Emperor Palpatine is one influential guy. He came from (relatively) humble beginnings on Naboo, to the Emperor of a galaxy (more or less) spanning Empire. He secretly plotted his way into a Senate seat, then the Chancellorship, and then extended his executive powers so far that he could unilaterally declare a New Order. All of this, of course, while being a Sith Lord in hiding. Plus, he was really creepy.

Emperor Sheev (yes he has a first name) Palpatine is really, really creepy. Can we all agree on that? As he would say: "goooooood." Since we now have that out of the way, let's get cracking. Kind of like the Emperor's old bones when he trips on a pebble. Sorry, couldn't help it. Low hanging fruit and all that. But seriously, there is something off about the good ol' Sheevster. Aside from him looking worse than 7-year-old shriveled prunes, the guy just had a lot of strange stuff about him.

Palpatine makes a compelling villain because he seemingly (whether intentionally or not) embodies many of the contradictions of the Star Wars universe. Somewhat OP (overpowered for short) and yet ultimately doomed by stupid mistakes. Significantly changed the course of Galactic History on his own and yet was only one person out of hundreds of billions. Broke the most significant Rule of the Sith Code, yet is put forth as the Order's zenith. Consistently defied both in and out of universe logic but got away with little apparent criticism from, really, anyone. This piece will all of these contradictions and more. So in no particular order, here are 20 things about Palpatine that make no sense.

20 Palpatine Broke The Rule Of 2

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For those who don't recall, Darth Bane created the Rule of 2 which stated that only two Sith could exist at any point in time. That is, only the Master and the Apprentice could exist. This was to preserve the Sith and prevent another defeat in a conflict against the Jedi.

Palpatine seemed to take the Rule as more of a suggestion.

For instance, he had already started training Darth Maul before he had ended his own Master. Then, without making sure his apprentice was truly gone, he got a new one. All this while he was secretly manipulating a third into becoming his final apprentice. Not very Rule of Twoey.

19 Palpatine Created Tears In Space-Time

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Well, technically, it's a Force Storm. Also, it's technically not a tear, but a wormhole. But come on, it may be both of those things, but let's call a spade a spade. Or in this case, call a tear in the fabric of the universe a tear in spacetime. This whole concept makes no sense at the basic level. For instance, wormholes don't suck matter into them. That's what black holes do. Furthermore, how could one person, no matter how powerful in the Force, even create such an asinine phenomenon? One would think, if it were even possible to create, it would probably take dozens or hundreds of Force Users to create a Force Storm. But, it works because reasons. Plus, it's Palpatine, so just go with it.

18 He Was A Great Duelist, But Hated Lightsabers

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Ever notice that Sheev only seems to wield a lightsaber twice in the movies? Once when he somehow ended 3 members of the Jedi Council in under a minute (then basically lost to Mace Windu), and another time when he beat Yoda at a duel in the Senate Chamber. Have you ever wondered why someone with such proficiency with a lightsaber disdained their use?

It's basically because Palpatine thought the use of the Force was more powerful and less barbaric than lightsaber combat. He thought that if a Sith couldn't protect themselves solely with Force, that they basically deserved to perish. However, Palpatine was clearly wrong. Just one example is enough: Palpatine's lightsaber saved him from Mace Windu. 'Nuf said.

17 Sheev Was A Terrible Master

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Jedi defeated every one of his apprentices. Not the greatest track record in my book. I count Vader among the defeated since Luke turned him against Palpatine. If anything, that is even stronger evidence supporting my hypothesis.

If Palpatine's success rate was a batting average, he wouldn't have made it past Little League.

The reason the Rule of Two worked was because each Apprentice was stronger than their Master. Therefore, part of being a good Master was choosing an Apprentice who was more powerful than you. Sure, you could count Vader as a success for Palpatine. However, 1 out of 3 is only good as a batting average. I guess the Emperor needed to visit the apprentice training batting cage more often.

16 He Somehow Replaced Himself Multiple Times

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That title may be a bit vague, but bear with me. Cloning is evidently quite easy in the Star Wars universe. Therefore, Palpatine making clones of himself is plausible. What he did with those clones wasn't. Using a Force-fueled essence transfer, Palpatine was able to cheat his way out of the end. He moved his mind and force potency from one body to another, taking them over.

According to some comics, he used this method to survive both his passing at the hands of Darth Vader but also subsequent passings until he finally ran out of clones, I think. He used his clones to replace himself. Since these clones presumably were capable of developing sentience, Palpatine ended himself to keep himself from perishing. Very oxymoronic, isn't it?

15 Sheev Suddenly Aged When He Used Force Lightning

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This is one of the strangest entries. Yet, it is seemingly one of the more simple ones. For the majority of the prequel trilogy, we see a middle-aged guy with a somewhat jovial demeanor. He laughed, made grave proclamations, and acted like any successful middle-aged politician. At the start of his Chancellorship, he was around 50.

Why at approximately 65 years old did Sheev suddenly go from gracefully aging to bargain basement Halloween mask?

The answer seemingly is that using Force Lightning against Mace Windu somehow drained him of his vitality. But that makes no sense. He had presumably been using Force Lightning for most of his life with no (apparent) ill effects. There is no reconciling the canon with logic.

14 He Started And Ended A War Virtually Unaided

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Aside from his various apprentices and bureaucrats like Mas Amedda, Palpatine was a lone operator. Sure, Count Dooku was the Head of Government of the Separatists, but even he could only do so much to influence their policies. Plus, even a savvy operator like Palpatine couldn't control every Senator (with there being several thousand presumably). If he couldn't control several thousands of individuals, then how could he control whole organizations like the Intergalactic Banking Clan or the Separatists? Even with 1000 years of Sith intrigue, one person cannot control the destiny of a galaxy-spanning polity, let alone a galaxy-spanning war. Not even the Force can be that strong in just one individual.

13 Palpatine Convinced Everyone To Hate War Heroes

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If there's one thing everyone seems to agree is awesome, that is bacon. I mean war heroes. Defeating the evil enemy time after time is something virtually every culture seems to celebrate in one way or another. So how could one man, even an extremely influential one, make everyone suddenly hate war heroes? Those heroic veterans of the conflict I refer to are not the Clones. No, they are the Jedi who led them.

After many thousands of years exemplifying everything good and pure in life, how could Palpatine convince the citizenry that suddenly the Jedi were evil? Even a failed ending attempt wouldn't sway the opinions of people whose entire family going back millennia lived in a society that revered Jedi. Not enough of them to support Order 66.

12 The Emperor Couldn't Stop The Rebellion

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Out of a galactic population of approximately 100 quadrillion individuals, the movies make it seem like the Rebels consist of less than 100,000 individuals. Looking at the size of the entire Rebel Fleet at Endor, that might even be a bit generous. That being said, how could the Emperor of a significant portion of 10 X 1014 people not crush smaller than 0.0000000001% of said people? Assuming the Imperial Military is 0.5% of the population of the Empire, that is still 500 trillion people.

It should be quite a simple matter to stamp out a rinky-dink band of idealistic freedom fighters.

Evidently, it was not. After all, Palpatine and the Empire lost to them.

11 He Got Away With Destroying A Planet

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Some things stretch credulity on this list. Some break it. For this entry, credulity is broken so badly not even Montgomery Scott, Geordi La Forge, and the entire US Army Corps of Engineers combined could repair it. I don't care how jaded you are; when you hear your government destroyed an entire planet, you don't just go about your business like nothing else happened.

Unless you are the Imperial equivalent of a Jonestown cultist, chances are the destruction of Alderaan would make you question the policies of Emperor Palpatine. The indiscriminate slaughter of billions of people allegedly in punishment for the actions of a relative handful of those individuals would anger any decent individual. So the fact that in Empire the Rebellion didn't include trillions of official members boggles the mind.

10 The Emperor Never Set Up A Succession Plan

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Succession crises almost never go well. Just ask the Austrians, the Spanish, the English, or a long list of other historical losers in succession wars. So one wonders what the hell the Emperor thought would happen when he perished? Did he just assume he'd live forever? That didn't work out very well for his Master Darth Plagueis since Palpatine ended him. So knowing that, wouldn't the smart dictator make sure his domain will survive intact after his or her passing? A clear and transparent line of succession is one major component separating the Galactic Republic from the Galactic Empire. The Republic lasted anywhere from 1000 to 25,000 years, depending upon your source. The Empire, by contrast, only lasted 24 years. A firm succession plan works every time.

9 He Couldn't Foresee His Own End

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Throughout The Empire Strikes Back and especially Return of the Jedi, Palpatine is always saying a variation on "just as I have foreseen." He foresaw the Rebels on Endor, his most famous prediction. He foresaw Luke joining him as his apprentice. Sheev believed Luke would end his father and this single event would lead to the younger Skywalker turning to the Dark Side. Despite supposedly seeing so much future events play out correctly, it seems like Darth Sidious could not foresee the most important event of his life. That, of course, being his own passing. Whether through arrogance, neglect, or some other error, the Emperor failed in preventing Darth Vader from turning briefly to the Light Side and saving his son by ending his Master.

8 Palpatine Single-Handedly Kept The Empire From Collapsing

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I mean, if you buy into Sidious being able to orchestrate the Clone Wars, then this isn't much of a stretch. By contrast, if you're like me and doubt the feasibility, then this is further proof that Palpatine makes little sense as a character.

As pointed out earlier, there are approximately 100 quadrillion sentients in the Galaxy.

How could one man possibly exert an influence on enough of them to keep his New Order intact? The answer: he couldn't. The Emperor had no one except Vader and again, at a stretch, Mas Amedda.

7 Nobody Thought Palpatine's Interest In The Sith Was Strange

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The statues pictured above did not represent Sith themselves. However, the Four Sages of Dwartii were taken up as a symbol of the Sith. Both Darth Sidious and eventually Supreme Leader Snoke had totems referencing the Sages. Even though they apparently helped write the Constitution of the Republic, they were known for their selfish ways. One Sage named Braata even encouraged the study of the Dark Side.

Shouldn't a group including a known proponent of Dark Side usage have no place in the office of the Chancellor?

Well, apparently it was A-OK with everyone because literally no one ever said anything. Everything we know comes from outside sources, not any dialogue from the movies.

6 Sidious Was Able To Unilaterally Dissolve The Republic

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So, you want to fundamentally change the governing structure of your society? How do you go about doing it? In a framework of a Republic or a Direct Democracy, it's usually in consultation with the legislature and subject to review and possibly dismantling by the judiciary. Even if you are successful in reforming your society, usually it takes a Revolution and complete dissolution of the government to change how your society runs itself. The Star Wars universe throws that logic out the window. No matter how much executive power the Chancellor's office had accrued, Palpatine couldn't simply declare the Republic out of existence. Sans Revolution, representative forms of government can't simply be dissolved.

5 Palpatine Encountered Little Resistance

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This is very much related to the previous post. Even during time of war and mass fear, people usually resist attempts at taking away their liberty. When your whole life and all of your nation's history revolves around ideals of freedom and representative government, a natural reaction to attempts at reducing said ideals is anger. The fact that there weren't riots or mass uprisings in thousands if not millions of star systems around the newly formed Empire is perplexing, to say the least. As bad the Republic was, at least citizens had the illusion they were being represented. They also did have tangible freedoms that were immediately taken away by the New Order, such as freedom of speech, expression, and the press. People usually aren't fans of said reforms.

4 He Had Unlimited Power

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Warning: this and the following entry fully enter meme territory. However, these memes encapsulate valid criticisms of Darth Sidious. This meme is probably one of the more famous examples of Palpatine making no sense. Even if you take on faith the man could do things such as manipulate quadrillions of individuals into doing what he wanted and could rip a hole in the space-time continuum, unlimited power? Given those above assumptions, it still makes little sense. Everything has its limit, even if its limit is infinity. However, Palpatine is clearly a man. A very powerful man, but just a man. By definition, all living beings have limitations. Palpatine was no exception. Hence the poignancy of the meme.

3 Palpatine Was The Senate

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In all its forms, the variations on "I am the Senate" perfectly encapsulate how absurd the statement is. Taken literally, it makes no sense. A person cannot also be an institution made up of multiple individuals. On a conceptual level, it's wrong. The Executive cannot also be the Legislative.

One person, no matter how powerful, could not control the actions of an institution made up of over 1000 individuals.

Sure, Sidious obviously influenced key decision makers and had help from almost 1000 years of plans set out by his Sith predecessors. But even given all that, I just have to say this. Sorry Palpatine, but you were not, and never could be, the Senate.

2 He Ended 3 Jedi Masters In Less Than 10 Seconds

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Immediately upon learning that Darth Sidious and Sheev Palpatine were one and the same, Mace Windu and 3 other members of the Jedi Council set off to confront the Chancellor. The result? Four out of four fatalities, 75% of which occurred in less than 10 seconds. From Sheev's weird scream to his odd spinning, and then his utter decimation of 3 Jedi Masters, this is quite a feat. Quite the unrealistic feat in my book. Remember, these masters were all hardened veterans of the Clone Wars. They also had been trained their entire lives in both lightsaber combat and use of the Force. they should have lasted longer than it takes to declare "watch out!"

1 Everything Palpatine Accomplished, He Did Mostly Alone

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With the notable exception of the passing of Mace Windu, Sheev Palpatine somehow did most of his work solo. He manipulated galactic affairs with little aid. Sidious ascended through the ranks of political power only using his charm and the Dark Side. He managed to govern the Empire mostly without much aid from anyone other than Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. I feel like this entire piece has basically boiled down to this last entry: the guy had no allies. This makes no sense. Even his apprentices followed him more out of selfishness than they did out of loyalty. You never really see Palpatine with any friends or confidantes. The guy was unrealistically powerful. Everyone needs help in completing their goals. Apparently Palpatine didn't? Weird.