Cheering for the Bad Guy: Part Two


In Part One I briefly discussed my cynicism about contemporary politics (even in Canada!), and confessed that while I can't stand such self-interested calculating in real life, I find its representation in fiction to be as fascinating as hell. At the end I mentioned my recent favourite of the political fiction genre, James Luceno's Star Wars novel Darth Plagueis, which I'll delve into here.

While the novel is no longer part of the “official” canon, I'm inclined to go ahead and count it canon anyways. Luceno has included many elements from Plagueis in his new-canon novel Tarkin, enough to cement the 2012 novel as a fixture in the “shadow canon.” More critical to its canonicity is the way the novel is so directly entwined with the entire film saga—well, at least Episodes I-VI, especially the prequel trilogy—that it forces us to watch the saga in a new light.

Well, it forces the saga into a “new darkness,” actually. The novel portrays the titular character—mentioned by Palpatine in the very telling opera house scene in Episode III—bringing the millennium-long Sith “master plan” to its climax by freezing Darth Bane’s “Rule of Two” and establishing a new Sith Empire over the corpse of a corrupted and diseased Galactic Republic and its Jedi defenders. However the novel’s more intriguing character is Palpatine himself, who as everyone knows is Plageuis’ apprentice Darth Sidious.

We (and Plagueis) meet Palpatine as an impressionable but cynical and almost brooding youth, clearly endowed with the ruthlessness and wits to become an incredibly skilled politician. Master teaches apprentice to sharpen these qualities for the master’s end-game of immortal Sith supremacy over the galaxy. Sidious is able to easily out-manipulate everyone precisely by befriending his enemies and pretending to call for more integrity and accountability on Coruscant. As also recounted to Anakin in the opera house scene, apprentice is even able to manipulate master into fatally dropping his defences. Apprentice defeats master in a thrilling culmination of its own, leaving Darth Sidious as the principal heir to Darth Bane's legacy.

The brilliance of this novel is manifold, but a few stand out. Luceno is deftly able to weave such a complex story out of a few lines of dialogue in Episode III, some throw-away lines in the opening crawl and dialogue in Episode I, and some plot points in that first, underwatched film. What is this dispute about the “taxation of trade routes to outlying systems?” Why is the Trade Federation blockading Naboo to resolve the dispute? How is Chancellor Valorum mired in “baseless accusations of corruption?” What is that massive, many-tiered industrial structure where Darth Maul duels Qui-Gon and Obi Wan, and what is it doing on such a green-friendly planet as Naboo? After reading this novel, I needed to watch Episode I, which is an achievement all on its own.

More importantly, it directly enmeshes itself with the whole film saga to date by showing how central the Sith Great Plan—and the Sith “point of view”—is to the saga. It delves primarily into the relationship between a Sith’s true, hidden identity and the false identity or “mask” fed to the public. Muun corporate magnate Hego Damask is really a puppet of Darth Plagueis, scheming Naboo politician Palpatine is really a tool of Darth Sidious’ rise to power, and the Empire itself is simply a means to pursue the Sith Order’s mastery over the universe. This mask-identity relationship nicely parallels the device famously employed in House of Cards, in which Underwood breaks the fourth wall to tell us what he really thinks and feels before returning to his congenial mask shown to the other characters. And when Sidious and Underwood reach the summit of power, they are free to unmask themselves: Sidious with the cowl and deformed face, and Underwood with the gradual disappearance of the fourth-wall asides.

Luceno takes us for a thrilling ride through the calculated mastery of Sidious’ rise to the Imperial Throne. It invites us to see this Sith quest for unlimited power as a good, at least from the Sith “point of view,” or that the Sith point of view transcends traditional notions of good and evil. This points to reasons why we want to cheer for the bad guy generally, which I will discuss in Part Three.

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