If you're like me, at the end of the movie Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, seeing the Sith Lords, clad in black, take their rightful place in the seat of galactic power, watching the monstrous Death Star being constructed, gave you a sense of awe. The malignant aura surrounding these imposing figures made my skin tingle.
Darth Sidious (aka Palpatine, aka The Emperor): What a cunning and totally unconscionable fellow! An intelligent and perceptive man, he was a maestro of political maneuvering and human manipulation; he realised his objectives of absolute power in the galaxy, together with the destruction of the Jedi and re-establishment of the Sith. Unburdened by scruples or remorse he skillfully played off both sides of the Clone Wars against each other, all the while subtly twisting Anakin Skywalker's own sense of love and stubborn devotion to turn him to the Dark Side.
So, Darth Sidious for President I say!
Here are a few highlights of his esteemed career:
- In a scheme of Machiavellian brilliance, as the benevolent Chancellor Palpatine he secretly masterminded the entire Clone War to cement his own power. Playing both sides he led the droid separatist forces under his alter-ego, the shadowy Darth Sidious. He orchestrated all this under the noses the Jedi Council, who failed to determine even the rough location of this new Sith Lord.
- In the course of the war Palpatine allowed himself to be captured by the "enemy" droid forces for the sole purpose of bringing the impressionable Skywalker into his sphere of influence, with terrible loss of life. We hark back to Palpatine's ominous words to Skywalker in the first movie: "We shall watch your career with great interest."
- Sidious had no compunction about terminating his agents in the droid forces to end the war in the Republic's "favour". His list of sacrificial pawns included his own Sith apprentice, Count Dooku (also briefly called Darth Tyranus), who was liquidated to make way for the preferred Skywalker. It is thought Dooku was ever only a "placeholder" for the forthcoming Darth Vader. So Skywalker's decent down the Dark Path was marked, as Palpatine/Sidious goaded him into destroying the vanquished Dooku in cold blood.
- It was Anakin's love for Padme, helped by his brashness, that made him easy prey to the Emperor's lies about the "secret power" of the Dark Side to cheat death. So Anakin's recurring nightmares of the dying Padme, probably planted by Sidious himself, became a self-fulfilling prophecy: He was driven to the Dark Side in an attempt to save her from the fate he had foreseen, and yet she ended up dying of a broken heart from her husband's descent into evil. All this went according to the Emperor's designs.
- I felt when Palpatine revealed himself as Darth Sidious to Skywalker he had played his hand too early; but it was a master stroke, as he knew well Skywalker would immediately expose him to the Jedi council. Then Skywalker would be forced to defend Sidious against the Jedi come to destroy him, or lose the "secret" to saving his beloved Padme forever; and so his path to the Dark Side was complete. Skywalker would now call Sidious "Master".
- At the same time Sidious neatly eliminated the Jedi threat by charging to the Galactic Senate that the Jedi were staging a coup; he even used his own ghastly disfigurement as proof of their attempt on his life. The destruction of the Jedi order was assured as the Senate bought the story. Most of the trusting fools were shot in the back by their own allies, on the orders of Sidious, whilst battling the droid armies.
- Now unchallenged by the Jedi and with his own personal clone army at his back, toughened by their recent war, Sidious "crossed the Rubicon". He immediately put an end to democratic rule in the galaxy and established himself as supreme leader of the new Empire. And he did this, as Padme put it, "to thunderous applause".
- Vader's overconfidence led to him being all but destroyed at the hands of his old master, Kenobi. But even in this Sidious saw opportunity, as he had Vader's ruined body rebuilt into the terrifying icon of villainy we know and love.
- In an ironic precursor to his own demise, it is hinted that the prodigious Darth Plagueis was the master of Sidious, and murdered at his hands. But unlike the redemptive Vader, Sidious was undoubtedly motivated by power and ambition.