Was Palpatine a good guy?
Throughout humanities existence, history has always been written by the victors. The same is true in star Wars. Written by the notable Republic and Jedi sympathizer, George Lucas, the original trilogy shows the events of Star Wars from the point of view of the victorious rebel alliance.
We are therefore presented with the view that the rebels were freedom fighters who are hellbent on restoring the good and righteous Republic. On the other hand, the empire is presented as a tyrannical regime, led by two evil and selfish Sith Lords.
The Mandalorian and the Prequels have briefly delved into the opposing view, that the Republic was corrupt and chaotic while the Rebels were a terrorist group, from a certain point of view, but despite this, it is still the widespread view that Palpatine is in fact evil.
In this video, we will be exploring the alternative perspective and asking the question, Was Palpatine actually a force for good in the Star Wars Galaxy?
So first of all, yes Palpatine did some awful things. He orchestrated the Clone Wars, Blew up Alderaan and implemented a harsh and oppressive regime across the galaxy. And of course these are all awful things. However, to determine whether these actions were actually justified within the context of the Star Wars Galaxy, we must first explore some philosophy surrounding morality and what actually makes someone good or evil.
The moral philosophy of consequentialism might suggest that Palpatine was actually a good guy. In its most basic form consequentialism suggests that the consequences of someones actions should form the basis in understanding whether or not those actions are right or wrong. For example, if an evil genius was about to blow up London, a consequensialist would argue that it would be morally right to kill the evil genius in order to save the lives of all the Londoners, even though murder is usually seen as morally wrong.
As we shall explore in this video, the same can be argued for Palpatine, only on a much grander scale.
After the events of the original trilogy in legends, an extra-galactic species known as the yuuzung vong greatly threatened the galaxy. The yuuzung vong had taken over and destroyed their own galaxy thousands of years before the battle of Yavin and had spent the majority of that time in the void between galaxies, their sights set firmly on invading the star wars galaxy. What made this species so terrifying was their advanced organic technology and fierce devotion to a crusade against machinery.
This species had originally been peaceful, but a war between two advanced AI pushed the yuvung vongs culture into a dark and violent direction. Using their biological technology, they eventually drove the AI from their galaxy. They soon turned their advanced weaponry on each other and other biological species. The resulting war left their whole galaxy uninhabitable. The survivors spent the next few thousand years travelling to the galaxy far far away on thousands of 100 km bioships. The first yuvung vong scouts ships arrived during the Old Republic era, with just one small probe ship decimating a whole brigade of neo-crusader Mandalorians, it's weapons able to melt through baskar armour as though it was wax. When the main invasion arrived around 30 years after the battle of yavin, 325 trillion inhabitants of the star wars galaxy were wiped out, far more than the clone wars and the galactic civil war combined. It was only through sheer luck that the New Republic was able to defeat them and in all problibilty, the yuzung vong should have completely steam rolled them.
So how is this related to Palpatine being good? Well in actual fact, Palpatine was one of the few individuals who was aware of this incoming invasion and had been informed about the yuvung vong, known to him as the far outsiders, well before the Clone Wars took place by. In fact, the reason for Grand Admiral Thrawn joining the empire was to help organise the galaxy into a military machine that could protect his species, the Chiss, from the inpending invasion. Likewise, Palpatines acceptance of Thrawn into his human centric military was largely because he held information on the Vong.
Palpatine and the Sith believed in the pursuit of power and order, with the Empire simply being a reflection of these beliefs. The Sith believed that the pursuit of peace would lead to stagnation, arrogance and weakness, allowing for more powerful enemies to ultimately defeat them. The revelation of the Yuzung Vong would provide Palpatine with just more reasons to destroy the Republic and implement a tough and ordered society mainly focused upon creating ever more powerful superweapons under the Sith Philosphy. He believed that without dramatic change, the galaxy would ultimately be doomed by more powerful enemies such as the vong because of the Republics apathetic and self serving Government
#sith #palpatine #starwars #starwarslore #starwarsexplained
27 авг 2024
