Sheev Palpatine, a.k.a. Darth Sidious, has always been an enigmatic character in Star
Wars lore, and much of his role in the saga remains shrouded in mystery.
After his unexpected return at the end of the Disney sequel trilogy, let's unearth some
facts about the evil Emperor you might not know.
A few years ago, one of the longest-running Star Wars fan theories was finally confirmed:
Yes, Darth Sidious really did create Anakin Skywalker.
All of the clues had been there for a while, of course.
In The Phantom Menace, Anakin's mother Shmi tells Qui-Gon Jinn that she became pregnant
with Anakin without the help of a father, while Qui-Gon discovers that young Anakin
has an abnormally high midi-chlorian count.
In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine tells Anakin the story of his former master, Darth Plagueis,
who figured out how to use midi-chlorians to create life.
According to the movie's making-of book, Lucas actually wrote a scene making Anakin's parentage
explicit, but the lines were cut from the final film.
Years later, in 2018, the 25th issue of Marvel's Darth Vader comic series settled the matter
by apparently showing Vader dwelling on the actual moment that Palpatine as Darth Sidious
zapped his mother's womb with dark side energy.
There's enough wiggle room built in that Lucasfilm could retcon this if they want, but for now
it's pretty clear: Palpatine is Darth Vader's daddy.
Not many Star Wars fans are aware of Emperor Palpatine's true connection with the Jedi
Temple.
Thousands of years before the formation of the Galactic Republic, the Sith erected a
shrine on the planet Coruscant that emitted dark side energy.
After defeating the Sith, the Jedi Order built the Jedi Temple directly over the foundations
of the Sith shrine.
This was done for two different reasons to symbolically bury the legacy of the Sith and
to neutralize the dark energy that the shrine radiated.
However, after Darth Sidious defeated the Jedi order, he converted what was left of
the Jedi temple into his personal Imperial Palace and secretly excavated the Sith shrine.
Palpatine had the unearthing of the shrine completed entirely by droids so that even
Lord Vader would not be aware of its existence.
The Emperor used the refurbished Sith shrine as his own private sanctum where he could
meditate on the dark side of the Force, and was eventually planning on allowing Vader
to join him.
Together, he believed they could use the shrine's connection to the dark side to discover more
Sith knowledge and powers.
Palpatine had no remorse for the people of his own home planet when he planned Operation
Cinder, a contingency plan to ensure the longevity of the Galactic Empire should he ever be killed.
Palpatine believed that if the Empire was unable to prevent his assassination, then
the entire organization was a failure and did not deserve to live on without him.
In order to fulfill his vision, Palpatine created a plan to annihilate both the Empire
and its enemies should he ever perish, and entrusted a select group of Imperial officers
with the duty of rebuilding a new Empire.
The plan was to use a series of satellites to form a climate disruption array capable
of laying waste to resistance-allied planets with catastrophic weather events.
After the Emperor's apparent death during the Battle of Endor, one of these climate
disruption arrays was used to wreak havoc upon Palpatine's home planet of Naboo . The
satellites created massive hurricanes and electrical storms that ravaged the surface
of the planet.
It was only through the actions of Leia Organa and Lando Calrissian that the rebels were
able to destroy the climate disruption arrays and stop the people of Naboo from being completely
wiped out.
Darth Sidious was a master Sith user and skilled fighter, but he didn't take over the Republic
by force.
He used trickery and deceit.
As such, it's hardly surprising that Palpatine used his gift for psychological manipulation
well before he was on the way to becoming Emperor, nor that he was one of the Galactic
Senate's most skilled propagandists.
Palpatine's predecessor, Supreme Chancellor Valorum , was a weak-willed and indecisive
leader who often kowtowed to special interests.
In short, he wasn't up to the job.
So, when Valorum needed to sway the hearts and minds of the people, he often offloaded
his duties to everyone's favorite Sith-lord-in-hiding.
The book Star Wars Propaganda, a collection of in-universe propaganda pieces, has some
of Palpatine's work, including a striking invitation to the Republic's 1,000 year anniversary
celebration.
Palpatine didn't stop meddling in the Republic's propaganda machine after he took power, either.
When the Republic commissioned posters to bolster support for the Clone Wars, Palpatine
explicitly forbade artists from producing materials featuring the Jedi.
Publicly, Palpatine said that he didn't want to make the Jedi, who were already wary about
being military leaders, more uncomfortable.
Privately, Palpatine didn't want people siding with the Jedi, since he planned to scapegoat
them as part of his coup once the war ended.
Death wasn't the end for Palpatine.
Even after he died on the second Death Star, his plans lived on.
Years before Palpatine crowned himself Emperor, he established an underground "observatory"
on the planet Jakku, Rey's homeworld in The Force Awakens.
His plan?
Stuff it full of Sith relics with the power to cause an explosion and then, in the event
of his death, detonate the whole thing and wipe out the Empire and the Rebel Alliance
in one fell swoop.
Palpatine figured any Empire that was inept enough to let him die didn't deserve to survive,
and winnowing out the Empire's weaker elements would give it the freedom to reform into something
stronger.
If his enemies died in the explosion too?
So much the better.
Palpatine put a man named Gallius Rax in charge of the plan, which unfolds in Chuck Wendig's
Aftermath trilogy of books.
It almost works.
Rax manages to lure the Empire and the New Republic to Jakku for a final showdown, but
a team of good and bad guys stop the planet from blowing up.
Still, after the battle, the Empire heads off to the Unknown Regions to regroup, where
it transforms into the lean and mean First Order.
In the long term, mission accomplished.
Palpatine looked down on luxury, preferring a spartan lifestyle that fit with his brutal
Sith philosophy.
Discomfort isn't great for impressing politicians, however, so Palpatine also maintained his
own pleasure craft, which he called the Imperialis.
He must've loved the ship a lot, too every single one of Palpatine's secret observatories,
which were home to the Sith lord's most treasured artifacts, contained a full replica of the
craft.
The Imperialis was fast enough to outmaneuver a Star Destroyer, had all kinds of fancy weapons
and defensive tools, and was stuffed full of treasure, making it a perfect target for
smugglers and pirates those who were dumb enough to take on the Emperor himself, anyway.
Well, that description fits Lando Calrissian perfectly.
In Marvel's Lando comic miniseries, Mr. Calrissian boosts the Imperialis and ends up on Palpatine's
bad side.
While Palpatine sends Star Destroyers and bounty hunters after Lando, none of them can
bring the Imperialis home, so Palpatine orders the ship destroyed.
Lando escapes, but the Imperialis is lost forever.
The dark robes, saggy pale skin, and yellow eyes should've given it away, but even after
Palpatine transformed the Republic into the Empire, he worked very hard to hide his Sith
background.
People knew or, at the very least, rumors suggested that Darth Vader was familiar with
the ways of the Force.
That Palpatine was his master was a tightly-guarded secret.
According to the books Lords of the Sith and Tarkin, only a few people were privy to what
Palpatine was.
His apprentices Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and Darth Vader they all knew, of course.
So did his royal guards.
Almost everyone else was kept in the dark.
Even Grand Moff Tarkin, one of Palpatine's closest allies and most trusted confidants,
only suspected that Palpatine was a Sith.
He didn't know for sure.
It's not clear why Palpatine didn't flaunt his Sith heritage, although it's easy to guess.
For one, Palpatine spent his entire career operating in the shadows.
Why start moving into the light now?
For another, to Palpatine, information was power.
There's no use in telling people more than they need to know.
Every fact that's revealed can eventually be used against you.
Lots of Palpatine's backstory comes from James Luceno's Darth Plagueis, which is no longer
considered canonical in Disney's new, streamlined Star Wars Universe.
Still, Plagueis' legacy lives on in a few ways.
"Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"
Plagueis' desire to conquer death plays a major role in Anakin's turn to the dark side,
and could be a key factor in Palpatine's mysterious, unexplained return in The Rise of Skywalker.
Finally, while Palpatine killed Plagueis while his master slept, he did take a souvenir with
him 11-4D, Plagueis' trusty protocol droid.
Palpatine didn't establish the Empire to get famous.
He just wanted power.
While serving as a senator made Palpatine a celebrity, he retreated from the public
eye once he became emperor, letting the Imperial Ruling Council handle most of the day-to-day
work of governing and leaving nastier tasks up to his apprentice, Darth Vader.
As a result, Palpatine was safe from his enemies and could devote as much time as he wanted
to his own pursuits, but it had an unintended side effect: Because no one saw him, some
conspiracy theorists argued that Palpatine was dead.
The most common story alleged that the Jedi killed Palpatine during their "uprising,"
and that the Imperial leaders were using Palpatine's name to grab power for themselves.
The Empire tried to dispel these rumors in a few ways.
In Tarkin, Tarkin's friend Nils Tenant admits that the Ruling Council sent out fake flying
motorcades to make it look like Palpatine was traveling from place to place.
In Aftermath, we learn that the Empire used body doubles to give the impression that Palpatine
was giving speeches or making other public appearances.
In reality, however, Palpatine preferred to stay at home although he was very much alive.
Like Darth Plagueis before him, Palpatine was obsessed with unlocking the secrets of
immortality, which clearly came into play during The Rise of Skywalker.
However, not all of his experiments paid off.
Just look at what happened to Project Blackwing: instead of discovering the key to everlasting
life, the Empire accidentally created stormtrooper zombies.
In the mobile game Star Wars: Commander which is canon, because under Disney, everything
is Palpatine recruits a bunch of "Sith scientists" to make Imperial soldiers live forever.
Instead, they create a virus that turns the corpses into members of the living dead.
The virus ultimately creates an entire army of so-called Death Troopers, but the combined
forces of the Empire and the Rebel Alliance contain the outbreak, saving the galaxy from
a zombie apocalypse.
Still, the Death Troopers' legacy lives on in one key way.
Allegedly, the Death Troopers seen in Rogue One who were special ops soldiers, not zombies
got their name from Palpatine's failed experiment.
Hey, it's a good name.
May as well use it twice.
Don't let anyone tell you that Palpatine didn't have a sense of humor.
The way he treated the Senate proves that he does.
Despite what you might think, Palpatine didn't dissolve the Galactic Senate as soon as he
took power.
In fact, he kept it around for decades.
Before the Death Star, Palpatine saw the Senate as a valuable political tool that let its
constituents feel like they had some say in politics as a means of quashing potential
rebellions, even though he had all the power, that’s why he said “I am the senate!”.
It was an illusion, of course.
Over time, power moved from the Senate to local, regional leaders, robbing the politicians
of any real influence.
Once Palpatine created the Death Star, which would let him control the galaxy via fear
instead of politics, he disbanded the Senate entirely, but that didn't happen until the
beginning of A New Hope.
That whole time, nobody bothered to let the senators know what was happening.
"Wait a minute!
How did this happen?
We're smarter than this."
In a comic in the ninth issue of Star Wars Rebels Magazine, the crew of the Ghost runs
into a senator from the planet Thrad, who still believes in the legislative body.
The senators still debate policy, she says.
They still pass bills, which they send to Palpatine to be signed into law.
They don't realize that Palpatine simply ignores them.
They think they're making a difference.
Instead, they're frittering away in the Senate chamber, doing absolutely nothing.
Heartbreaking?
Kind of.
Tragically hilarious?
Oh, absolutely.
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