We were fools to trust the Sith!

[Megabot]

I get the feeling this topic is redundant, because I have zero doubt tons of people have already picked up on this recurring theme in SW: Time and again people trust, associate with, or collaborate with the Sith to fulfill some kind of agenda, only to get betrayed in some way...despite the fact that for millennia the Sith have established a galaxy-wide reputation for being a bunch of power hungry sociopaths who will readily backstab anyone and everyone in their quest to defeat the Jedi and rule the galaxy. The Trade Federation trusting Darth Sidious, who openly admits to being a Sith Lord, in the PT immediately springs to mind, and we all know how that ended for them. But an even more glaring example I recall is the the SW:TOR prequel webcomic where the Sith Empire reneges on the peace negotiations and attacks the Republic, handily summed up by the quote in the lower-left quote of the page and the thread title:



Gee, ya think!? "Fools" doesn't even begin to describe you...
There's also SW: Legacy, where as I recall the Moff Council secretly collaborates with the One Sith to overthrow Emperor Roan Fel, and Grand Moff Morlish Veed is led to believe that he'll be the new Emperor...only for Darth Krayt to declare himself emperor and makes the Moff Council swear fealty to him.



At least Moff Calixte has enough common sense to lampshade this, as well as certain other things in secret...but I digress, another moment that comes to mind later in the comic is when Captain Yage gets fed up with serving the Sith after one too many atrocities and defects to Fel's Empire in Exile:



The Sith have no honor? You don't say, it's not like they haven't demonstrated this sort of thing for millennia or anything!

So is it possible there's a justification for this collective, galaxy-spanning Sith-specific amnesia? I mean besides the need to rehash the usual "Sith backstab, betray and wreck shit up in the galaxy" plot. Something similar to "The Shroud of the Dark Side," perhaps?

[Esquire]

Counterpoint: What is a... I don't know, a Hussite? If you didn't immediately know in-depth doctrinal facts about a sect only a few hundred years removed from regional importance, why would you think a GE citizen would immediately recognize a sect much longer defunct and potentially much more distant to their own history? Galaxies are, it turns out, large.

[Simon_Jester]

Or, taken from another point of view, no one nowadays dreads the prospect of pissing off Mongolia for fear that a Ghenghis Khan-like army will lay waste to their country. People don't tremble at the thought of crossing Italy for fear of a Roman legion showing up at their doorstep, or Syria for fear of angering the Assyrians.

People who don't understand the underlying nature of the Force will tend to identify the Sith as adherents of an ancient religion about whom a lot of nasty rumors and vague bad things are said in the history books, not as an ongoing and eternally untrustworthy entity whose modern incarnation is as bad as its previous ones.

[Lonestar]

Or, taken from another point of view, no one nowadays dreads the prospect of pissing off Mongolia for fear that a Ghenghis Khan-like army will lay waste to their country. People don't tremble at the thought of crossing Italy for fear of a Roman legion showing up at their doorstep, or Syria for fear of angering the Assyrians.

Once someone displays an ability to manipulate Old Republic politics like Sideous did in TPM, I think I would start to be hesitant to blindly trust them as being innocuous.

[Batman]

Except 1) no one knew Palpy was a Sith and 2) nobody realized how much he was manipulating both sides until the very end.

[The Romulan Republic]

Or, taken from another point of view, no one nowadays dreads the prospect of pissing off Mongolia for fear that a Ghenghis Khan-like army will lay waste to their country. People don't tremble at the thought of crossing Italy for fear of a Roman legion showing up at their doorstep, or Syria for fear of angering the Assyrians.

People who don't understand the underlying nature of the Force will tend to identify the Sith as adherents of an ancient religion about whom a lot of nasty rumors and vague bad things are said in the history books, not as an ongoing and eternally untrustworthy entity whose modern incarnation is as bad as its previous ones.

A lot of people have short memories in general.

I mean, its been only seventy-odd years since WW2, and we've got increasing support for fascism across the Western world. Does it really shock anyone that there would be a significant percentage of the population who are willing to trust the Sith a millennia after the last war with them?

[Simon_Jester]

Once someone displays an ability to manipulate Old Republic politics like Sideous did in TPM, I think I would start to be hesitant to blindly trust them as being innocuous.

Except 1) no one knew Palpy was a Sith and 2) nobody realized how much he was manipulating both sides until the very end.

It is, at the least, unclear how much the outside galaxy really knows about events. The only people who were personally present for many of the pivotal events surrounding the fall of the Republic were Palpatine, Vader, and a handful of Jedi who all died during or before the events of the original trilogy.

It's entirely possible that the 'consensus history' known by the galaxy as of, say, Episode VII reads something like:

"Chancellor Palpatine took power from the ineffective Valorum during the Naboo crisis. His leadership during the Clone Wars was highly effective. At the end of the Clone Wars, there was a short, violent conflict between the Jedi Knights and Palpatine, fought for reasons that to this day were unclear. Palpatine claimed that the Jedi sought to remove him to stage a coup d'etat, but presented little evidence for this claim. Meanwhile, he purged the Jedi order with brutal efficiency in the aftermath of the conflict. This was perhaps the first sign that he sought to consolidate all power into the Galactic Empire..."

The part about Palpatine being a Force user might well just not be on the radar.

[KraytKing]

Palpatine claimed that the Jedi sought to remove him to stage a coup d'etat, but presented little evidence for this claim.

I would contest this. Multiple Jedi Masters entered the office of the Chancellor with express intent to remove him from office, then proceeded to attempt to kill him. Evidence enough, I would say.

The part about Palpatine being a Force user might well just not be on the radar.

Oh, it certainly wasn't. We hardly knew it in the OT. The moniker "Darth Sidious" wasn't added until the PT. He was revealed as a Force-user in ROTJ, but even then he made his guards leave beforehand. And in the canon novel Lords of the Sith, Palpatine states multiple times that he can leave no witnesses to his Force abilities aside from Vader and his personal guard. And the guards are both caught by surprise the first time he shows off his unique skills.

[Simon_Jester]

Palpatine claimed that the Jedi sought to remove him to stage a coup d'etat, but presented little evidence for this claim.

I would contest this. Multiple Jedi Masters entered the office of the Chancellor with express intent to remove him from office, then proceeded to attempt to kill him. Evidence enough, I would say.

Okay, I screwed up my phrasing, you're right.

What I was thinking but failed to write was along the lines of "we know what the Jedi did, but we don't know why the Jedi did what they did."

The New Republic's official line may very well be something like "the Jedi tried to remove Palpatine because they knew he was trying to consolidate power as Emperor, they must have known it was coming, why else would several prominent Jedi who were lauded as heroes in Clone Wars era have so abruptly sought his removal?"

Meanwhile, Imperial apologists would be saying "Mace Windu was a notorious hitman for Marsellus Wallace hardliner and fanatic, of course he'd be the Jedi Council's point man in any attempt to instate a Jedi theocratic dictatorship!"

So the disagreement would be whether Palpatine was a criminal who successfully resisted arrest, or a blameless civil servant brutalized by a bunch of magic-glow-sword-wielding thugs.