Recently, I was reading the Revenge of the Sith Novelization and there was a line from Palpatine that caught my attention: “I haven’t run since I was a boy on Naboo.” It instantly made me imagine a young Palpatine running around the grasslands of Naboo… happy. Not happy because he’s about to kill someone, not happy because he’s telling Anakin about the tragedy of his former master, just happy because he’s in nature and free to explore. Perhaps it also strung a note with me because I like to run as well, but regardless, this train of thought made me realize that I hadn’t seen anyone imagining what a good-hearted Palpatine would look like by thought or art. I loved the idea and decided to draw Palpatine watering a flower, a blue flower signifying the light side of the force. I wanted to add the flower firstly because, without it, he would still somewhat resemble Sidious. I knew that adding a flower would do it because he’s taking care of something. He cares about something, something alive. He is giving life to a living entity. But my favorite part is that, somehow, I made Sheev look content, and that is the profound thing that Sidious never had: contentment.
Perhaps for some, this art is a bit jarring: the most evil and cruel person in Star Wars suddenly turned into a nice grandpa looking fellow innocently watering his flower. But, as a matter of fact, one reason I did this is because no one seems to think of Palpatine as a person. I think we can tend to look at evil people as something that isn’t human. I think we detach ourselves from them, thinking that we could never be like them or that they should be hated, shamed, and killed for what they have done. But we forget is to pity them. Pity them for their selfishness, greed and sin-filled ways, because I believe that we are never far off from falling in our own ways and traps that can control us and, likely not commit mass genocide that Palpatine did, but still do great, great wrong with ourselves. We aren’t that far off from them.
Alright, almost at the end, guys!
Last, I was to emphasize that I am not making excuses for what Palpatine did. People such as him should be looked down upon and disagreed with. I just think that we loose ourselves to our singular view of them sometimes, which leads to us thinking of them as not-human, which interestingly enough, is like them in a way. I pray that no one takes offense to anything I said, and I hope it perhaps make you pause to think about Palpatine and Dark-Side characters. After all, Star Wars likes to show neither total good or evil in any faction… other than Palps though, lol.
Thank you guys for reading. Feel free to disagree with me or give your thoughts below!
May the Force Be With You.
