Sith Lord, Palpatine loved to taunt the Jedi, who didn’t yet realize that
he was the Sith Lord they had been looking for.
The combination of the ancient Sith Shrine below the Jedi temple that Ahsoka was unable
to warn the Jedi about, and the remains of Darth Plagueis being kept so close to the
Jedi temple prevente the Jedi from being able to sense that Palpatine was a dark side user
through the force, and made their connection to the light side of the force significantly
weaker, as Mace Windu stated.
Now I don’t know about you guys, but before the Last Jedi came out, I was really hoping
that Darth Plagueis would be confirmed to be snoke, who had actually saved himself from
dying, in contrast to what Palpatine told Anakin in Revenge of the Sith.
Despite Snoke just being a creation of Palaptine himself, it’s still possible that Plagueis’
ashes were somehow involved in the process of surviving his fall down the reactor shaft
on the second Death Star.
It’s very possible that the Sith Eternal cultists took Plagueis’ ashes from Palpatine’s
office after his death and moved them to the ancient and secretive Sith world of exegol,
to be with the other fallen Sith Lords which we know are buried there.
On Exegol we see many large statues of previous Sith Lords, with their ashes or bodies potentially
being right there with the statues.
With the dark essence surrounding Plagueis’ body after his death at the hands of Sidious
on Coruscant, its possible that Palpatine was able to use the life force of his former
master to keep him alive long enough to create Clone bodies of himself to transfer his true
essence into.
We also know from the Rise of Skywalker that the Rule of two is a physical process which
involves transferring the essence of each Sith Master into the Sith apprentice to continue
the Darth Bane Line, making it almost certain that Palpatine has a deeper connection to
the ashes of his master and even the Sith lords before him.
But either way I definitely think we’ll be seeing more content with Darth Plagueis
in the future, so there may be an opportunity to tell the story of what Palpatine actually
did with the ashes after Revenge of the Sith.
Who knows, maybe they could still be sitting on Excel, being preserved by the surviving
Sith eternal cultists on the planet, after the Battle of Exegol.
But let me know in the comments down below if you’d like to see Plagueis ashes used
in future Star Wars content.
Maybe it can help to explain how Sith essence transfer like Momin and palpatine used, actually
worked.Or even be used to communicate with Plagueis through the cosmic force, as the
Sith version of force ghosts, which we know they can’t achieve.
So that’s exactly how Palpatine stored the Ashes of Darth Plagueis inside of his office
on Coruscant during Revenge of the Sith.
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Cheers guys, hope to see you in the next one!