• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

What was Palpatine's original plan for Naboo?

Skipper

Skipper

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Disclaimer: I've only watched movies and live action series on Disney+. No animated shows

I saw The Phantom Menace decades ago (and have no desire to rewatch it) but there are a couple of points that are unclear to me.

The Trade Federation did a blockade in secret preparation for a full-scale invasion of Naboo. The Republic sends two Jedi to negotiate.

But the Viceroy tries to kill them, setting in motion the events of the movie. And of the entire saga, if you think about it. If it had been just a fruitless chat, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would never have met Anakin.

The fact is that by escaping, they also manage to free Queen Amidala, which I don't think was planned at all. Palpatine manages to exploit this unexpected event for his own plans and persuades Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence in Valorum. But if the queen hadn't been present in the Senate and if the invasion had proceeded as planned, what would the original plan have been?
 
Skipper said:
Disclaimer: I've only watched movies and live action series on Disney+. No animated shows

I saw The Phantom Menace decades ago (and have no desire to rewatch it) but there are a couple of points that are unclear to me.

The Trade Federation did a blockade in secret preparation for a full-scale invasion of Naboo. The Republic sends two Jedi to negotiate.

But the Viceroy tries to kill them, setting in motion the events of the movie. And of the entire saga, if you think about it. If it had been just a fruitless chat, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would never have met Anakin.

The fact is that by escaping, they also manage to free Queen Amidala, which I don't think was planned at all. Palpatine manages to exploit this unexpected event for his own plans and persuades Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence in Valorum. But if the queen hadn't been present in the Senate and if the invasion had proceeded as planned, what would the original plan have been?
Click to expand...
Probably show Valorum's ineffective leadership to manage the crisis of an attack from one member of the Republic to another and rally a vote of no confidence. If Amidala dies it's further weight to a sympathy vote for him.
 
The Clone army had already been commissioned. Any way the invasion ends (except, perhaps, for Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan negotiating a swift and equitable resolution) starts the situation deteriorating towards war, and Palpatine is well-positioned to become powerful in the wartime administration as the representative of the first planet devastated as a result of the Republic's feckless handling of the Trade Federation crisis, and once he's high in the government, he can amass more power for himself publicly or in the backrooms. He doesn't necessarily need to jump straight to Chancellor for his plan to progress.
 
But why did Palpatine order the Jedi to be killed? Worst case scenario, they would return with nothing accomplished after a fruitless negotiation. Trying to kill them would have created too many unpredictable scenarios.

They had almost made it into the command room! And they would have prevented the invasion before it began, interfering with Palpatine's plans.
 
Palpatine would've argued against the legitimacy of the Trade Federation's invasion, forced Valorum out of office by blaming him for any deaths that occurred, and then rode a 'sympathy wave' to the Chancellor's Office.
 
Skipper said:
But why did Palpatine order the Jedi to be killed? Worst case scenario, they would return with nothing accomplished after a fruitless negotiation. Trying to kill them would have created too many unpredictable scenarios.
Click to expand...
To up the body count and tragedy. Either Gunray is successful and it's a deliberate strike against the Republic peacekeeper forces, or they add legitimacy to the Federation's crimes by observing the tragic events.
 
The real question is why send Darth Maul after the Jedi? Granted, he was the only was seemingly capable of fighting them, but it also suddenly exposed the Jedi to the renewed Sith presence.
 
Sketcher said:
The real question is why send Darth Maul after the Jedi? Granted, he was the only was seemingly capable of fighting them, but it also suddenly exposed the Jedi to the renewed Sith presence.
Click to expand...
Good question. Whether they had lived or died would have been irrelevant to Palpatine's plan.

Edit
It occurred to me that perhaps he believed the Jedi might have discovered someone else was behind the Federation's actions. He didn't know what they'd learned while "guests" on the ship.
 
Sketcher said:
The real question is why send Darth Maul after the Jedi? Granted, he was the only was seemingly capable of fighting them, but it also suddenly exposed the Jedi to the renewed Sith presence.
Click to expand...
Getting the Jedi spun up on the Sith possibly being around every corner also serves Palpatine's aims. If they're paranoid and frightened, they're more likely to make bad decisions.
 
Naboo was Palps' springboard to power. If he had been from some other planet, he would have been the senator for that planet, and engineered the trade blockade of that planet. It was all to put him in position to be vaulted into the Chancellor's seat. He had no other plans for Naboo, probably. Once he was Chancellor and then Emperor, he no longer had any use for the planet per se.

As for unleashing Maul against the Jedi . . . He was at the stage of his plan where the Sith would be revealed, the Clone Wars started, and the shroud of the dark side unleashed to cloud the perception of the Jedi. (Galaxy-wide war, hatred, and fear on interstellar scales) The Jedi were far more likely willing and motivated to get involved once they knew their true opponent was a hidden Sith Lord. As Luceno so elegantly explained in his Episode III novelization- by fighting at all, the Jedi lost. The entire Clone War was a trap to destroy the order.
 
At first Maul was sent to track down the Jedi and the Queen. Mostly to get the treaty with the Neimoidians signed (or at least that is what he told them). After the Jedi head back to Naboo, it seems to be mainly to block the Jedi who went with the Queen. The move seemed to puzzle Palpatine (at least by his words to Gunray and Maul). Maybe he was playing them at that point knowing outcome, or he was covering his bases.
 
Sketcher said:
The real question is why send Darth Maul after the Jedi? Granted, he was the only was seemingly capable of fighting them, but it also suddenly exposed the Jedi to the renewed Sith presence.
Click to expand...

I think ultimately it's about gaining control over Anakin.

There's Palpatine's line near the end about watching Anakin's career with great interest that indicates foreknowledge of his significance.

Sidious has to get rid of his apprentice to keep him from becoming too powerful and a threat. It creates an opening for Tyranus, and the vacancy left by him when Palpatine entices Anakin to commit an evil act creates the opening for Vader.

Confronting and defeating Maul elevates Kenobi and makes him resolute to follow Qui-Gon's dying wish that Anakin be trained over Yoda's objections.

Maul is sacrificed to pursue all of this.
 
Palpatine didn't even know Anakin existed until he showed up with Padme and the Jedi, and he didn't take even the slightest interest in him until after the events of the battle, which succeded largely because of his actions. So that whole idea is a non-starter. Besides, if he had foreknowledge of Anakin; waiting for some Jedi to find him and then via for control over him is a very perculiar approach when he could just kidnap and raise the kid as a Sith like he did with Maul.

Anyway, the original plan is fairly obvious given the movie is quite clear on this. Invade Naboo, force a settlement, use that injustice for a sympathy vote to propel Palpatine into high office, or position him to take a leadership role in the already fomenting separatist movement.
When the Jedi got loose and absconded with the Queen, he sent Maul out to retreve them because at that point, he still needed that treaty signed. When Maul failed and they showed up on Coruscant, Sheev spun the situation and engineered the vote of no confidence. Indeed if anything, what the heroes of that story really did was accellerate his ascension. He probably originally planned to use the crisis to continue to chip away at Valourum's credibility for a few more months, or even a year before making any serious move for the Chanselloeship.

Palpatine is a very clever planner precisely because his plans have built-in contingencies, and everything doesn't always need to go exactly his way to achieve his end goals. We see this multiple times in the movies and TCW, and weach time we see him think on his feet to adapt and spin things back in a direction that he can use. Or just accept the short-term loss and continue to play the long game.

For example; I've often assumed that while the Clone Wars was essentially a phony war, it's still a war with all the chaos and unknown outcoms that such bring, and there's limits to how much he could control the outcomes of individual battles and campaigns without overtly showing his hand. As such I would fully expect that had things gone differently and the Seperatists ended up "winning", he would have still positioned himself to come out of it in charge of a Galactic Empire.
Indeed, he probably told Dooku that this was in fact "Plan A", and Dooku would get to be Emperor while Sidious would shed the Palpatine guise and rule from the shadows. Dooku also probably thought he could raise an apprentice of his own and take him out of the equation at somepoint because: Sith gonna Sith.
 
Reverend said:
Palpatine didn't even know Anakin existed until he showed up with Padme and the Jedi, and he didn't take even the slightest interest in him until after the events of the battle, which succeded largely because of his actions. So that whole idea is a non-starter. Besides, if he had foreknowledge of Anakin; waiting for some Jedi to find him and then via for control over him is a very perculiar approach when he could just kidnap and raise the kid as a Sith like he did with Maul.

Anyway, the original plan is fairly obvious given the movie is quite clear on this. Invade Naboo, force a settlement, use that injustice for a sympathy vote to propel Palpatine into high office, or position him to take a leadership role in the already fomenting separatist movement.
When the Jedi got loose and absconded with the Queen, he sent Maul out to retreve them because at that point, he still needed that treaty signed. When Maul failed and they showed up on Coruscant, Sheev spun the situation and engineered the vote of no confidence. Indeed if anything, what the heroes of that story really did was accellerate his ascension. He probably originally planned to use the crisis to continue to chip away at Valourum's credibility for a few more months, or even a year before making any serious move for the Chanselloeship.

Palpatine is a very clever planner precisely because his plans have built-in contingencies, and everything doesn't always need to go exactly his way to achieve his end goals. We see this multiple times in the movies and TCW, and weach time we see him think on his feet to adapt and spin things back in a direction that he can use. Or just accept the short-term loss and continue to play the long game.

For example; I've often assumed that while the Clone Wars was essentially a phony war, it's still a war with all the chaos and unknown outcoms that such bring, and there's limits to how much he could control the outcomes of individual battles and campaigns without overtly showing his hand. As such I would fully expect that had things gone differently and the Seperatists ended up "winning", he would have still positioned himself to come out of it in charge of a Galactic Empire.
Indeed, he probably told Dooku that this was in fact "Plan A", and Dooku would get to be Emperor while Sidious would shed the Palpatine guise and rule from the shadows. Dooku also probably thought he could raise an apprentice of his own and take him out of the equation at somepoint because: Sith gonna Sith.
Click to expand...

Some have claimed, and done so right here on this board, that the story of Darth Plagueis that Palpatine told to Anakin at the opera house implies that Sidious had a hand in creating Anakin in the first place. I don't believe that that's necessarily true, because Sidious is certainly an insinuator and a liar, but it's certainly possible. Furthermore, we know canonically that Sidious foresaw much that was accurate. Unless you have canonical references that say otherwise, what's a non-starter is a sweeping proclamation that Sidious couldn't have had foreknowledge of Anakin's existence.

Why didn't Sidious just scoop up Anakin? Three reasons, given foreknowledge. One, he needed Vader's help to hunt down and destroy the Jedi. That would have been much harder had Anakin not had the privileges and training of a Jedi. Two, Anakin's attachment to his wife was the key to his downfall. Third, Luke was to be Vader's successor, so the attachment had to be Padmé.

It's absolutely canonical that the Emperor claimed to have foreseen Vader bringing Luke before him. Did he really foresee that, and if so when, is all we need to ask. Even if Sidious hadn't foreseen Luke specifically at the time of the Federation invasion of Naboo, he still could have realized the importance of the other two factors, at a minimum, in creating assets worth cultivating.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top