Spoilers 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' series [Spoiler Discussion]
- Thread starter Reverend
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It's clear being a senator still has sway so Bail can still bury it.
How does he bury it from DARTH VADER?
Because Tarkin and Palpatine still worry about the Senate. Right up until the first film.
Tarkin might, but I seriously doubt either of the Sith Lords do. Palpatine: "I am the senate!"
Vader could show up at Alderaan with a fleet of star destroyers and a legion of stormtroopers, and what are the pacifist Alderaanians going to do about it? Die horribly, is what they'll do. One of the few really good things about this show has been Vader's temperament and lethality- this is a phase where he has fully given himself to the Dark Side. If Vader were to decide the Organas were a threat to the New Order, they'd be gone. I'm curious to see how they write their way out of this in the final episode.
Palpatine is pragmatic though. The Senate is useful and Vader wiping out a member world will do what Leia predicted faster. It's a fine line they have to walk until the Death Star removes all doubt.
Unless something happens in the last episode to make everyone, Vader included, to think Obi-Wan actually died.
The case against the Organas is at this point very circumstantial. All Vader knows is that Reva had Leia kidnapped, and Kenobi showed up to rescue her. That Bail knew Obi-Wan is not new information to Vader, hell he was very much a part of the Christophsis campaign which started with a blockade the trapped Bail and his mercy mission behind the lines.
All he would have to go on is the suspicious timing. Sure, Bail could have been hiding Obi-Wan somewhere, maybe even the royal palace. But it's just as likely that Kenobi found out through third or even fourth party contacts and acted on his own conscience because: Jedi. Only Reva has concrete proof, and we've yet to see what she does with it.
Doubtless, dragging Bail into an interrogation chamber would get the truth out of him, but at what cost? They're already on very thin ice having kidnapped an Imperial Senator's child. Interrogating a serving Senator and the husband of the ruling monarch of one of the oldest and most influential planets in the core systems would be risking an open uprising. This would be less of a concern on some other planets where the Empire has made deeper inroads and could quietly control the situation, and while they certainly seem to be working on Breha's brother in-law, they just don't have that degree of influence on Alderaan. In an Empire like this, Imperial Senators are essentially aristocrats and if there's one thing that, makes an entire aristocracy rally or even rebel is the idea that the Emperor is picking them off one at a time.
I think Vader knows Palpatine would be less than pleased with this outcome since it could potentially split the Empire asunder and set his plans back decades, if not scupper them entirely. At this point, he fears Sidious more than he wants Kenobi.
The implication in 'Rebels' is that Vader certainly believes him to be, while Palpatine seems less than convinced. So it's certainly possible something happens that at least makes it seem outwardly plausible that he's dead.
All he would have to go on is the suspicious timing. Sure, Bail could have been hiding Obi-Wan somewhere, maybe even the royal palace. But it's just as likely that Kenobi found out through third or even fourth party contacts and acted on his own conscience because: Jedi. Only Reva has concrete proof, and we've yet to see what she does with it.
Doubtless, dragging Bail into an interrogation chamber would get the truth out of him, but at what cost? They're already on very thin ice having kidnapped an Imperial Senator's child. Interrogating a serving Senator and the husband of the ruling monarch of one of the oldest and most influential planets in the core systems would be risking an open uprising. This would be less of a concern on some other planets where the Empire has made deeper inroads and could quietly control the situation, and while they certainly seem to be working on Breha's brother in-law, they just don't have that degree of influence on Alderaan. In an Empire like this, Imperial Senators are essentially aristocrats and if there's one thing that, makes an entire aristocracy rally or even rebel is the idea that the Emperor is picking them off one at a time.
I think Vader knows Palpatine would be less than pleased with this outcome since it could potentially split the Empire asunder and set his plans back decades, if not scupper them entirely. At this point, he fears Sidious more than he wants Kenobi.
The implication in 'Rebels' is that Vader certainly believes him to be, while Palpatine seems less than convinced. So it's certainly possible something happens that at least makes it seem outwardly plausible that he's dead.
Reminds me of the Lansarrad from Dune.
Basically any feudal system really. There's always an implicit tension between an Emperor/King/Queen/Whatever and all of the nobility he depends on to actually manage the lands, resources, and peoples such a one claims as subjects. Strong rulers keep their aristocrats happy to the extent that rebelling would be slightly less comfortable than they'd prefer, and too concerned about infighting with their peers to gain favour, or worse; have a rival take the ruler's place. Weak rulers wind up as puppets controlled by the very Lords they supposedly swore fealty to them. Either way, no one person rules alone.
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Good video. Very educational.
It says a lot about Lucas that this is a dynamic he clearly understood from the get-go and rather subtly weaved it into his "wizards and cowboys in space" fairy tale. People whine on about all the politicking in the PT, but they often forget that he took the time in ANH not only to establish that the Empire is an Empire of separate systems that must be controlled through a bureaucracy of some description, but also that even within the Empire itself we saw political manoeuvring, backstabbing, grandstanding and general bickering by the higher-ups.
Sure it's minimal with all the actual senatorial stuff going on off-screen, but he chose to include it nonetheless when he really didn't need to, because this stuff actually matters, and he was very much thinking of very real politics and power dynamics when he wrote it.
Sure it's minimal with all the actual senatorial stuff going on off-screen, but he chose to include it nonetheless when he really didn't need to, because this stuff actually matters, and he was very much thinking of very real politics and power dynamics when he wrote it.
You know Darth Vader could lure Obi-Wan about say 10 years from when this series takes place by commandeering a ship that Princess Leia is on and then taking her prisoner with him to another location, but still allowing her to send him a message... Oh wait...
Good point. Once Obi-Wan's association / "weakness" has been exposed, there's no forgetting that. He's not coming out of hiding to rescue any of the innumerable kidnapped people in the galaxy--just one, so like any kidnapper / blackmailer, he will manipulate the same source because he knows his quarry's weakness. This too is something the series needs to explain away.
Vader can't handle the truth, but the Emperor must have known where luke was and where Leia was all along but it served no purpose to start a war, just to put a child in a cell, when he didn't need the twins to service his long term plans until Aby 000.
On the contrary; Palps was utterly clueless about either of them right up until about 2 minutes before he made that call to Vader in tESB. That's literally what that conversation is about; it's not "hey buddy, just letting you know Luke Skywalker is a thing I thought you should know about", it's "hey you mopey git, I just figured out what you're up to, so watch your step."
Palpatine engineered the Rebel Fleet to attack a fully operational Death Star.
That took years, meanwhile his real plan was to take over Luke or Leia's body after they tried to strike him in anger, so he didn't die of old age. Palpatine had no interest in possessing a gimp, or possessing a baby, or possessing anyone going through puberty.
Last time Palpatine was setting shit up to take over the republic and possess a vital preteen Anikan, he spent a decade before the prequels started building up the grand army as well as waiting until Anikan was all man, back before we knew that his fate was to be a third of a man.
The emperor is immortal. A plan that takes two or three decades to bare fruit is not surprising.
That depends on whether she will remain with the Empire. Especially after the events of Episode 5.
If Palpatine wasn't worried about the Senate at this point, why did the Grand Inquisitor have a fit when he learned that Reva had arranged Leia's kidnapping, whom he regarded as Bail's daughter? And why did Palpatine take so long in breaking up the Senate? He had waited 19 years before he did this. I wonder why.
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One does not exert totalitarian control over an entire galaxy overnight...
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