Darth Plagueis

In dramatizing the Sith Master-Apprentice relationship, the novel draws parallels with concepts of natural patrilineage, drawing on established Star Wars mythology, and on the real myth of Oedipus. By presenting the Sith dynamic and its Rule of Two as a dark version of a fundamental family bond, the novel emphasizes the cruelty and hatred integral to the dark side of the Force.

The novel relies on the Star Wars framework of the Rule of Two and the established mythology of the Sith Order. Established by Sith Lord Bane, the Rule is an attempt to harness the Force by concentrating it into only two Sith Lords at any one time: a master and an apprentice. By the Rule, each master must be killed and usurped by his own apprentice, who takes his place as master and identifies an apprentice of his own. This rule frames Sith succession as a dark version of the natural familial bond between father and son. It is a violent enactment of the traditional pattern of patrilineal succession, in which an heir’s realization of power is predicated on the father’s death.

The prophesied, inexorable murder of a father figure by a son figure also belongs to the Oedipus myth, a pervasive literary-cultural trope taken from Socrates’s play of the same name. This has given rise to the Oedipus Complex, a theory that considers patricide tropes symbolically expressive of real subconscious competition between sons and fathers, in which the son must “kill” the father in order to gain full maturity and independence. The Rule of Two draws on Oedipal features to create dramatic irony and tension in the novel. Both the Oedipus myth and the novel create a tragic narrative arc in which actions taken by a character to avoid a prophesied tragic destiny will paradoxically cause that very fate. The Prologue’s depiction of the murder of Plagueis by Sidious embeds its inexorability into novel’s structure from the outset. With ultimate dramatic irony, the novel’s telling of Sidious’s rise to absolute power by killing Plagueis is also situated within his destiny as the last of his Order. The Sith Order will be destroyed by Sith Lord Darth Vader when he sacrifices himself to save his real son, Luke Skywalker. Thus, the Sith Order will be conquered when its cruel pseudo-patrilineal structure is usurped by the power of a real father-son bond.

The father-son parallel is further emphasized by the novel’s apprentice selection stories, demonstrating that each Sith master takes on a corrupted fatherly role for their adopted protégé as the apprentice’s allegiance shifts from their natural father. The novel reveals in Chapter 6 that, exceptionally for Sith apprentices, Plagueis was a child when selected by Tenebrous, sold by his natural father in return for power and wealth. This has its more violent and explicit counterpart in Plagueis’s selection of Palpatine. When Plagueis—as Damask—grooms Palpatine through Chapter 10, the novel makes clear that he presents himself as an alternative father figure, stoking Palpatine’s resentment of his real father. Palpatine is goaded to kill his whole family in Chapter 11, including his father Cosinga, as a literal and symbolic manifestation of his transference of allegiance to Plagueis. Palpatine’s murder of Cosinga is a mirror of his later murder of the replacement father, Plagueis, confirmation that patricide is a part of his character. Palpatine’s unusual use of his single name—his family name—symbolizes his wish to obliterate his father and define his dynasty. These Oedipal narrative signals create dramatic irony, confirming the blindness of Plagueis to his apprentice’s destiny: to kill him, despite his efforts to break the Rule of Two.

The novel draws on the more intimate dynamics of paternal relationships through the perspective of the apprentices. In Chapter 6, Plagueis learns that Tenebrous has trained a second, rival apprentice, Venamis, breaking the exclusive line of succession between Tenebrous and Plagueis. Although Plagueis understands this to be useful confirmation that the Rule of Two has “expired,” his internal monologue also reveals a sense of hurt and betrayal, casting him in the role of the dispossessed son. He feels that his memory of Tenebrous is “demeaned” by the discovery of Venamis. Despite this disillusionment, Tenebrous’s past lessons continue to break into Plagueis’s internal monologue, suggesting that Tenebrous holds an unshakeable fatherly place in Plagueis’s psyche. In hunting down and eliminating Tenebrous’s other candidates for apprenticeship, even though he has already killed Tenebrous and taken his place, Plagueis enacts his resentment and jealousy over his “father’s” attempted disinheritance of him. This assertion of rightful inheritance is mirrored by Sidious’s murder of Plagueis, triggered by Plagueis’s attempt to break the Rule of Two. In doing so, Plagueis threatens Sidious’s progression to master and thus, paradoxically, hastens his own death. In the Prologue, as he surveys Plagueis’s body, Sidious recognizes that he has “coveted” Plagueis’s assets: His usurpation of Plagueis’s authority to hasten his own succession is intensely Oedipal.

Drawing on the principle that there can be no love or positive feelings felt by the Sith, the novel shows that the master-apprentice relationship is corrupt at its heart, predicated on a fundamental act of betrayal, patricide. The brutal inevitability of the novel’s narrative structure and its use of the Oedipus myth demonstrates how the Sith adoption process corrupts a natural father-son bond of duty and allegiance into one of betrayal and distrust.