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Considering the Rule of Two and the unspoken rule that every Sith Lord is essentially choosing an apprentice that will one day kill him and must train him to do so one has to wonder if a Sith Lord has broken the rules of the game or come close. By that I mean has a Sith lord trained more than one apprentice or more importantly has a Sith lord tried to hold on to more power by killing his apprentice or intentionally choosing one that would be too weak to overthrow him.

The Sith seem almost fanatically discplined in that arena and for an order of force users governed by their passions and rule breakers at heart you have to wonder how they could function over a long period of time as they have. How can a Sith lord overcome his Instinct to live and intentionally choose someone who they know will one day kill him/her and then go on to train him with all his secrets? If a Sith lord who gains power is afraid of losing it how does he not try to sabotage his apprentice or at least weaken them to the point where they are no longer threats?

I guess what I'm asking is whether you find it reasonable that an order based on personal power and ruled by personal passions could maintain such iron discipline in continuing the cycle of betrayal and death that runs counter to personal power and passion. In ROTS Palpatine is giddy with joy that Vader will supplant him and be stronger. How does the order indoctrinate something that seems to run counter to seizing personal power and walking the quick and easy path?

Since Bane, Palpatine never noted anyone deviating from the rule of two in regards to the Sith Order.

It's shown that Vader, Palpatine, even Dooku had trained others in using the dark side, but not making them Sith.

Also in Dark Lord, Palpatine notes that the order of two was based upon the teacher giving out little snippets of power, with the apprentice coveting the said power. When he recounts how he became the new Sith Lord, it was more because he was cunning and struck when his master least expected, and noted he would not fall for something as poorly thought out as "Killed while snoozing". If the apprentice makes his bid for power and fails...I'm sure the Sith Lord just shrugs and tries again.

Palpatine also gave some real note but Vader more so that finding his child would not be a resurgence of a legion of Sith. A trained individual, like Ventress...but not a Sith anything.

I think Dooku thought ahead on if Griviouse tried to kill him in one of the books he says "I have kept secrets from him just in case" maybe his master told him the legend off Darth Plaguse the wise, i'm not sure if I spelled the name right, and Dooku thought ahead of that and if his apprentice were to turn on him he would just use what he didn't teach him.

Well, there is that entire, revenge against the Jedi Order 'thing' they have.

They actually want someone more powerful to be their successor so that they can carry on the torch. And the apprentice is ready to be the master when they slay the old one. The master gets to die satisfied that the apprentice is truly worthy of the mantle 'Sith lord'.

What? It's religion. It doesn't have to make sense.

Well using KOTOR:

You do have to wonder if Darth Bandon was actually intended to be able to surpass Darth Malak. Malak definitely didn't surpass Revan.

Darth Treya manipulated events to have Darth Nihilus taken care of, and seemed to gain control back over Dath Sion a little to easy. Not to mention her convenient escape much earlier. Overall she didn't seem to exactly be following the Sith ideals so much as her own strong views on the Force. Of course she does effectively, apparently, follow the rule about training a successor ie the Exile. So whether you want to consider her following the rules or not is I suppose up to you.

Doesn't KOTOR take place before the rule of 2 was established?

They actually want someone more powerful to be their successor so that they can carry on the torch. And the apprentice is ready to be the master when they slay the old one. The master gets to die satisfied that the apprentice is truly worthy of the mantle 'Sith lord'.

That made me think of Sidious' goading in ROTJ: "Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete!"

I always thought he was taunting him, sure that Vader would protect him in any case. But now, with his wish in ROTS for Vader to be stronger than him, this scene changes somewhat.

Perhaps he didn't care what happened to himself, either Vader would stay loyal and Luke would be pushed further (as it happened in the film) or Vader wouldn't stop Luke and the Emperor dies, leaving Vader in charge and with a new apprentice to continue the order and the Empire.

I believe Darth Bane had a firm grasp on the concept of the balance of the force when he instituted the rule of two. By reducing the number of Sith the force in trying to maintain balance with itself would either increase the power of darkside users, decrease the power of lightside users, or both. Hopefully giving the Sith the power to completely destroy the balance altogether at a future time.

After the Jedi Purge, I seriously doubt that a power hogging control freak like the Emperor would do anything that would create more rivals for his throne.

Darth Yoshi wrote:Doesn't KOTOR take place before the rule of 2 was established?

I believe so. There's plenty of enemies in KOTOR that are supposed to be Sith Lords/apprentices/acolytes/etc. I'm not exactly sure where Darth Bane is in the SW timeline, but, IIRC, Revan was the first Sith to use the title "Darth" so he must've come before him.

The ideas of Sith Master and Sith Apprentice and the apprentice eventually killing the master were certainly around then, though.

Anyway, I suspect that what allows such a self-interested group as the Sith to hold to the rule of two is a) their total hatred of the Jedi and/or b) arrogance. They may place their desire to destroy the Jedi even above their own survival. Or perhaps each one just believes that they'll be the one "true" Sith who is invincible and immortal.

I believe so. There's plenty of enemies in KOTOR that are supposed to be Sith Lords/apprentices/acolytes/etc. I'm not exactly sure where Darth Bane is in the SW timeline, but, IIRC, Revan was the first Sith to use the title "Darth" so he must've come before him.

Indeed, KOTOR takes place 4,000 BBY, while Darth Bane's Rule of Two is not instituted for another 3,000 years, after the disasterous Battle of Ruusan. One can only assume that the "Darth" title became defunct after Traya was defeated (or whoever the big Sith in KOTOR 3 turns out to be), and the tradition was restarted by Bane.

Noble Ire wrote:

I believe so. There's plenty of enemies in KOTOR that are supposed to be Sith Lords/apprentices/acolytes/etc. I'm not exactly sure where Darth Bane is in the SW timeline, but, IIRC, Revan was the first Sith to use the title "Darth" so he must've come before him.

Indeed, KOTOR takes place 4,000 BBY, while Darth Bane's Rule of Two is not instituted for another 3,000 years, after the disasterous Battle of Ruusan. One can only assume that the "Darth" title became defunct after Traya was defeated (or whoever the big Sith in KOTOR 3 turns out to be), and the tradition was restarted by Bane.

Actually there is a note that Bane started the Rule of Two tradition after an enourmous amount of Sith and Jedi died about 1000 years before TPM.

Right, the TPM novelisation...

The Sith order seems to embody "survival of the fittest" to its most extreme extent. It could be that a Sith Lord does his best not to be taken out by his apprentice, thus ensuring that if the apprentice does succeed his master he truly deserves it. So only if an apprentice is truly stronger and more cunning, and can survive and overcome any sabotage perpetrated by his master will he replace his master. If not, too bad so sad that apprentice wasn't worthy better find another.

The only way I could see a Sith Lord breaking the rule of two is to see which apprentice is the strongest.

So a Sith Lord might take on two apprentices with each one not knowing the other and then when he believes them to be ready he sets them against each other in order to see who truly is the strongest in the force and worthy of the title "Dark Lord of the Sith"

NRS Guardian wrote:The Sith order seems to embody "survival of the fittest" to its most extreme extent. It could be that a Sith Lord does his best not to be taken out by his apprentice, thus ensuring that if the apprentice does succeed his master he truly deserves it. So only if an apprentice is truly stronger and more cunning, and can survive and overcome any sabotage perpetrated by his master will he replace his master. If not, too bad so sad that apprentice wasn't worthy better find another.

That's more or less how I see it. I mean, I don't get the feeling that the master is just going to step aside gracefully; they probably all clung to power and life as long as they could, but time eventually caught up with them. It wouldn't surprise me if many masters end up each going through several apprentices before one finally gets skilled enough, lucky enough, or comes along after the master has passed his prime. The only way one could avoid eventually being usurped by their apprentice is by refusing to train an apprentice at all. And that would effectively end the Sith Order.

In addition, it seems to me that the "Rule of Two" is that there never be more than two Sith at a time, not about exactly how the apprentice becomes the new master. Assassination is just the way it happened most of the time because of the highly self-centered nature of the Sith (the master doesn't want to step aside gracefully, and the apprentice wants the power *now*), not inspite of it.

Also, it should be noted that apparently Plagueis wasn't completely forthcoming in teaching Sidious; he never taught him the way to "make life through the midichlorians." Presumably he dangled it in front of Sidious's face, claiming that he'd teach him eventually in order to keep Sidious from turning on him, until Sidious finally realized he was never going to cough it up. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of knowledge of the Sith got lost over the years exactly in that way.

In the end though, I think the rules and traditions of the Sith Order are more like the "Pirate Code" in Pirates of the Caribbean; they're more like "guidelines" than "rules".

In the end though, I think the rules and traditions of the Sith Order are more like the "Pirate Code" in Pirates of the Caribbean; they're more like "guidelines" than "rules".

Substantial evidence appears to contradict you; as far as I can tell the Sith order is very heavily steeped in tradition; I'd be willing to bet money that Palpatine's renaming ceremony for Vader is a Sith ritual repeated with varying levels of sincerity throughout the the 1,000 years following Darth Bane. The fact that in those thousand years no Sith has, as far as we know, ever violated the Rule of Two would suggest that the Sith definitely view them as being somewhat more binding than "guidelines."

Theoretically it would be possible for a Sith master to break the rule, since as far as I can tell there is no squad of Sith Police to descend down and enforce the Rule of Two. That said, the possibility exists that as part of the process of becoming a Sith, power psychological barriers are put in place that supress any thought of violating the Rule of Two or other Sith precepts.

or Vader wouldn't stop Luke and the Emperor dies, leaving Vader in charge and with a new apprentice to continue the order and the Empire.

Which would absolutely rock, by the way.

FOG3 wrote:Well using KOTOR:

You do have to wonder if Darth Bandon was actually intended to be able to surpass Darth Malak. Malak definitely didn't surpass Revan.

Darth Treya manipulated events to have Darth Nihilus taken care of, and seemed to gain control back over Dath Sion a little to easy. Not to mention her convenient escape much earlier. Overall she didn't seem to exactly be following the Sith ideals so much as her own strong views on the Force. Of course she does effectively, apparently, follow the rule about training a successor ie the Exile. So whether you want to consider her following the rules or not is I suppose up to you.

KOTOR takes place before Darth Bane came to existance therefore before the rule of 2 about 2 thousand years before actually

Darth Millennial is the only one known to have broken the rule, but he did this by abandoning his master and founding a new order. Presumably his master selected a new apprentice after Millenial's desertion.

I think its fairly obvious that by the time of Dark Empire that "Count Palpatine' has pretty much abandoned the Rule of Two... (well actually he's abandoned that way before then, we just don't *learn* about it until the comic..)

I believe that brotherhood whatever from the Valley of the Jedi also broke the rule, or kinda did.. (or maybe it was just come close.. I haven't really read the comics in awhile so I don't remember the details.)

Edit: On second thought, I vagueyl recall that dude who set that brotherhood thing up was a contemporary of Bane, so that might be "before the rule" bit as well.

Yeah. The Brotherhood of Darkness and Kane's "Rule by the Strong" method was actually what prompted Bane's reform.

Palpatine, at least as of Dark Lord, still plans to adhere to the rule of two.

Ante-Endor, though, he doesn't seem to care much about the sith order at all.

Of course, he's also arguably insane.

The Sith defeat at Ruusan was the main reason for the rule of two. Bane realised that having more than two Sith breeds chaos and infighting, that has the Sith doing more damage to each other than the Jedi. To mitigate this tendancy toward internecine conflict the rule of two was instituted. Also, with only two the Sith could be much more covert and only need reveal themselves when the time was right to destroy the Jedi which is what happened with the Jedi having no contact with Sith until Palpatine was ready to begin the end of the Jedi.

Noble Ire wrote:

I believe so. There's plenty of enemies in KOTOR that are supposed to be Sith Lords/apprentices/acolytes/etc. I'm not exactly sure where Darth Bane is in the SW timeline, but, IIRC, Revan was the first Sith to use the title "Darth" so he must've come before him.

Indeed, KOTOR takes place 4,000 BBY, while Darth Bane's Rule of Two is not instituted for another 3,000 years, after the disasterous Battle of Ruusan. One can only assume that the "Darth" title became defunct after Traya was defeated (or whoever the big Sith in KOTOR 3 turns out to be), and the tradition was restarted by Bane.

Didn't one of the Masters in TPM say the Sith had been extint for a millennia (or so he thought). This would be 1000 years before TPM, and if this was the same time the "Rule of Two" was created, how would Yoda know about it as he did at the end of TPM?

I think there was a story dealing with Darth Bane being discovered and the Rule of Two exposed. But something happened to make the Jedi believe he had perished and the Order destroyed once again.

Jedi Guardian wrote:I think Dooku thought ahead on if Griviouse tried to kill him in one of the books he says "I have kept secrets from him just in case" maybe his master told him the legend off Darth Plaguse the wise, i'm not sure if I spelled the name right, and Dooku thought ahead of that and if his apprentice were to turn on him he would just use what he didn't teach him.

Of course, Grievous wasn't force sensitive.