blood and bone: what sith are

still thinking about how maul bit palpatine’s hand in his final trial on hypori. he bites the hand that feeds him. sidious tells him there is a second apprentice not out of any truth, but only to determine if maul can take this last, crucial, utterly irrevocable step towards the dark side: to hunger not only for destruction, but to hone that anger, one target at a time. to be willing to kill the one thing he loves. (and maul does indeed love sidious.)

this is why maul succeeded. this is why anakin failed. for he did not truly love the jedi. and he did not willingly kill padme. his anger was a frenzy, blind and indiscriminate. palpatine underestimated the power of pure, love. for the love maul had for sidious was sickened and twisted and built on foundations of blood and bone. but anakin and padme had something particularly tangible. something sidious could not understand, even though he claimed to. you cannot unravel this love, you cannot pervert it or manipulate it at its core, though it’s extremities may weaken and die.

this is why vader failed, this is why luke succeeded. because vader never really wanted to kill padme. and perhaps he buried the notion of fatherhood despite bearing it in his new name, but he never really killed it. so when luke comes into the picture, vader no longer needs palpatine. he is no longer the only connection he has. padme is back, now, and the legacy of anakin skywalker is more than blood and bone.

it is luke. it is leia. it is hope. it is light. it is love.

vader will not bite the hand that feeds him because everything he has done has been for love. and palpatine can’t understand that. he never has. he never will.

and this is why anakin skywalker succeeds. this is why palpatine fails.

i could talk for hours about the force bro. palpatine made some fire ass points in the wrath of darth maul by saying it was stupid to place morality on an energy field, but then there's also the mortis gods + abeloth. and then there are the ladies from the wellspring that taught yoda how to force ghostify himself.

and there's also that whole thing about how the jedi serve the force, but sith make the force serve them. the force is often portrayed as a mystical entity, a mistress or a commander, but it's also seen as a current. like a river that force-sensitives tap into when they find it necessary.

and then there's people like kreia who believe the force is pretty shitty in general (i'm not well-versed on her beliefs tbh) and i think she's real for that. if the force is an entity with goals and good and evil, then who is to say that the force does not dictate everything within the galaxy? is there free will, or is everything the will of the force.

then there's the whole plagueis novel karmic repercussion thing. plagueis actively seeks immortality through the most twisted avenues, and when he and sidious finally manage some iota of success, anakin skywalker is born across the galaxy as some sort of equalizing force. boo. chosen one.

i think the force is probably the MOST interesting and accurate representation of a religious deity. and star wars is dead-on when it comes to having so many people differentiate on the same thing, when in reality, NOBODY (not even the audience) knows exactly what the force is in its entirety. and everyone's fuckin starting wars over it LOL

the wrath of darth maul

yeah so... sidious is probably at his absolute worst in this novel. very blatant abuse, manipulation, etc.

i think it becomes impeccably clear why maul is such a horrible person in the clone wars. and yes, he is a horrible person. tragically so, but still quite terrible indeed.

i think the real tragedy of maul is that he is never what he wants to be. he never really gets to do what he wants to do. and if he does, it's through sidious twisting it into something entirely sickening and quite horrendous. case in point:

maul grew up in a small room on mustafar with a small viewport out to the planet. he had always wanted to go outside and see the world from outside the window, even going so far as to paint the view (with his own blood) onto the wall of his new, windowless bedroom (cell). sidious learns of this. he has maul sedated and chucks him out into mustafar with no supplies and no weapons. maul survives seventeen days. his reward? sidious kills his caretaker droid in front of him and then makes him eat a fish alive.

whether or not he knew it, maul always sought connection. it's a sentient thing to desire, and sidious was very, incredibly scant with it. maul grew up relating compliments to punishment because of it. at orsis academy, he finds friends -- kalindi and daleen (bless their souls). and they are good friends, even though they're all pretty tragic characters with shitty pasts and a bloody future. how lovely, how nice... until maul kills everyone at orsis academy, including his two friends, on sidious' orders.

there are other examples. can't remember them, but all the way up till tpm, he's been constantly restrained by sidious. that restraint starts as a way to keep him from being a good person -- moulding him into a brutal, paranoid, well-guarded monster -- to restraining him from actually being that monster. he isn't allowed to use the force up until naboo in order to keep the sith a secret.

and the tragedy is heralded by this. the one time he really gets to do what he wants; to kill jedi, to cement his superiority, to unleash himself entirely... he dies. well, not quite, but he dies in every way that matters. so desperately has he desired freedom that the moment he achieves it, he hardly knows what to do with himself.

pretty sickening. he got the shortest straw for sure. went batshit insane on lotho minor, tripled the amount of legs he had, nearly killed his brother. incoherently rageful. more sadly was the fact that he had to come to terms with the fact that he was a failure to sidious; the only person he wanted to impress (though i think some part of him knew he'd never be able to. sidious just doesn't care enough.). he would never be what he could've been. he will never be a true sith again.

and as horrible as being a sith is, it's all he ever knew. and only before he died, for real this time, did he really and truly understand what that meant.

Anakin and Ahsoka Analysis

Kind of starts when Anakin says, "The Council is asking you back," and then reinforces with "I'm asking you back." He knows how little the Council's opinion means to Ahsoka in that moment, but also knows how much his opinion means to her. He offers out her Padawan braid, and the music swells almost in a dark and eerie manner, as if her decision here will condemn or free Anakin from the chains of the Dark Side--which it will. And when she closes his hand over the very thing that represents her connection to him--Master to Padawan--the music stops. Anakin is horrified, betrayed, and Ahsoka doesn't regret her decision yet, but by God does she feel guilt for abandoning Anakin like this. The music becomes more lighthearted then, though--a better future for Ahsoka, one where she won't die at the hands of clones, one where the Council won't use her and then toss her aside when politics call for it. After all this time considering others, she can finally look out for herself.

The Force theme plays as she leaves the Order, a once-pure pillar of Light now rife with corruption thanks to Palpatine and the Jedi's longstanding arrogance due to the Sith's millenium-old "destruction." Her leaving, plus the theme choice implicates that this really was the best path she could go down. Not for Anakin, but for herself. And when Anakin follows her out, she tries not to engage. She knows that if she speaks to him, she'll want to come back to her big brother. To her friend Rex, to her father Plo, to the old grandfather that Yoda was to her. She steels her nerves and leaves, but Anakin persists. He couldn't bear it if his Padawan walked away from him now, another loved one down the drain of things he couldn't control. First Shmi, now Ahsoka, with Padme soon to follow. And he speaks to her. 

He doesn't understand why she's doing this, why she's leaving him and everything he did for her, taught her. He can't see past the veil of selfishness that Palpatine has draped upon him--it is all about you, Anakin. Somehow this is your fault. Should've caught Barriss sooner, should've known from the start, should've fought for Ahsoka more than he had.

Ahsoka knows and sees this--she can't fathom where it comes from, but she knows his intentions are good. Anakin Skywalker is a good man, a trustworthy man who believed in her when no one else did. And that was it. After everything she'd done for the Council, they didn't trust her. After the battles she'd fought hard, won and lost, the blood, the bruises, trauma and worry, all for the sake of an Order who cast her out when the Senators began to question their loyalty. Her loyalty. Was her loyalty to be questioned? If she had turned herself in, could she have come to a better resolution? She was more like Anakin every day, determined to handle every problem on her own, finding it harder and harder to see the logic in simply retreating and cooling your head. One day, that veil of selfishness might fall on her, too. How long until that happened? She needed to calm her nerves and take a step away from the blitz, the action, the war.

That's what she was doing now. She couldn't go back, but Anakin didn't see it. Anakin thought that because he alone had stood by her side, it would be enough to bring her home. She was undyingly grateful for his trust, his love and his loyalty, but she needed to make it unquestionably clear that she couldn't return. Too much had transpired against her; she could never enter those Temple doors again without remembering it.

And Anakin says she's throwing her life away, but that isn't it. The Jedi Order was everything she'd ever known, everything she'd ever stood for. Morals ingrained into her mind from when she was a toddler, techniques and mantras running through her head as she rushed across the battlefield. 

She wasn't throwing it away. She couldn't. She would never be able to let go of the Jedi's teachings, and she didn't want to. They had taught her more than just how to block blaster bolts, how to pull objects into your hands or sway people into letting her past locked doors. Corrupt as they had become, they were still good people. And she wanted to remember them as that--remember their teachings and let them guide her through the foreseeable future. All her life she'd been taught and told, and now it was time to teach and tell herself what to do...even if it meant leaving her family behind.

This wasn't what Anakin would do, as much as he had considered it. She saw how he would smile at Padme--the most genuine grin she'd ever see from him. He loved her, and he knew that he couldn't. And she knew that he couldn't. Of course he would want to leave. Anakin wanted a family--that's why he latched onto everyone with a death grip. He didn't know how to let go.

Maybe she could switch the roles just this once...teach him something invaluable, like the many things he'd taught her.

A lesson in letting go.

And the music swells once again as she takes strides away from him, tears welling in her eyes as she feels him watching her. He won't force her back--he understands now, why she needs to go. They understood each other now--their reasonings and their fears, their loves and their resentment. War tore people apart, but it could bring them together.

So as she descends the stairs of the Temple for the last time, she says good-bye to the people this wretched war had given her. Good-bye to Obi-Wan, to Anakin, to Rex and to Plo. But there was a greeting to be given to one person and one alone.

And so, without looking back, she wishes the best to Jedi Padawan Tano, and embraces Ahsoka with open arms.

just to clarify everything ever

palpatine doesn’t believe he’s GOOD. he doesn’t believe he’s a good person. he never has and he never will.

he, like his master before him, considers himself to be completely above morality. he is an incredibly classic… might makes right mentality… in which he believes that because he is the strongest, it is his job, and perhaps his wet dream, to rule the galaxy. (sukuna, voldemort, all for one and a few other big villains share this way of thinking.)

i believe staunchly that all dictators feel this way. that in order to rule something and to rule it “well”, you have to believe on some level that you are the only person who can do it.

he doesn’t think he’s good, he thinks he’s god. or that he soon will be. little freak that he is.

arrogance. don’t you love it?

maul was never meant to succeed sidious. he was just a tool and a weapon. he was never an apprentice and he was never really, truly a sith. as all of sidious’ apprentices (yes, all), he was entirely disposable, though sidious had no apt replacements at the time.

had he not died, i am sure sidious would have continued to use him for covert missions, but he would’ve recruited someone else (dooku still, i imagine) to lead the separatist side of the war. and while there are a litany of things to show that maul was little more than a weapon, the clearest one is from The Wrath of Darth Maul.

the key tenet of the sith is that the apprentice yearns to kill the master. both tyranus and vader had the desire to murder sidious, though dooku was far less eager to act upon such things in comparison to vader… arguably this is second proof of dooku’s pure disposability, was the fact that palpatine first endeared himself to dooku, so he was always a friend before he was an enemy.

(anakin is the exception. he is a son who wishes to kill his father. palpatine saw that, and he acknowledged that no amount of false affections would be enough to keep vader’s killing intent at bay.)

back to maul. during his final trial on hypori, where he dueled sidious, he lost his hatred for his master. it became unwavering loyalty. treachery is the way of the sith, and this is the antithesis to that. palpatine needed a subordinate. he did the same with dooku, but dooku always figured that by the end of the day they would be somewhat equal in the post-war empire. dooku was deluded. maul was just… never meant to be a sith. too bad for him. he had all the anger and all the strength, and he would’ve absolutely crushed it about a thousand years earlier. but he was not built for the modern era of darkness, where deception and political cunning reigned supreme.

sidious preaches finding apprentices who are strong where you are weak, but also weak where you are strong (the creation of monsters). maul could carry out assassinations and hits and takedowns that sidious could not, but he was never well-accustomed to the world of subtlety and subversion. he chafed at the idea of being restrained to non-force action, as any sith would, but he prioritized his master’s will over his own. and it’s good that he did, from sidious’ perspective, anyways.

and while sidious considers vader to be his minor masterpiece, this guy is absolutely terrible at picking apprentices and keeping them. or, more like, he’s just a terrible fucking dude and master as well. and he didn’t really want a successor; he just wanted monsters and tools and subordinates.

but the dark side is founded not only on anger but on arrogance. you have no truly humble sith lords, no true sith lords who believe that they are just fine where they are. this hunger for strength makes good students and good masters, but terrible, terrible tools. maul was a failed apprentice because he thought he had everything he needed. he died. dooku was a failed apprentice because he never thought he needed more. he died. anakin was a failed apprentice because he needed what only palpatine could provide. each in their own way failed to carry out the will of two because of palpatine’s ability to engender dependency on him.

tldr: what palpatine really needed was a neurotic and insecure force-sensitive who didn’t get arrogant and die to a jedi on naboo. nice try, old guy.