Emperor Palpatine

Galactic Emperor Palpatine, known also as Senator and Chancellor Palpatine and Darth Sidious, is a significant character throughout five of the first six movies of the fictional Star Wars franchise. In the prequel trilogy, he is not yet an Emperor (he started out as a senator representing the planet Naboo in Episode I: The Phantom Menace then was elected Chancellor of the Galactic Senate via manipulation of the Senate later in that movie), but in the original trilogy, he fulfilled that role, having declared himself Emperor and dissolving the democratic Galactic Republic in favor of forming the authoritarian Galactic Empire in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

During his reign as Emperor, Palpatine ruled the Galactic Empire with an iron fist, using his Sith apprentice, fearsome cyborg Darth Vader (the former Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker, who Palpatine turned to the Sith in Episode III) as his main enforcer, along with the Imperial Stormtroopers as his shock troops and the gigantic Death Star superweapons (the original Death Star in Episode IV: A New Hope and the even larger Death Star II in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi), to impose his will and spread terror upon the Empire's subjugated populations.

In Episode VI, Palpatine met Luke Skywalker for the first time aboard Death Star II and tried to get him to kill him with his lightsaber, using the Battle of Endor (which was raging on the planet of that name below and in its skies above, and which the Imperial forces had taken the upper hand in) to compel Luke to turn to the dark side of the Force and become a Sith as well, leading to a lightsaber duel between Luke and his biological father Vader. When Luke defeated Vader in the duel but refused to kill him, then declared himself a Jedi like his father before him, Palpatine sadistically tried to kill Luke by using Force lightning against him. Vader stopped Palpatine by seizing him and throwing him down the reactor shaft of Death Star II, killing the Emperor and leading to Vader's redemption and transformation back to Anakin Skywalker, shortly before his own death due to the Force lightning shorting out his life support systems.

The teaser for Episode IX implied that Palpatine would return in some form, with it eventually being revealed he came back via cloning, and was the paternal grandfather of the Sequel Trilogy's protagonist, Rey (with her father being one of his failed clones). This was similar to in the Legends Expanded Universe comic "Dark Empire".

Besides Vader, his other Sith Apprentices were Darth Maul, and later Count Dooku, the latter under the Sith name, Darth Tyranus.

Quotes

“

In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the FIRST GALATCTIC EMPIRE ...for a safe and secure society. —Emperor Palpatine

”

Inspiration

George Lucas, when writing the character in the original trilogy, and to a lesser extent the Prequel trilogy, had been inspired by then-President Richard Nixon, who at the time the first film was undergoing development was dealing with the Watergate Scandal. Part of this reason was because he also intended for Star Wars to be anti-Vietnam War propaganda as well as "a decisive blow against American Imperialism." To a lesser extent, Lucas also indicated that he at least in part based Palpatine during the Prequel Trilogy on then-Vice President Dick Cheney, or at least that he compared him to such, while comparing Bush to Vader. Despite this, however, some EU books made at the time of Revenge of the Sith such as the tie-in book Labyrinth of Evil alluded to a "Triad of Evil" that Palpatine mentioned in reference to Saleucami, Mygeeto, and Felucia, which was an unsubtle reference to George W. Bush's Axis of Evil remark during the 2002 State of the Union Address. In the Matt Stoner novelization for Revenge of the Sith, when announcing the reorganization of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire, Palpatine also declares that it was "Morning in the Republic", which mirrored Ronald Reagan's Morning in America 1984 presidential campaign commercial. Lucasfilm also implied that Palpatine also had bits taken from Emperor Constantine, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Modern Comparisons to Emperor Palpatine

Rush Limbaugh once compared Barack Obama to Emperor Palpatine, even posting comparison speeches between Obama and Palpatine's Declaration of a New Order in Revenge of the Sith.

Some conservatives have noted similarity of Justin Trudeau's authoritarian behavior to that of the fictional Palpatine. While this comparison previously occurred to some extent during Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act, they were intensified by his comments regarding members of the Canadian Parliament potentially voting against his wishes of continuing the Emergencies Act when he said,

“

I can't imagine that anyone who votes "no" tonight is doing anything other than indicating that they don’t trust the government to make incredibly momentous, and important, decisions — Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

”

Further notes

• In the A New Hope novelization ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, Palpatine was implied in various descriptions of the character by other characters such as Vader and Tarkin to be a puppet ruler controlled by the Imperial Bureaucracy, and that the reason the Rebel Alliance was gaining more influence was due to incompetent ruling on his part, and was not a Force user. Later films nixed that description by showcasing him to be extremely competent, including his creating the Empire in the first place as well as a very powerful Force user (and later, a Sith Lord).
• Although Palpatine was identified by name in the novelization for A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, alongside supplemental materials such as the Star Wars Visual Dictionary, he was never identified onscreen by name in the actual films until the Prequel Trilogy.

See Also

• Emergencies Act (Canada)
• Star Wars (science fiction)