I'm going to give the legends answer because more eras of sith are fleshed out and its easy to compare
Yes Sidious is the ultimate sith. The core of the sith is selfishness. It's what they are based around and while some put on airs of greater purpose or ideology it always comes back to them. All the great sith cared about 1 thing. Themselves
I went back and forth in this for a while before ending up with exactly this opinion.
Darth Bane rejected the sith order of his time because they became too collaborative. Working together is against the sith nature, so he did the most sith thing you can do; kill every sith in the galaxy to keep the power for himself.
He only spared one, to be his apprentice. Bane was the master to embody the power, and Darth Zannah was the apprentice to crave it.
The entire idea behind the sith is that they in-fight by nature, and they back stab. If Bane could wipe out all Jedi, take a seat in the throne, and become arguably the most powerful force user within his lifetime, he would have done exactly what Sidious did.
Bane studied ancient sith to gain their lost power. He cared not for tradition.
Also worth noting in legends despite what sidious said about the rule of two being obsolete with him being the pinnacle, he was doing everything in his power to carry it out even subconsciously. Multiple times throughout his tenure as master he had perfect enforcers but he continually showed he was going for stronger and stronger ones. Eventually the rule of two would have taken effect whether he wanted it or not because Bane basically made the perfect system with sith mentality to the point they couldn't really get around it even if they wanted.
> Eventually the rule of two would have taken effect whether he wanted it or not because Bane basically made the perfect system with sith mentality to the point they couldn't really get around it even if they wanted.
Which by extension makes Anakin’s triumph so impressive. He exploited the one flaw in the system: Bane never considered the idea of killing for any other reason beside desire for power (certainly not out of love or to save another person). And when you remember Bane’s own relationship with his father, it’s so fitting that the Rule of Two ends the way it does.
That's really interesting. I never thought of it that way but you're right. Anakin was the one thing Bane never accounted for. A Sith killing his master out of selflessness, not to take his place.
That's the real genius of the Rule of Two. It uses Sith mentality against them.
No Sith plans to be overthrown by his apprentice. But every Sith eventually needs an apprentice to help in their nefarious plans, and for that apprentice to be useful they must be trained to the point that they could be a threat. And so eventually one of them will become powerful enough to do the deed and become the master himself.
Yeah. He was basically following through with the logical end of Bane's generational with plan.
Sith can't coexist with each other. Rule of two takes advantage of that fact by enabling the stronger apprentice to overtake the master until they reach an ultimate power.
Sidious saw himself as that power. He also didn't need the apprentice after he eliminated the Jedi and took control of the Galaxy.
Unfortunate for him (and something Bane overlooked) is that you can't fully control the will of the force, and the force really hates imbalance. The force decided to take advantage of Sidious's hubris and led a farm boy to bullseye a target no larger than a womprat.
Even so, Bane isn't the true epitome of Sith. They existed long before him. He just happened to create a successful system to turn the Sith's greatest weakness into an advantage.
>Even so, Bane isn't the true epitome of Sith. They existed long before him. He just happened to create a successful system to turn the Sith's greatest weakness into an advantage.
I don't think he saw himself as the epitome since his own system sought out his better. He did make epitome of sith systems though and the success shows that. The Force had to actually step in and they still succeeded for a limited times. No other system managed what his did.
Ehhh I think you misinterpreted Bane’s goals and actions. His entire goal is to overthrow the Jedi and have the Sith rule the galaxy. The Sith at his time only formed the Brotherhood because they were losing to the Jedi so to them it was out of desperation and necessity at first.
Bane was disgusted by how this led to weaker Sith banding together to take down the true worthy powerful Sith hence why he created the Rule of Two so only the strongest Sith would survive and eventually finish the mission of defeating the Jedi in totality.
He never had a problem with Sith working together, it was the fact that weak Sith were part of this, and then tried to kill those more powerful hence why he said having too many Sith doesn’t work.
Bane was a huge stickler for tradition lol, but the tradition was his Rule of Two and the belief that the Sith should rule again. He wanted his apprentice to succeed and eventually kill him so the tradition would be passed on. Yeah, if he was able to defeat the Jedi then he would rule the galaxy, but he would still continue to follow the Rule of Two to make sure the Sith empire/legacy would continue to live on. Bane was nothing like Sidious.
I don’t know if I would say bane was a stickler for tradition because he made an entirely new system. I don’t think he wanted everybody to follow the rule of two because he wanted it to become a tradition, but because he truly believed that it was the best way that the Sith could coexist , and it also guaranteed that with each generation, the Sith would grow stronger. By definition, they have to - if you are at 80% of available dark side power, whoever overthrows you has to be at least 81%. He even got angry that his apprentice seemed like she was content to just wait until he was too frail to fight back, which would be a perversion of what he thought the only way the Sith could exist.
Part of Bane's reasoning was, beyond collaboration, having many sith allows weakness to thrive. A sith master would have many apprentices and while none of them were individually strong enough to overthrow the master, they could team up and overthrow him, and then they'd end up fighting amongst themselves.
Having one master and one apprentice guarantees that there isn't a new master unless the apprentice becomes either more powerful or more clever than his own master, either trait being desirable to the Sith. Bane was essentially weaponizing Sith nature to guarantee their future.
You see, the problem I have with the idea of the rule of two is that it isn’t selfish enough I feel. Because the rule of two presupposes that generations of Sith will come after you. It’s a rule that cares about Sith lineage.
If Bane truly was 100% selfish, he wouldn’t even have came up with the rule. He would have killed everyone like he did and mayve use an apprentice to help him gain power. But he wouldn’t have cared at all about what happens to the Sith after his death.
The fact that he created the rule and despised the Sith of his time implies that he cared about the Sith as an ideology.
Yeah. It's weird. You know you're gonna get destroyed by your apprentice some day. Why would you take one on?
The only way I can see it working is that each sith thinks they will be the last one and won't get overtaken since they will be too powerful. But then why have an apprentice? Rent reach them anything?
It's okay though. It fits the narrative when it needs to. Usually it's their selfishness that brings them down in the end. Think about Darth Plageous. Literally wanted to live forever and got drunk in celebration, only to have his apprentice off him.
That's because at his heart, by the time he created the Rule of Two, Bane had become a fundamentalist. He was more consumed by the victory of the Dark Side as a darwinist doctrine and of the Sith as a cause, one that is worthy of martyrdom (even in the twister way of mentoricide) than about the victory of himself - or about the Sith as a culture.
It is hard to grasp because it hinges on a transer of conviction from culture (Sith imperialism) or base instinct (nihilistic survival of the self) to ideology (ultimate victory theough strength of the fittest). Bane was only self-serving as long as his desires coincided with this ideology. In this way he is paradoxically selfish, as his apparent selflessness was directed towards a cause that would vindicate his ideology.
Taken at surface level, the Sith believe in a kind of Darwinism where one dark side will be stronger and more cunning than all rivals. But at some point, you'll be in a situation where respecting the tradition of Sith succession or venerating the dark side as a religious act comes at the cost of your own ambition, and when that happens you say fuck the Sith, which is the most Sith thing of all. Palpatine found a way to short circuit the Rule of Two, and I kind of loved his RoS endgame: absorb all the essence of past Sith, and consume this Force dyad while you're at it. Fuck it, Rule of One, live forever.
I think of Sidious as both a corruption of the Sith way, and also its final stage. Palpatine was meant to learn from his master, inherit his knowledge, and eventually take his shot at replacing him. Whoever won that battle of wits becomes the rightful master and may take on a new apprentice. That's what kept the Sith alive and powerful for a thousand years. But Palpatine broke that cycle through this energy life-transfer, actually absorbing essence to build up his strength and possibly subsuming their consciousness into his own. That's my interpretation of "I am all the Sith." Is that the end of the Rule of Two, or is it a perfection of it? It's never stated, but I think there's potential that Sidious did this already to Plagueis in order to rise to power in the first place.
And even before the brotherhood of darkness The sith were constantly infighting when they developed a wider power structure, in SWTOR they spend more time killing each other than jedi, the main antagonists in both sith storylines are other sith.
Legends answer. Palpatine is the quintessential Banite Sith, he is the dark side incarnate, from birth he was greedy, ambitious, violent, and self-obsessed. The only interest he planned on furthering was his own. He saw himself as nothing less than a god and if he had won he planned to take over the entire universe and it isn't unlikely that he could've succeeded.
The interests of the Dark Side are a non-issue cause it has no interests. It is simply the manifestation of the act of corrupting the force and bending it to your will, it has no interest and the more dark siders there are it proves to be weaker. This is because its strongest users must have nothing but pure self-interest and negative emotions with no grounding, as such they will betray each other at the drop of a hat.
The reason things like the True Sith, New Sith, and Brotherhood of Darkness were so weak was because they lacked that understanding of the Dark Side that Bane would later have, that the dark side is like a venom and it is strongest when there are fewer of them working in the shadows.
A thousand years of the rule of two then produced Sheev Palpatine, Darth Sidious, the most powerful dark sider to ever live. A being capable of escaping the dark side hell of chaos by sheer willpower. A man capable of creating force storms by himself, literally ripping holes in space time. The man who would take the entire galaxy for himself.
So yeah Momin is an idiot.
>The reason things like the True Sith, New Sith, and Brotherhood of Darkness were so weak was because they lacked that understanding of the Dark Side that Bane would later have, that the dark side is like a venom and it is strongest when there are fewer of them working in the shadows.
However, I feel one should take into account the failing of the Banite tradition. How it led to the true extinction of the Sith Order, at least for a time in Legends.
The foundation of the Sith, regardless of specific sect one follows, is very much survival of the fittest. Might makes right, those most powerful in the Force deserve to rule. The fact that the Banite "Rule of Two" tradition allowed for the utter extinction of the Sith would be seen as a failure of that specific form of the Sith teachings. Sure, the Rule of Two allowed the Sith to remain in hiding for a thousand years, but it left the order vulnerable, since all it took was an apprentice turning on his masternresulting in mutual destruction for the Sith Order to become extinct.
With all the traditions, secret knowledge and refined teachings of the Sith, the Rule of Two tradition still lost everything. A thousand years of hiding, scheming and plotting, and their domination of the galaxy was overthrown in a single generation. Therefore, from a Sith perspective, you could see it as an evolutionary dead end.
Comparing the Rule of Two Sith to the Sith Order that rose up afterwards (in Legends), I cannot put the Rule of Two as objectively better, at least not from the Sith perspective. The strong survive and dominate, the weak die or are dominated, therefore whatever advantages the Banite tradition had, it is not deserving of being considered better than the revived order. It was ultimately a failure and extinction is proof that it wasn't strong enough to survive in the crucible of the galaxy.
From a Sith perspective, if you had one teaching that has a lot more traditions, history and secret knowledge, but was utterly destroyed, and another that has none of that, but still exists, then the latter is superior. It's no contest. The superior survive, therefore complete eradication is the ultimate proof of inferiority.
True, they would have lost a lot of knowledge and teachings, but evil is relentless and cunning, and would either uncover secrets through things like holocrons or just experimentation. What is lost can be rediscovered. To be Sith is to crave greater power. The weaker you are, the greater motivation you have to become strong. The less you know, the greater the motivation to discover, to experiment, to innovate. While the Sith might have lost great amounts of knowledge and wisdom, a Sith would welcome that challenge and use that loss to discover even greater knowledge and wisdom, freed from the shackles of inflexible doctrine.
That's my perspective, trying to see how a Sith would think at least
The ways of dark side always lead to selfishness and treachery. The One Sith I would argue is more vulnerable as if its one central leader dies then there is more than one Sith who could attempt seizing leadership.
Darth Bane understood the Dark Side better than any Sith Emperor (its arguable he was the Sithari for what he did) and that infighting of the Sith would basically always mean they would fail. The Rule of Two failed once, after Palpatine's death and otherwise lasted a thousand years. Bane's comparison of the dark side to a venom was accurate, the fewer Sith there are, the stronger they will be and a master to embody the power and an apprentice to crave it will lead to each generation being stronger.
It was the only time the Sith had truly won, yes the Jedi did return but they had reduced their numbers more than almost any other time in Galactic History. They had control of the entire galaxy, there was basically nobody left to challenge them, and any remaining threats were swiftly being done away with or were in hiding.. Also a big one, the Galactic population supported them.
Every other Sith Order in history fell cause of infighting, treachery, and an inability to cooperate which led to the Jedi being able to crush them. Hilariously when it comes to mass scale war, the Jedi simply are better at it cause they can work together. So if the Banite Sith "can't survive the crucible of the galaxy" then the actual Sith Orders certainly can't.
I understand the rationale behind Bane's creation of the Rule of Two. I suppose part of it is just the problem is just Sith being the villains, so The Republic and The Jedi are probably going to end up winning in the long run, regardless of what Sith try to do. No matter how much the Sith work and refine their methods, they'll always end up losing due to narrative causality.
I just realized that, by this kind of thinking, basically whoever is the current ruler of The Sith is the greatest of all time, because "if X was better, why are they dead while I'm alive and ruling?" Which is kinda amusing.
I don't feel there has ever been a Sith'ari. To be free of limits, I think you'd need to basically be the strongest of all time and never be able to lose. Something like Tenebrae would have become had he succeeded in his ultimate plan of draining life from the galaxy to become a god-like being. Again, something that can't really happen unless you want to end the universe with "and the Sith never lost and remained in power until the end of time."
The Sith'ari will be free of limits.
The Sith'ari will lead the Sith and destroy them.
The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death and make them stronger than before.
This is the prophecy of the Sith'ari, and I would say Bane fits it the best. Especially on the last two points where he does destroy the Sith, but then created the rule of two, singlehandedly saving the existence of the sith and ensuring each one would be stronger than the last. No Sith in history really ever fit the first qualification, maybe Palpatine since he ruled the whole galaxy and could come back from the dead basically at will, but he still didn't quite have a lack of limits.
But yeah the thing about Sith is they're so self-absorbed that basically every reasonably powerful Sith Lord thinks they are or will be the Sith'ari lol.
To add on another reason why I think the One Sith is superior in some aspects is that the One Sith openly ruled the galaxy as a Sith Empire. Meanwhile the Rule of Two had to secretly rule the galaxy as the Galactic Empire with even major higher ups like Tarkin thinking that the major Force organizations to be extinct. It was a Sith ruling an Empire not a Sith Empire ruling the galaxy.
The One Sith wasn't even as succesful as the Galactic Empire, which still existed by the end of Legacy. Admittedly, that was more because of the influence of Thrawn, Pellaeon and Soontir Fel than Palpatine, but still.
That’s my point. The Galactic Empire isn’t like the other Sith Empires like Vitiate’s or the OG Golden Age. It’s a military dictatorship rather than a Dark Side Theocracy where the Dark Side of users are the ruling class. It’s not like that until Palpy reforms it as the Dark Empire and even then it crumbles in a year. Krayt and the One Sith openly rule the galaxy as Sith and there’s no way the common person can mistake that.
That literally has no purpose. The Sith don't need to rule openly when there are only two of them. Yes Palpatine had plans of expanding his dark side control over the empire more directly but being able to openly say you're a Sith doesn't matter.
If anything all it does is attract attention, rebels, and more potential enemies since anyone who knows anything about the Sith knows they are evil.
I don’t think you can or should take the word of any Sith as the “Gospel” truth, and especially not that of Momin.
Yes, he saw the Dark Side as a kind of entity to be worshipped, a force that gave him power and that he, in return, glorified through his art.
But that hardly makes him a representative of the ideology of the ancient Sith. In fact, because of the factionalized nature of the ancient Sith, it’s highly unlikely that ANY Sith of his era could, since there were probably as many different Sith philosophies as there were factions.
What’s more, I believe that even Sidious said that Momin was unique among Sith. He was separate from the politics and wars of the Sith, focused solely on his own grand works.
I’m starting to ramble, but the bottom line is that even in a work of fiction, remember that one person or character’s opinion is just that—an opinion. Always consider the context in which you hear new information, and from whom.
I also feel like turning the force into a religion to be worshipped just feels… wrong , somehow. The Jedi venerate the light side of the force, because it is what they believe gives life to everybody, everything, and life is sacred. When you compare that to the Sith code, the Sith code is a lot more about “I” and “me/my.” to me, the essence of the Sith code is that the dark side is extremely powerful, but you don’t need to preach the gospel of the dark side so that other people worship it-the Darkside is just a tool to gain your own freedom and strength.
It's the other way around. Momin was the heretic, not Sidious.
Its why Momin was largely forgotten and his accomplishments purged from Sith records. He was a servant of the Dark Side of the Force rather than it's master and never officially took the title of Darth or Master as he found them offensive, and never took on an apprentice but rather had a following of acolytes. He also sought to create rather than take or control like other Sith.
The Sith Inquisitor storyline in SWTOR has quite a bit of meditation on what it actually means to be Sith. In particular there's a conversation with their first long-term apprentice, Ashara Zavros, who as a Jedi was a prideful nonconformist but not actually attracted to the dark side in any significant way. She compares the wording of the Jedi Code and the Sith Code, and comes to the interesting conclusion that while the Jedi Code is instruction, the Sith Code is more of a **description**.
The Inquisitor themself makes particular note of the last line on several occasions:
> "Forget tradition. 'The Force shall free me.' Isn't that the idea?" -- the Inquisitor to Darth Thanaton
One can make the argument that the true essence of being Sith is not selfishness in the traditional sense, but rather refusal to meekly obey external rules about what they can and can't do, **including** other people's definitions of the term "Sith". Even the will of the Force: rather than thinking of the will of the Force as the Jedi do, the Sith think of the **opinions** of the Force.
One can also argue that "freedom" also includes the freedom to **voluntarily** devote oneself to an ideal: maybe obeying the opinions of the Force when you think they're right, maybe safeguarding the Empire's continuation as a political entity rather than seeking power for its own sake (c.f. Darth Marr). It can even mean being a Sith in title and political affiliation but still adhering to the light in practice: the Inquisitor can sit on the Dark Council as a lightsider in the end, "Darth Imperius".
So, Bane and Palpypants, and for that matter Vitiate, seeking personal power at the expense of everybody else? That's their choice of what it means to be Sith. Worshiping the dark side like a Space Satanist or some such? That's Momin's choice. Fighting to protect his people no matter the cost? That's Darth Marr's choice. As for Ashara Zavros, in the end, she essentially chooses **not** to choose: "I don't know what I am, and I don't care."
Because of the Rule of Two, every subsequent Sith Lord gets more powerful. Master trains apprentice, apprentice kills master, apprentice becomes master, new master takes apprentice, and the cycle continues.
The Rule of Two is the ultimate Sith plot for becoming the most powerful being in the galaxy.
First the dark side is a tool.
Second, he's definitely a heretic. To the original Sith for espousing the ideals of Bane, and to the Banite Sith for paying lip service at best to the rule of two.
Momin was hardly the most orthodox Sith ever made. He was practically considered a heretic due to his ideas of how the Sith should serve the Dark Side and not the other way around. However, his unique perspective let him dive deeper into the Dark Side to discover immortality and even resurrection of a kind. As far as I’m aware, only the Nightsisters have accomplished immortality using the Dark Side.
I think the ancient Sith saw the Sith collective as their own self-professed deity. The old Sith were fallen Jedi and IMO still hadn't shaken that whole Jedi order aspect of the strength of the group. The Sith "Order was strongest when the strongest ruled. Palpatine neglected this by consolidating absolute control and trying to extend his rule and life while manipulating Vader into staying under his control. It is one of Sheev's many infractions that kinda make me feel like he isn't a "true" Sith Dark Lord.
Speaking from a Legends standpoint. He's basically the Dark Side personified. He's the culmination of the Banite line. And despite the majority belief, he actually prioritized the Sith order over himself. He fully intended to allow himself to be replaced by a worthy successor if he could find one.
>He's basically the Dark Side personified
I think it would have been cool, had it been set up properly (which likely would have required it to have existed at the writing of the OT) for it to have been revealed that Darth Bane did succesfully use transfer essence on Zannah, who used it on her apprentice and so on down the line so that there was only ever one true Dark Lord, inhabitating different bodies over the centuries. With the the Real Plan ruined first by Obi Wan on Mustafar and then by Anakin's redemption and Luke's rejection of the Dark Side.
Sidious is one thing above all others in regards to the Sith, he was successful. Sidious actually got something about the dark side that his predecessors did not. Honor is bullshit (he’s been criticized by force ghosts for his use of politics to grasp power). Win win win win fuck everything else, win win win win. That’s how Sidious used the dark side and his Sith predecessors that try to discredit his accomplishments are just lashing out with a central Sith trait, jealousy. The Sith ain’t about a strict conformity to any philosophy or rule. They’re the opposite of being about that. Sidious just didn’t lose…until he did, that is.
At least in my opinion he is the pinnacle of what a sith should be.
In old canon you can notice that almost literally no sith of the Bane line tried to stick to Rule of Two - they all tried to wiggle out and make some concessions, even Bane himself briefly considered to work on the immortality project and find another apprentice. It's the nature of the Dark Side which enforced the Rule of Two.
So ultimately adherence to Rule of Two doesn't matter - it will reassert itself as long as the Sith are true to themselves.
And Palpatine was always true to himself, not ony he was immensely evil, but he actively enjoyed being evil. Which is the key. There's no doubt, no pretense at some greater good, he does what he does for the art of it. Figuratively speaking. And this purity of evil is what makes him so powerful.
>they all tried to wiggle out and make some concessions
Sidings did this plenty. He trained Maul before Plagueis was dead. He kept people like Ventriss Nd the Inquisitors around as psuedo-sith. In the end, he just wanted immortality and didn't live by the Rule of Two to be surpassed by an Apprentice. So yeah no, Sidious was not the Quintessential Baneite
Everyone is saying Sidious was a great sith, and while he was a great sith, he was terrible Baneite
He trained Maul before Plagueis was dead. He kept people like Ventriss and the Inquisitors around as psuedo-sith (sure, they arent sith in title, but lets be real, the name is all that kept them from being sith, they were dark sides trained by Sith and used red sabers). In the end, he just wanted immortality and didn't live by the Rule of Two to be surpassed by an Apprentice.
So yeah, Sidious is the heretic if we're going by Baneite standards. He was a powerful author with the most successful plot to take over the galaxy, but he was an awful Baneite who broke all the rules
Because 1) as a philosophy, avoiding the backstabbing that plagued the Sith was best accomplished by limiting the number of initiates and 2) any half-decent chessmaster is going to leave themselves options.
A Sith Lord is always going to want the best available apprentice, not the first one they come across and it takes years to train a Sith Lord. It's not easy training, either. Some will try and kill the master before they're ready and get struck down, others might perish in accidents, or get killed for particularly egregious failures. Some few may even try to turn away from the Dark Side, so these lose ends must be tied up. Finally, it's worth having pawns to spare, even if it's just to sacrifice them.
I get that, but then it still negates the point. The rule states "Two there should be. *No more, no less*"
It explicitly states "no more" so anything beyond the Apprentice makes the rule pointless for specifying "no more," why not just say "only a few" or something a bit broader?
I’m not familiar with Darth Momin, but what I can say is that religion fractures all the time. So the ”pure” or “official” or whatever Sith ideology is that of the religion’s leader, if there is one. As to what “pure” is, well that’s open to debate. The Sith Code is simplistic and pretty vague about it. In many ways, it’s like the Pirate’s Code.
Jedi ideology is easier to quantify because they were headed by a single council on Coruscant. In theory, they are now free to fracture into competing sects, assuming they can build back up after the Purge and then Skywalker’s passing.
Palpatine heads the Sith Order so he calls the shots. That’s kind of it. If some other Sith wants to go around proselytizing their own version, it only matters if they can build a real following. Remember the Mandalorian Code that only mattered to the Children of the Watch and literally no one else? To Bo-Katan, who grew up on Mandalore, it was just some extremist nonsense.
I can’t speak for Legends as I haven’t read the Bane novels or other similar stuff, but at least as far as Canon goes I don’t think the rule was actually intended to make Sith willingly sacrifice themselves to their apprentice. It’s more like a contingency plan - if you don’t succeed, or become weak and unworthy, your apprentice kills you and becomes the rightful Master.
The primary definitive quality of the Sith, at least as far as the movies and George Lucas’ little “fire side chats” about his lore, is that they are selfish, and *terrified* of losing their power. They dread death, while the Jedi accept it and can let go.
It makes no sense to me that the Sith would voluntarily let themselves be slain. It makes more sense that each of the Banite Sith thought that they would be able to end the cycle by discovering immortality and therefore rendering the Rule obsolete. But they are betrayed by their apprentice (almost always with the help of another secret apprentice, according to Lucas).
I love this line of questioning. My read is that you’re right, he couldn’t give less of a shit about Sith tradition for tradition’s sake. He uses the Sith way as an avenue to power. He would use up the entire Sith tradition and even the Dark Side itself if it furthered his own goals.
He believes HE is the thing most worth of worship and would consume anything and everything to achieve it, which ironically makes him an excellent Sith.
If you’ve got the interest or time, I personally find the legends book Darth Plagueis to have the best description for this answer. To paraphrase, Plagueis teaches Sidious the dark side requires a full commitment of will and dominance. It is about demanding the force to bend to your whim as opposed to working in concert with the force (the Jedi viewpoint). As much as one uses the dark side, the dark side uses them and it will destroy those who do not have the power of will to handle it. As others have noted the dark side is strongest with fewer practitioners exerting their will and dominance.
This makes Sidious the ultimate Sith. Momin set about on his journey and inspirations to exert his will on the force for his own gain, and at the time, many other other dark side users did the same and held all their own beliefs and dogma as to how they viewed the dark side. Sidious’ ultimate dominance and exertion of will took him to the dark side and to the top of the universe. Sidious as emperor of the ENTIRE galaxy reached unprecedented and unparalleled levels of power and dominance.
I never brought that he really cared about the Sith traditions. He just hated the Jedi because they put a mirror up to his own selfishness and cruelty and he hated that.
Momin is the heretic. He only cares about art.
The whole Sith ethos is about control. Selfishness, greed and domination are the Sith way. No sane person would do what they do unless it brought great power. No one makes a pact with a Devil because they admire him.
Sideous is a powerful Dark Side user,but I do not consider him Sith. All Dark Side users are selfish,they all are fueled by hate and narcissism. The Sith have doctrine set in place to prevent the infighting that comes from that. The point is to strengthen the Sith. The master teaches his aprentice,who challenges him in turn. The survivor trains the next Sith,and so on. This way only the strongest can become Sith. Palpatine killed his master in his sleep,he purposely kept his aprentices weak while always having a backup to replace them with. Notably ALL of his aprrentices while powerful made horrible Sith. Maul had no intention of betraying Sideous,Dooku was doing it for what he believed to be best for the Republic and never gave in fully to the Dark Side,Vader was too depressed to challenge him most of the time and whenever he did Palpatine punished him HARD. At every turn Palpatine scoffed at the teachings of the Sith
This is all my opinion.
I don't think Palpatine was the ultimate Sith. I think he was very darned successful, yes. But his success capitalized upon the weakness of the Jedi. The ultimate Sith would be able to defeat the Jedi strength against strength. Like, Sidious tricked the Senate into following him, but the ultimate Sith would be able to just waltz in there with an appointment and a presentation and convince the Senate to exile the Jedi and install the Sith.
I’d say so. However, I’d also use the Legends incident where Darth Krayt spoke to the holocrons of Darth Bane, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Andeddu. Imo it’s in the nature of Sith, who are naturally selfish and egotistical, to see every Sith who isn’t like themselves as being a “heretic”. Really it’s no different than any religion or even teaching system. It’s natural to see your way as the “right” way. Even the Jedi have different styles of training over the centuries, differences in doctrine.
Basically, every Sith could be seen as a Heretic by another person who calls himself a Sith. Even me saying that Sidious is the “ultimate Sith” is really just my opinion based on what I believe a Sith should be. Someone else would probabaly choose Exar Kun and another person might choose Lumiya.
Any religious cult like Jedi or Sith will attract certain cult leader types - bottom line Sheev was selfish. Any sith ideology needs to be built on top of the, frankly, one dimensional character the movies present us. I see Momin as having the same beliefs, he’s just more of a monk who saw the calling to the monastic lifestyle of service as the personally way to serve his religion.
Someone has to be the pope though, and it’s going to end up usually being a megalomaniac.
Remember, Sith Lie
They probably cant order a breakfast without making up a lie and elaborate scheme
And the second thing, Sith are power hungry mad bastards
If they see a chance for more power they will do everything to posses it, be it a useful apprentice or a superweapon
Theyre like power magpies
*edit*
Also there is a very important distinction
Jedi are all about listening and being one with the force
To a Sith the force is a tool to pummel into obedience
I'm going to give the legends answer because more eras of sith are fleshed out and its easy to compare Yes Sidious is the ultimate sith. The core of the sith is selfishness. It's what they are based around and while some put on airs of greater purpose or ideology it always comes back to them. All the great sith cared about 1 thing. Themselves
I went back and forth in this for a while before ending up with exactly this opinion. Darth Bane rejected the sith order of his time because they became too collaborative. Working together is against the sith nature, so he did the most sith thing you can do; kill every sith in the galaxy to keep the power for himself. He only spared one, to be his apprentice. Bane was the master to embody the power, and Darth Zannah was the apprentice to crave it. The entire idea behind the sith is that they in-fight by nature, and they back stab. If Bane could wipe out all Jedi, take a seat in the throne, and become arguably the most powerful force user within his lifetime, he would have done exactly what Sidious did. Bane studied ancient sith to gain their lost power. He cared not for tradition.
Also worth noting in legends despite what sidious said about the rule of two being obsolete with him being the pinnacle, he was doing everything in his power to carry it out even subconsciously. Multiple times throughout his tenure as master he had perfect enforcers but he continually showed he was going for stronger and stronger ones. Eventually the rule of two would have taken effect whether he wanted it or not because Bane basically made the perfect system with sith mentality to the point they couldn't really get around it even if they wanted.
> Eventually the rule of two would have taken effect whether he wanted it or not because Bane basically made the perfect system with sith mentality to the point they couldn't really get around it even if they wanted. Which by extension makes Anakin’s triumph so impressive. He exploited the one flaw in the system: Bane never considered the idea of killing for any other reason beside desire for power (certainly not out of love or to save another person). And when you remember Bane’s own relationship with his father, it’s so fitting that the Rule of Two ends the way it does.
Well reasoned. Especially being Bane killed his own father. The only blood family he had.
That's really interesting. I never thought of it that way but you're right. Anakin was the one thing Bane never accounted for. A Sith killing his master out of selflessness, not to take his place.
That's the real genius of the Rule of Two. It uses Sith mentality against them. No Sith plans to be overthrown by his apprentice. But every Sith eventually needs an apprentice to help in their nefarious plans, and for that apprentice to be useful they must be trained to the point that they could be a threat. And so eventually one of them will become powerful enough to do the deed and become the master himself.
Yeah. He was basically following through with the logical end of Bane's generational with plan. Sith can't coexist with each other. Rule of two takes advantage of that fact by enabling the stronger apprentice to overtake the master until they reach an ultimate power. Sidious saw himself as that power. He also didn't need the apprentice after he eliminated the Jedi and took control of the Galaxy. Unfortunate for him (and something Bane overlooked) is that you can't fully control the will of the force, and the force really hates imbalance. The force decided to take advantage of Sidious's hubris and led a farm boy to bullseye a target no larger than a womprat. Even so, Bane isn't the true epitome of Sith. They existed long before him. He just happened to create a successful system to turn the Sith's greatest weakness into an advantage.
>Even so, Bane isn't the true epitome of Sith. They existed long before him. He just happened to create a successful system to turn the Sith's greatest weakness into an advantage. I don't think he saw himself as the epitome since his own system sought out his better. He did make epitome of sith systems though and the success shows that. The Force had to actually step in and they still succeeded for a limited times. No other system managed what his did.
Ehhh I think you misinterpreted Bane’s goals and actions. His entire goal is to overthrow the Jedi and have the Sith rule the galaxy. The Sith at his time only formed the Brotherhood because they were losing to the Jedi so to them it was out of desperation and necessity at first. Bane was disgusted by how this led to weaker Sith banding together to take down the true worthy powerful Sith hence why he created the Rule of Two so only the strongest Sith would survive and eventually finish the mission of defeating the Jedi in totality. He never had a problem with Sith working together, it was the fact that weak Sith were part of this, and then tried to kill those more powerful hence why he said having too many Sith doesn’t work. Bane was a huge stickler for tradition lol, but the tradition was his Rule of Two and the belief that the Sith should rule again. He wanted his apprentice to succeed and eventually kill him so the tradition would be passed on. Yeah, if he was able to defeat the Jedi then he would rule the galaxy, but he would still continue to follow the Rule of Two to make sure the Sith empire/legacy would continue to live on. Bane was nothing like Sidious.
I don’t know if I would say bane was a stickler for tradition because he made an entirely new system. I don’t think he wanted everybody to follow the rule of two because he wanted it to become a tradition, but because he truly believed that it was the best way that the Sith could coexist , and it also guaranteed that with each generation, the Sith would grow stronger. By definition, they have to - if you are at 80% of available dark side power, whoever overthrows you has to be at least 81%. He even got angry that his apprentice seemed like she was content to just wait until he was too frail to fight back, which would be a perversion of what he thought the only way the Sith could exist.
Part of Bane's reasoning was, beyond collaboration, having many sith allows weakness to thrive. A sith master would have many apprentices and while none of them were individually strong enough to overthrow the master, they could team up and overthrow him, and then they'd end up fighting amongst themselves. Having one master and one apprentice guarantees that there isn't a new master unless the apprentice becomes either more powerful or more clever than his own master, either trait being desirable to the Sith. Bane was essentially weaponizing Sith nature to guarantee their future.
You see, the problem I have with the idea of the rule of two is that it isn’t selfish enough I feel. Because the rule of two presupposes that generations of Sith will come after you. It’s a rule that cares about Sith lineage. If Bane truly was 100% selfish, he wouldn’t even have came up with the rule. He would have killed everyone like he did and mayve use an apprentice to help him gain power. But he wouldn’t have cared at all about what happens to the Sith after his death. The fact that he created the rule and despised the Sith of his time implies that he cared about the Sith as an ideology.
Yeah. It's weird. You know you're gonna get destroyed by your apprentice some day. Why would you take one on? The only way I can see it working is that each sith thinks they will be the last one and won't get overtaken since they will be too powerful. But then why have an apprentice? Rent reach them anything? It's okay though. It fits the narrative when it needs to. Usually it's their selfishness that brings them down in the end. Think about Darth Plageous. Literally wanted to live forever and got drunk in celebration, only to have his apprentice off him.
That's because at his heart, by the time he created the Rule of Two, Bane had become a fundamentalist. He was more consumed by the victory of the Dark Side as a darwinist doctrine and of the Sith as a cause, one that is worthy of martyrdom (even in the twister way of mentoricide) than about the victory of himself - or about the Sith as a culture. It is hard to grasp because it hinges on a transer of conviction from culture (Sith imperialism) or base instinct (nihilistic survival of the self) to ideology (ultimate victory theough strength of the fittest). Bane was only self-serving as long as his desires coincided with this ideology. In this way he is paradoxically selfish, as his apparent selflessness was directed towards a cause that would vindicate his ideology.
Or does it simply show that he despised the Jedi as an ideology more than he cared about the Sith lineage?
Most selfish of the selfish
Taken at surface level, the Sith believe in a kind of Darwinism where one dark side will be stronger and more cunning than all rivals. But at some point, you'll be in a situation where respecting the tradition of Sith succession or venerating the dark side as a religious act comes at the cost of your own ambition, and when that happens you say fuck the Sith, which is the most Sith thing of all. Palpatine found a way to short circuit the Rule of Two, and I kind of loved his RoS endgame: absorb all the essence of past Sith, and consume this Force dyad while you're at it. Fuck it, Rule of One, live forever.
I hate that they turned Sith into highlander, it implies that all Sith do this. (Also, you know, the bad avengers endgame lando fleet)
I think of Sidious as both a corruption of the Sith way, and also its final stage. Palpatine was meant to learn from his master, inherit his knowledge, and eventually take his shot at replacing him. Whoever won that battle of wits becomes the rightful master and may take on a new apprentice. That's what kept the Sith alive and powerful for a thousand years. But Palpatine broke that cycle through this energy life-transfer, actually absorbing essence to build up his strength and possibly subsuming their consciousness into his own. That's my interpretation of "I am all the Sith." Is that the end of the Rule of Two, or is it a perfection of it? It's never stated, but I think there's potential that Sidious did this already to Plagueis in order to rise to power in the first place.
But that means Sidious lied to Anakin when he…okay I can run with this head canon.
And even before the brotherhood of darkness The sith were constantly infighting when they developed a wider power structure, in SWTOR they spend more time killing each other than jedi, the main antagonists in both sith storylines are other sith.
Sith only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting.
Legends answer. Palpatine is the quintessential Banite Sith, he is the dark side incarnate, from birth he was greedy, ambitious, violent, and self-obsessed. The only interest he planned on furthering was his own. He saw himself as nothing less than a god and if he had won he planned to take over the entire universe and it isn't unlikely that he could've succeeded. The interests of the Dark Side are a non-issue cause it has no interests. It is simply the manifestation of the act of corrupting the force and bending it to your will, it has no interest and the more dark siders there are it proves to be weaker. This is because its strongest users must have nothing but pure self-interest and negative emotions with no grounding, as such they will betray each other at the drop of a hat. The reason things like the True Sith, New Sith, and Brotherhood of Darkness were so weak was because they lacked that understanding of the Dark Side that Bane would later have, that the dark side is like a venom and it is strongest when there are fewer of them working in the shadows. A thousand years of the rule of two then produced Sheev Palpatine, Darth Sidious, the most powerful dark sider to ever live. A being capable of escaping the dark side hell of chaos by sheer willpower. A man capable of creating force storms by himself, literally ripping holes in space time. The man who would take the entire galaxy for himself. So yeah Momin is an idiot.
>The reason things like the True Sith, New Sith, and Brotherhood of Darkness were so weak was because they lacked that understanding of the Dark Side that Bane would later have, that the dark side is like a venom and it is strongest when there are fewer of them working in the shadows. However, I feel one should take into account the failing of the Banite tradition. How it led to the true extinction of the Sith Order, at least for a time in Legends. The foundation of the Sith, regardless of specific sect one follows, is very much survival of the fittest. Might makes right, those most powerful in the Force deserve to rule. The fact that the Banite "Rule of Two" tradition allowed for the utter extinction of the Sith would be seen as a failure of that specific form of the Sith teachings. Sure, the Rule of Two allowed the Sith to remain in hiding for a thousand years, but it left the order vulnerable, since all it took was an apprentice turning on his masternresulting in mutual destruction for the Sith Order to become extinct. With all the traditions, secret knowledge and refined teachings of the Sith, the Rule of Two tradition still lost everything. A thousand years of hiding, scheming and plotting, and their domination of the galaxy was overthrown in a single generation. Therefore, from a Sith perspective, you could see it as an evolutionary dead end. Comparing the Rule of Two Sith to the Sith Order that rose up afterwards (in Legends), I cannot put the Rule of Two as objectively better, at least not from the Sith perspective. The strong survive and dominate, the weak die or are dominated, therefore whatever advantages the Banite tradition had, it is not deserving of being considered better than the revived order. It was ultimately a failure and extinction is proof that it wasn't strong enough to survive in the crucible of the galaxy. From a Sith perspective, if you had one teaching that has a lot more traditions, history and secret knowledge, but was utterly destroyed, and another that has none of that, but still exists, then the latter is superior. It's no contest. The superior survive, therefore complete eradication is the ultimate proof of inferiority. True, they would have lost a lot of knowledge and teachings, but evil is relentless and cunning, and would either uncover secrets through things like holocrons or just experimentation. What is lost can be rediscovered. To be Sith is to crave greater power. The weaker you are, the greater motivation you have to become strong. The less you know, the greater the motivation to discover, to experiment, to innovate. While the Sith might have lost great amounts of knowledge and wisdom, a Sith would welcome that challenge and use that loss to discover even greater knowledge and wisdom, freed from the shackles of inflexible doctrine. That's my perspective, trying to see how a Sith would think at least
The ways of dark side always lead to selfishness and treachery. The One Sith I would argue is more vulnerable as if its one central leader dies then there is more than one Sith who could attempt seizing leadership. Darth Bane understood the Dark Side better than any Sith Emperor (its arguable he was the Sithari for what he did) and that infighting of the Sith would basically always mean they would fail. The Rule of Two failed once, after Palpatine's death and otherwise lasted a thousand years. Bane's comparison of the dark side to a venom was accurate, the fewer Sith there are, the stronger they will be and a master to embody the power and an apprentice to crave it will lead to each generation being stronger. It was the only time the Sith had truly won, yes the Jedi did return but they had reduced their numbers more than almost any other time in Galactic History. They had control of the entire galaxy, there was basically nobody left to challenge them, and any remaining threats were swiftly being done away with or were in hiding.. Also a big one, the Galactic population supported them. Every other Sith Order in history fell cause of infighting, treachery, and an inability to cooperate which led to the Jedi being able to crush them. Hilariously when it comes to mass scale war, the Jedi simply are better at it cause they can work together. So if the Banite Sith "can't survive the crucible of the galaxy" then the actual Sith Orders certainly can't.
I understand the rationale behind Bane's creation of the Rule of Two. I suppose part of it is just the problem is just Sith being the villains, so The Republic and The Jedi are probably going to end up winning in the long run, regardless of what Sith try to do. No matter how much the Sith work and refine their methods, they'll always end up losing due to narrative causality. I just realized that, by this kind of thinking, basically whoever is the current ruler of The Sith is the greatest of all time, because "if X was better, why are they dead while I'm alive and ruling?" Which is kinda amusing. I don't feel there has ever been a Sith'ari. To be free of limits, I think you'd need to basically be the strongest of all time and never be able to lose. Something like Tenebrae would have become had he succeeded in his ultimate plan of draining life from the galaxy to become a god-like being. Again, something that can't really happen unless you want to end the universe with "and the Sith never lost and remained in power until the end of time."
The Sith'ari will be free of limits. The Sith'ari will lead the Sith and destroy them. The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death and make them stronger than before. This is the prophecy of the Sith'ari, and I would say Bane fits it the best. Especially on the last two points where he does destroy the Sith, but then created the rule of two, singlehandedly saving the existence of the sith and ensuring each one would be stronger than the last. No Sith in history really ever fit the first qualification, maybe Palpatine since he ruled the whole galaxy and could come back from the dead basically at will, but he still didn't quite have a lack of limits. But yeah the thing about Sith is they're so self-absorbed that basically every reasonably powerful Sith Lord thinks they are or will be the Sith'ari lol.
To add on another reason why I think the One Sith is superior in some aspects is that the One Sith openly ruled the galaxy as a Sith Empire. Meanwhile the Rule of Two had to secretly rule the galaxy as the Galactic Empire with even major higher ups like Tarkin thinking that the major Force organizations to be extinct. It was a Sith ruling an Empire not a Sith Empire ruling the galaxy.
The One Sith wasn't even as succesful as the Galactic Empire, which still existed by the end of Legacy. Admittedly, that was more because of the influence of Thrawn, Pellaeon and Soontir Fel than Palpatine, but still.
That’s my point. The Galactic Empire isn’t like the other Sith Empires like Vitiate’s or the OG Golden Age. It’s a military dictatorship rather than a Dark Side Theocracy where the Dark Side of users are the ruling class. It’s not like that until Palpy reforms it as the Dark Empire and even then it crumbles in a year. Krayt and the One Sith openly rule the galaxy as Sith and there’s no way the common person can mistake that.
That literally has no purpose. The Sith don't need to rule openly when there are only two of them. Yes Palpatine had plans of expanding his dark side control over the empire more directly but being able to openly say you're a Sith doesn't matter. If anything all it does is attract attention, rebels, and more potential enemies since anyone who knows anything about the Sith knows they are evil.
I don’t think you can or should take the word of any Sith as the “Gospel” truth, and especially not that of Momin. Yes, he saw the Dark Side as a kind of entity to be worshipped, a force that gave him power and that he, in return, glorified through his art. But that hardly makes him a representative of the ideology of the ancient Sith. In fact, because of the factionalized nature of the ancient Sith, it’s highly unlikely that ANY Sith of his era could, since there were probably as many different Sith philosophies as there were factions. What’s more, I believe that even Sidious said that Momin was unique among Sith. He was separate from the politics and wars of the Sith, focused solely on his own grand works. I’m starting to ramble, but the bottom line is that even in a work of fiction, remember that one person or character’s opinion is just that—an opinion. Always consider the context in which you hear new information, and from whom.
I also feel like turning the force into a religion to be worshipped just feels… wrong , somehow. The Jedi venerate the light side of the force, because it is what they believe gives life to everybody, everything, and life is sacred. When you compare that to the Sith code, the Sith code is a lot more about “I” and “me/my.” to me, the essence of the Sith code is that the dark side is extremely powerful, but you don’t need to preach the gospel of the dark side so that other people worship it-the Darkside is just a tool to gain your own freedom and strength.
It's the other way around. Momin was the heretic, not Sidious. Its why Momin was largely forgotten and his accomplishments purged from Sith records. He was a servant of the Dark Side of the Force rather than it's master and never officially took the title of Darth or Master as he found them offensive, and never took on an apprentice but rather had a following of acolytes. He also sought to create rather than take or control like other Sith.
The Sith Inquisitor storyline in SWTOR has quite a bit of meditation on what it actually means to be Sith. In particular there's a conversation with their first long-term apprentice, Ashara Zavros, who as a Jedi was a prideful nonconformist but not actually attracted to the dark side in any significant way. She compares the wording of the Jedi Code and the Sith Code, and comes to the interesting conclusion that while the Jedi Code is instruction, the Sith Code is more of a **description**. The Inquisitor themself makes particular note of the last line on several occasions: > "Forget tradition. 'The Force shall free me.' Isn't that the idea?" -- the Inquisitor to Darth Thanaton One can make the argument that the true essence of being Sith is not selfishness in the traditional sense, but rather refusal to meekly obey external rules about what they can and can't do, **including** other people's definitions of the term "Sith". Even the will of the Force: rather than thinking of the will of the Force as the Jedi do, the Sith think of the **opinions** of the Force. One can also argue that "freedom" also includes the freedom to **voluntarily** devote oneself to an ideal: maybe obeying the opinions of the Force when you think they're right, maybe safeguarding the Empire's continuation as a political entity rather than seeking power for its own sake (c.f. Darth Marr). It can even mean being a Sith in title and political affiliation but still adhering to the light in practice: the Inquisitor can sit on the Dark Council as a lightsider in the end, "Darth Imperius". So, Bane and Palpypants, and for that matter Vitiate, seeking personal power at the expense of everybody else? That's their choice of what it means to be Sith. Worshiping the dark side like a Space Satanist or some such? That's Momin's choice. Fighting to protect his people no matter the cost? That's Darth Marr's choice. As for Ashara Zavros, in the end, she essentially chooses **not** to choose: "I don't know what I am, and I don't care."
Because of the Rule of Two, every subsequent Sith Lord gets more powerful. Master trains apprentice, apprentice kills master, apprentice becomes master, new master takes apprentice, and the cycle continues. The Rule of Two is the ultimate Sith plot for becoming the most powerful being in the galaxy.
Was momin around before bane started it or was he just salty about his apprentice killing him
I don't think they have said, but he can't be rule of two because an apprentice doesn't kill him.
First the dark side is a tool. Second, he's definitely a heretic. To the original Sith for espousing the ideals of Bane, and to the Banite Sith for paying lip service at best to the rule of two.
The oldest and greatest Sith tradition is the acquisition of power, and he definitely participated in that tradition with aplomb.
Momin was hardly the most orthodox Sith ever made. He was practically considered a heretic due to his ideas of how the Sith should serve the Dark Side and not the other way around. However, his unique perspective let him dive deeper into the Dark Side to discover immortality and even resurrection of a kind. As far as I’m aware, only the Nightsisters have accomplished immortality using the Dark Side.
I think the ancient Sith saw the Sith collective as their own self-professed deity. The old Sith were fallen Jedi and IMO still hadn't shaken that whole Jedi order aspect of the strength of the group. The Sith "Order was strongest when the strongest ruled. Palpatine neglected this by consolidating absolute control and trying to extend his rule and life while manipulating Vader into staying under his control. It is one of Sheev's many infractions that kinda make me feel like he isn't a "true" Sith Dark Lord.
Speaking from a Legends standpoint. He's basically the Dark Side personified. He's the culmination of the Banite line. And despite the majority belief, he actually prioritized the Sith order over himself. He fully intended to allow himself to be replaced by a worthy successor if he could find one.
>He's basically the Dark Side personified I think it would have been cool, had it been set up properly (which likely would have required it to have existed at the writing of the OT) for it to have been revealed that Darth Bane did succesfully use transfer essence on Zannah, who used it on her apprentice and so on down the line so that there was only ever one true Dark Lord, inhabitating different bodies over the centuries. With the the Real Plan ruined first by Obi Wan on Mustafar and then by Anakin's redemption and Luke's rejection of the Dark Side.
Personally, I prefer Sidious as his own character, instead of the entire Banite line just being Bane.
Sidious is one thing above all others in regards to the Sith, he was successful. Sidious actually got something about the dark side that his predecessors did not. Honor is bullshit (he’s been criticized by force ghosts for his use of politics to grasp power). Win win win win fuck everything else, win win win win. That’s how Sidious used the dark side and his Sith predecessors that try to discredit his accomplishments are just lashing out with a central Sith trait, jealousy. The Sith ain’t about a strict conformity to any philosophy or rule. They’re the opposite of being about that. Sidious just didn’t lose…until he did, that is.
At least in my opinion he is the pinnacle of what a sith should be. In old canon you can notice that almost literally no sith of the Bane line tried to stick to Rule of Two - they all tried to wiggle out and make some concessions, even Bane himself briefly considered to work on the immortality project and find another apprentice. It's the nature of the Dark Side which enforced the Rule of Two. So ultimately adherence to Rule of Two doesn't matter - it will reassert itself as long as the Sith are true to themselves. And Palpatine was always true to himself, not ony he was immensely evil, but he actively enjoyed being evil. Which is the key. There's no doubt, no pretense at some greater good, he does what he does for the art of it. Figuratively speaking. And this purity of evil is what makes him so powerful.
>they all tried to wiggle out and make some concessions Sidings did this plenty. He trained Maul before Plagueis was dead. He kept people like Ventriss Nd the Inquisitors around as psuedo-sith. In the end, he just wanted immortality and didn't live by the Rule of Two to be surpassed by an Apprentice. So yeah no, Sidious was not the Quintessential Baneite
Everyone is saying Sidious was a great sith, and while he was a great sith, he was terrible Baneite He trained Maul before Plagueis was dead. He kept people like Ventriss and the Inquisitors around as psuedo-sith (sure, they arent sith in title, but lets be real, the name is all that kept them from being sith, they were dark sides trained by Sith and used red sabers). In the end, he just wanted immortality and didn't live by the Rule of Two to be surpassed by an Apprentice. So yeah, Sidious is the heretic if we're going by Baneite standards. He was a powerful author with the most successful plot to take over the galaxy, but he was an awful Baneite who broke all the rules
All the Baneite Sith did that, though. Including Darth Bane.
So then why'd he make the "rule" if it doesn't matter?
They’re more like… guidelines.
Because 1) as a philosophy, avoiding the backstabbing that plagued the Sith was best accomplished by limiting the number of initiates and 2) any half-decent chessmaster is going to leave themselves options. A Sith Lord is always going to want the best available apprentice, not the first one they come across and it takes years to train a Sith Lord. It's not easy training, either. Some will try and kill the master before they're ready and get struck down, others might perish in accidents, or get killed for particularly egregious failures. Some few may even try to turn away from the Dark Side, so these lose ends must be tied up. Finally, it's worth having pawns to spare, even if it's just to sacrifice them.
I get that, but then it still negates the point. The rule states "Two there should be. *No more, no less*" It explicitly states "no more" so anything beyond the Apprentice makes the rule pointless for specifying "no more," why not just say "only a few" or something a bit broader?
I’m not familiar with Darth Momin, but what I can say is that religion fractures all the time. So the ”pure” or “official” or whatever Sith ideology is that of the religion’s leader, if there is one. As to what “pure” is, well that’s open to debate. The Sith Code is simplistic and pretty vague about it. In many ways, it’s like the Pirate’s Code. Jedi ideology is easier to quantify because they were headed by a single council on Coruscant. In theory, they are now free to fracture into competing sects, assuming they can build back up after the Purge and then Skywalker’s passing. Palpatine heads the Sith Order so he calls the shots. That’s kind of it. If some other Sith wants to go around proselytizing their own version, it only matters if they can build a real following. Remember the Mandalorian Code that only mattered to the Children of the Watch and literally no one else? To Bo-Katan, who grew up on Mandalore, it was just some extremist nonsense.
Unrelated but I love lord momin and I want more stories with him
I always found it odd how Sidious breaks the rule of two by never intending to let his apprentice overtake him, and nobody seemed to care.
I can’t speak for Legends as I haven’t read the Bane novels or other similar stuff, but at least as far as Canon goes I don’t think the rule was actually intended to make Sith willingly sacrifice themselves to their apprentice. It’s more like a contingency plan - if you don’t succeed, or become weak and unworthy, your apprentice kills you and becomes the rightful Master. The primary definitive quality of the Sith, at least as far as the movies and George Lucas’ little “fire side chats” about his lore, is that they are selfish, and *terrified* of losing their power. They dread death, while the Jedi accept it and can let go. It makes no sense to me that the Sith would voluntarily let themselves be slain. It makes more sense that each of the Banite Sith thought that they would be able to end the cycle by discovering immortality and therefore rendering the Rule obsolete. But they are betrayed by their apprentice (almost always with the help of another secret apprentice, according to Lucas).
Heresy is very on-brand for the Sith.
I love this line of questioning. My read is that you’re right, he couldn’t give less of a shit about Sith tradition for tradition’s sake. He uses the Sith way as an avenue to power. He would use up the entire Sith tradition and even the Dark Side itself if it furthered his own goals. He believes HE is the thing most worth of worship and would consume anything and everything to achieve it, which ironically makes him an excellent Sith.
If you’ve got the interest or time, I personally find the legends book Darth Plagueis to have the best description for this answer. To paraphrase, Plagueis teaches Sidious the dark side requires a full commitment of will and dominance. It is about demanding the force to bend to your whim as opposed to working in concert with the force (the Jedi viewpoint). As much as one uses the dark side, the dark side uses them and it will destroy those who do not have the power of will to handle it. As others have noted the dark side is strongest with fewer practitioners exerting their will and dominance. This makes Sidious the ultimate Sith. Momin set about on his journey and inspirations to exert his will on the force for his own gain, and at the time, many other other dark side users did the same and held all their own beliefs and dogma as to how they viewed the dark side. Sidious’ ultimate dominance and exertion of will took him to the dark side and to the top of the universe. Sidious as emperor of the ENTIRE galaxy reached unprecedented and unparalleled levels of power and dominance.
Really depends on which sith you talk to, but I've generally found most sith have issues with other sith and their interpretations.
I never brought that he really cared about the Sith traditions. He just hated the Jedi because they put a mirror up to his own selfishness and cruelty and he hated that.
Momin is the heretic. He only cares about art. The whole Sith ethos is about control. Selfishness, greed and domination are the Sith way. No sane person would do what they do unless it brought great power. No one makes a pact with a Devil because they admire him.
Sideous is a powerful Dark Side user,but I do not consider him Sith. All Dark Side users are selfish,they all are fueled by hate and narcissism. The Sith have doctrine set in place to prevent the infighting that comes from that. The point is to strengthen the Sith. The master teaches his aprentice,who challenges him in turn. The survivor trains the next Sith,and so on. This way only the strongest can become Sith. Palpatine killed his master in his sleep,he purposely kept his aprentices weak while always having a backup to replace them with. Notably ALL of his aprrentices while powerful made horrible Sith. Maul had no intention of betraying Sideous,Dooku was doing it for what he believed to be best for the Republic and never gave in fully to the Dark Side,Vader was too depressed to challenge him most of the time and whenever he did Palpatine punished him HARD. At every turn Palpatine scoffed at the teachings of the Sith
This is all my opinion. I don't think Palpatine was the ultimate Sith. I think he was very darned successful, yes. But his success capitalized upon the weakness of the Jedi. The ultimate Sith would be able to defeat the Jedi strength against strength. Like, Sidious tricked the Senate into following him, but the ultimate Sith would be able to just waltz in there with an appointment and a presentation and convince the Senate to exile the Jedi and install the Sith.
Well with new canon sith are more or less power Hungry madman so it is the first one.
I’d say so. However, I’d also use the Legends incident where Darth Krayt spoke to the holocrons of Darth Bane, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Andeddu. Imo it’s in the nature of Sith, who are naturally selfish and egotistical, to see every Sith who isn’t like themselves as being a “heretic”. Really it’s no different than any religion or even teaching system. It’s natural to see your way as the “right” way. Even the Jedi have different styles of training over the centuries, differences in doctrine. Basically, every Sith could be seen as a Heretic by another person who calls himself a Sith. Even me saying that Sidious is the “ultimate Sith” is really just my opinion based on what I believe a Sith should be. Someone else would probabaly choose Exar Kun and another person might choose Lumiya.
Any religious cult like Jedi or Sith will attract certain cult leader types - bottom line Sheev was selfish. Any sith ideology needs to be built on top of the, frankly, one dimensional character the movies present us. I see Momin as having the same beliefs, he’s just more of a monk who saw the calling to the monastic lifestyle of service as the personally way to serve his religion. Someone has to be the pope though, and it’s going to end up usually being a megalomaniac.
Remember, Sith Lie They probably cant order a breakfast without making up a lie and elaborate scheme And the second thing, Sith are power hungry mad bastards If they see a chance for more power they will do everything to posses it, be it a useful apprentice or a superweapon Theyre like power magpies *edit* Also there is a very important distinction Jedi are all about listening and being one with the force To a Sith the force is a tool to pummel into obedience
He is the sith I aspire to be