Emperor Palpatine



Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, was a Force-sensitive Human male who served as the last Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and the first Emperor of the Galactic Empire. He was a Dark Lord of the Sith who followed the Rule of Two, an ancient tenet of the Order of the Sith Lords, and was the most powerful Sith Lord in galactic history. His entire life as a Sith was the culmination of a thousand year plan to overthrow the Republic and the Jedi Order from within. As Palpatine and Sidious, the Dark Lord was responsible for escalating the Separatist Crisis until a galactic-wide conflict, known as the Clone Wars, began when the rebellious Confederacy of Independent Systems challenged the Republic for primacy over the galaxy.

Born in 82 BBY on the planet Naboo to the aristocratic clan House Palpatine, he was eldest son and heir to the noble Cosinga Palpatine and his wife, a family he grew to hate. Palpatine discovered the Sith at a young age as a collector of dark side artifacts. After going through many private schools due to repeated lawbreaking, he enrolled at Theed University and joined the Legislative Youth Program under the mentorship of Vidar Kim. In 65 BBY, the seventeen-year-old Palpatine came to the attention of Darth Plagueis, a Sith Lord known publicly as Hego Damask, Magister of the influential Damask Holdings. Impressed by the young Naboo's knowledge, ambition, and disregard for morality, Damask recruited Palpatine as a spy for his company. After he discovered that Palpatine had the Force, he manipulated the young man into committing parricide. Orphaned at seventeen, Palpatine pledged himself to his new Master's teachings and the ways of the dark side of the Force. Plagueis gave his apprentice the name "Darth Sidious".

Just as his Master lived the double life of corporate mogul in public and Sith Lord in secret, Sidious also maintained his former identity as a façade. As Palpatine, Sidious served for years as Naboo's ambassador. Though he was involved in numerous shady activities, his reputation remained untarnished by scandals. While still an apprentice, Sidious reluctantly became the guardian of a Force-sensitive male Dathomirian Zabrak, known simply as Maul whose Nightsister mother wished to spare her infant son from the life of a Nightbrother. With his own Master's permission, Sidious was allowed to train the Zabrak as a Sith assassin. Though Sidious dubbed his disciple "Darth Maul" and Dark Lord of the Sith, Maul never knew that his own Master answered to another Master. Thus, he was also unaware of the fact that his status as a "Sith Lord" violated the Rule of Two.

Plagueis and Sidious, both exceptionally skilled and powerful in the the Force, were able to conceal the darkness within them from even the most powerful members of the Jedi Order for decades. Sidious' ability to present himself as an honest politician, and simultaneously living as a Sith Lord in secret, allowed him to manipulate many important figures and events that contributed to the blockade of Naboo by the Trade Federation. In the wake of the political crisis, the Galactic Senate voted to elect him as Supreme Chancellor. With the Republic's chief executive branch under Palpatine's control, the first phase of the Sith Grand Plan was realized while the Jedi remained in the dark about his true identity.

Plagueis had been instrumental in Sidious' rise to power. For years, the Dark Lord delved deeper into the mysteries of the Force while his apprentice carried out the Sith's interests in the public domain. But on the eve of Palpatine's election to the Chancellery, Sidious—in accordance with Bane's Rule of Two—murdered Plagueis and usurped the role of Sith Master. Around the same time, Maul killed the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, only to be defeated by Jinn's Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, during the Second Battle of Theed. Despite the presumed death of his personal assassin, Sidious continued to carry out the Grand Plan.

As Chancellor of the Republic and Dark Lord of the Sith, Palpatine orchestrated the outbreak of the Clone Wars, a devastating conflict on a scale unseen since the Ruusan Reformation, ten years after the Naboo Crisis. He himself headed both the Galactic Republic and, secretly, the Confederacy of Independent Systems. The public leader for the Separatists was none other than Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master who became Sidious' second apprentice as "Darth Tyranus". As billions perished in the war, the vast majority of Republic citizens rallied behind Chancellor Palpatine, thus increasing his public approval to an astonishingly high level. With the support of most of the Senate and the people of the Republic, Palpatine enacted various amendments to the Constitution in the name of security, thereby transferring most of the Senate's executive authority to his own office. Despite his increasingly despotic hold over the Republic, he defended his actions by pretending to be a staunch defender of democracy and a friend to the Jedi High Council.

In 19 BBY, Palpatine revealed his identity as Darth Sidious to the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. All proceeded according to plan when Skywalker informed Jedi Master Mace Windu of Palpatine's duplicity. Windu's failed attempt to arrest him, combined with Skywalker's conversion to the dark side of the Force, contributed to the rise of Sidious' New Order. All members of the Jedi Order were accused of treason and, as a consequence of Order 66, betrayed by their clone troopers. Without the Jedi to oppose him, Palpatine declared himself emperor of the first Galactic Empire, thus bringing an end to the Republic that had stood for over 25,000 years. Among his first acts under the new regime, Emperor Palpatine enacted the state-sponsored systematic extermination of the surviving Jedi, ironically carried out by Skywalker, who had been proclaimed "Darth Vader" upon becoming the Dark Lord's new apprentice. Throughout most of his reign, the Emperor all but disappeared from public life, opting to live in the opulence and grandeur of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant while Vader acted as his Military Executor and chief enforcer.

As a totalitarian despot, Emperor Palpatine effectively wielded absolute control over the entire galaxy and virtually everyone who lived within it. Despite his promises of peace and harmony, he spared no expense to build one of the most powerful military forces the galaxy had ever seen, primarily for the purpose of enforcing his rule over all others. For nearly decades, there was no serious political or military threat to his reign and, as a consequence, the Imperialization of the galaxy went on unopposed for nearly two decades. At some point during the rise of the Empire, Darth Vader adopted and raised Galen Marek, an exceptionally powerful prodigy of the Force, as his secret apprentice. Although seemingly loyal to his Master, Vader harbored a great deal of anger at Sidious for manipulating his fall to the dark side. Under the codename "Starkiller", Vader's apprentice yearned for the day when he and his Master could rule the galaxy by assassinating Darth Sidious.

When Palpatine discovered Starkiller's existence in 3 BBY, he forced Vader to fake Starkiller's death as part of a new plot to expose the most influential traitors in the Empire. Six months later, Starkiller was healed from his near-fatal injury and tasked by Vader to initiate a full-scale rebellion against the Empire. The apprentice believed that the insurrection's purpose was to distract Palpatine so that he and his Master could have another chance to kill the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith. However, he was unaware that the Rebellion was Palpatine's plan to destroy the disillusioned citizens and politicians within his Empire. At the same time, he fully intended to train a new apprentice by manipulating Starkiller into killing Darth Vader. Due to the extensive injuries that Vader suffered on Mustafar, Palpatine bitterly judged his hobbled disciple to be a failure. Yet in Starkiller, he saw a chance to finally have an incredibly powerful apprentice who was worthy to stand at his side.

However, Palpatine's plan to rout out the Empire's subversive elements and secure Starkiller as his new apprentice ultimately backfired in a way that he never anticipated. By finding redemption in the light side of the Force and the Jedi Way, Galen Marek spared Vader's life in order to save a group of rebel senators. In the ensuing showdown between Palpatine and Marek on the incomplete Death Star, the former secret apprentice perished in a sacrificial act of heroism that inspired the senators to formally create the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Palpatine regarded the death of Marek and the formation of the Alliance as frustrating setbacks that threatened his entire reign and the rule of the Sith. In losing Marek, the Emperor had no choice except to keep Vader alive for a while longer. By losing control of the Alliance, he ironically had to fight against a rebellion that he started in secret.

As the Galactic Civil War broke out to determine the fate of the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine's facade as an enlightened leader all but fully disappeared. Under the doctrine of terror, Palpatine attempted to rule through fear of the threat of force, symbolized by the Death Star upon its completion in 0 BBY. But when the Empire suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Yavin in the same year, the Emperor steadily began to lose the absolute control over the galaxy that he had enjoyed for nearly two decades. The destruction of the Death Star proved to be an pivotal turning point that galvanized many beings throughout the galaxy to join the Alliance in open rebellion against the Emperor's tyranny.

The year of 4 ABY witnessed the undoing of Emperor Palpatine and the countless plans that initiated his rise to ultimate power. In a dangerous gamble to annihilate the Rebel Alliance once and for all, Palpatine allowed Rebel spies to learn of the existence of a second Death Star and its secret location at Endor. He was fully aware that the desperate Alliance could not afford to pass up the opportunity to destroy the new battle station while it was still under construction and vulnerable to an attack. To further entice the Rebels into launching a disastrous assault, he placed himself in harm's way by personally overseeing the Death Star's completion. As expected, the Alliance fell for the bait and dispatched its fleet to destroy the Emperor, Vader and the incomplete Death Star.

Unknown to the Rebels, however, an entire legion of the Emperor's most elite soldiers were guarding the battle station's shield generator bunker in anticipation of a Rebel strike team's arrival. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker, the son of Darth Vader, was brought before the Emperor by his own father. As with Galen Marek, Palpatine saw a new opportunity to replace Vader with an apprentice who was far younger and more powerful. After goading Skywalker to give into his frustrations with thoughts of the Alliance's defeat and the death of his friends, Palpatine eagerly watched as the father and son fought one another in his throne room. Despite all his hopes, however, Skywalker refused to submit to the dark side by murdering his father. Palpatine's failure to corrupt the young Jedi, as well as the unexpected destruction of the shield generator bunker, infuriated the Emperor, who then unleashed all of his rage and hatred on Skywalker.

Unfortunately for his Empire, Palpatine was far too distracted by his own anger and frustrations to realize that Darth Vader had reverted back to the persona of Anakin Skywalker. Unwilling to stand by and watch his son die in under the agonizing effects of Force lightning, Anakin lifted Palpatine over his head with one arm and threw his shocked Master down the Death Star's shaft. Although Anakin was mortally wounded for his efforts, his single act of redemption fulfilled the prophecy of the Chosen One and brought about the end of the Order of the Sith Lords. The death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star marked the Battle of Endor as a crushing defeat for the Galactic Empire. Throughout the rest of the Galactic Civil War, the remnants of the Empire experienced a sharp decline while the Alliance reformed itself into the New Republic.

Through the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, the Rebel victory at Endor marked a turning point in the war, but failed to ensure that Palpatine stayed dead. Utilizing a rare and ancient Force technique, Palpatine endured the maddening experience of disembodiment until his spirit inhabited a new body, cloned from his own genetic structure, on the Deep Core world of Byss. Yet the instability of his clone hosts, aggravated by the poisonous effects of the dark side, forced the reborn Emperor to constantly change bodies in order to stave off the final death that haunted him. Six years after his first death, Emperor Palpatine resurfaced in the galaxy in a bid to rebuild his Empire by destroying the fragile New Republic. He even succeeded in finally turning Luke Skywalker into his apprentice, but his short-lived accomplishment was reversed by Skywalker's redemption.

Furthermore, his efforts to live forever were undermined by subversives within his own inner circle, including Royal Guardsman Carnor Jax. With the last supplies of healthy clone bodies sabotaged and contaminated by Jax and his allies, Palpatine desperately tried to take over the body of Darth Vader's youngest grandchild, the infant Anakin Solo. His spirit, however, was intercepted by the dying Jedi Knight Empatojayos Brand. With his dark soul bounded to a frail body that he himself fatally wounded, Palpatine could do nothing more than curse his enemies as Brand dragged him down into the depths of the Force, never to return ever again. The Sith Lord Darth Sidious, better remembered in galactic history as Emperor Palpatine, was truly dead by 11 ABY.

In Ultima, Palpatine was resurrected one more time by Padro Lodo, who inducted him into the Inner Circle because of his grand knowledge of the Dark Side of the Force and of his control over the Galactic Empire.