The quote "the power of the dark side does not debilitate the practitioner as much as it debilitates those who lack it. SlingyTheWhill thank you so much for such a well thought out and informative post I just finished clone wars and I'm starting bad batch and I really appreciate this.
What led me to this site was having a theory similar to what your post entails but I took it a little further. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine manipulates Anakin at the theater event and tells him a story about a "Wise and powerful" Sith "Darth Plagueis who discovered the secret to immortality - 'keeping the ones he loved from dying'. Typical in any manipulation there's bound to be some ounce of truth to stitch it together, and the only way that Palpatine would have had such familiarity with Plagueis is if that was his master and that 'he' had killed him in his sleep, where he grins in reflection.
Palpatine also reveals that his master taught him everything he knew in another scene. Apart from any canon, Plagueis sounds like he lived a very long time ago compared to current events in episode III. If this were true, Palpatine very likely was using the darkside itself vs some apparatus to present a false image publicly, filling peoples minds with an illusion.
He would be so disfigured after battling with Mace, compared to any of his apprentices because he could literally be years old.
That he was so committed to the darkside that he cheated any pitfalls associated with it. He also shows high enthusiasm when he finally meets Yoda, which likely is rooted to his self image of long existence - not exactly life as Yoda was also long living.
Thus seeing the other as a kind of distorted equal. He was also still vibrant when he quotes - "Unlimited power" and destroys Mace. The power probably extends beyond the scope of just force lightning. Rather the ability to continue living - albeit disfigured from age, more zombie esque. The darkside would have concealed his true age and Sith qualities, but like you said, he was so manipulative that he simply allowed his true appearance to take shape in front of Anakin. Afterward he took advantage of it publicly, seeing no reason to hide anymore, moreover after issuing order A secondary question that arises is why did Darth Vader physically age at least twice as fast as he should have, being so young when he was converted?
As he is revealed without his helmet, apart from scarring, he already appears old - up until this point he had not begun the journey back to the light side per his interactions with Luke - where it would be suggested that his aging was due to a lack of commitment to the darkside, this being contrary to Palpatine who cheated death and would have been truly very old. Another thought is that perhaps part of acquiring the long life Palpatine could have been draining life from another such as his loyal apprentice Darth Vader - where he celebrates in episode III that his new apprentice is "Far younger and more powerful", even to the extent that the darkside would drain from that greater power in Anakin.
Finally, I've always imagined that Palpatine told Anakin the story of Plagueis because he was actually boasting on how he himself used the knowledge to order the midi-chlorines to create Anakin in the first place - truly "owning" him. This event could have taken place a century prior and the force determined the arrival and timing of the child - along with presented prophecy from the Jedi temple.
It also seemed odd that at any time the Sith lord would have embraced marriage or having a child which is the essence of life not death. Even if the story claims he killed off Rey's parents, - his own child, later. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? An alternate explanation could be that disfigurement only occurs when one is hit with their own force lightning.
Mace Windu, one of the few practitioners of the lightsaber form Vaapad, allowed his own dark nature into his fighting. In the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, it is at one time suggested that he allows the dark side to flow through him without embracing it. This intense internal struggle allows for a particularly powerful sword technique, but may have also had unintended consequences on the lightning strike.
When Dooku strikes at Yoda with lightning, we see the the master Jedi catch the power, calm and absorb it rather than let it harm him. It is possible, and my personal hypothesis, that when the lightning strike was aimed at Master Windu, he allowed the dark side power to flow through him and out again through his lightsaber as he normally does in his form.
This focused energy could have easily had a magnified effect on the Emperor. Well, even in real life, some people who are hit by lightning become horribly disfigured, while some don't. Darth Bane was hit by his own force lighting and did not get disfigured. Arguably, Mace is a strong enemy: Palpatine has to put his all into the Force lightning if he is to have any hope of overcoming the Jedi.
Therefore, he is channeling a lot of Dark side Force which is detrimental to the Force user himself. The same thing happens to Luke in the beginning of the Dark Nest crisis when he creates a powerful illusion using both Dark and Light side.
For him the effect was temporary, so arguably Palpatine wanted the effect to last -- maybe for intimidation? In the Plagueis book, Plagueis and Palpatine are able to hide their dark side corruption even from Jedi and holo-recordings. Palpatine simply let he disguise fade away to make it look like Windu was hurting him, and help sway Anakin to intervene on his behalf, thus isolating him form the Jedi, and allowing him to be manipulated into giving into the darkside of the force.
I agree with KHW. I added this explanation on another question I just answered about "Why did'nt Anaj Ventress use Force lighting".
I was talking about how the continued use of the dark side makes you ugly in apperance as Palpatines true form was. His human looking kindly old man appearance in the prequels is realy a mask of dark side energy. Here is what I wrote below;. In other books, it was taught that any use of the dark side eventually casuses the splotching and bruising seen in the Emperors appearance.
But in ROTS we saw that in palpatines case, it was because Mace was using Vapaad to repulse the dark side lightning and, along with his lightsaber, send it back towards Palpatine. I personally thought that Palpatines entire human like appearance was a force mask, and that the lightning simply revealed his true visage.
In other words, his current decrepit appearance IS his normal appearance through the decades of use of the dark side, and his human looking one was simply an illusion.
Luke was also able to totally mask his appearance where others could not tell at all who he was. Only other high level force users were able to tell that Luke was using the force to hide his true form. And another thing! Notice the emperor didn't steadily electrocute Luke! He shot some then made small rest periods! Even near the end he did it! Also ROTJ is older and the word 'sith' isn't used, so the emperor was supposed to be something special then Like a galactic wizard or something of that nature!
Although he used the force to unlock Luke's hand cuffs, it was still not enough evidence at the time! The prequels were a good move by Lucasfilm! It's quite simple: Mace Windu used a lightsaber to reflect the lightning at Sidious, but Sidious simply electrocuted Luke without a lightsaber reflecto or whatever. That's what I think. Torture, Killing, and disfiguring, palpatine was in a bad situation and probably used it out of will of disfiguring because he was being shocked himself!
That's my theory! Luke was just getting tortured he wasn't actually getting killed. The Emperor was just electrocuting him, so he wouldn't actually die he was just getting hurt terribly so luke could change his mind into joining the dark side.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. This scenario seems likely, given what is known about both situations. In Revenge of the Sith , Palpatine was in what could be described as a state of desperation. He was losing to Windu, who had already beaten him in a lightsaber duel.
Seeing he was about to die unless he did something to stop it, Palpatine unleashed all the power he could muster at his opponent. He was fully in control of the fight when he was blasting Luke. Instead of trying to outright kill his enemy, Palpatine just used enough force lightning to torture him for his entertainment.
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