Emperor Palpatine, Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith and ruler of the Galactic Empire, is the Star Wars saga's ultimate embodiment of evil. Star Wars creator George Lucas has compared the character to the Devil, the personification of evil who tempts heroes away from the light and into the clutches of the dark side. While his apprentice, Darth Vader, may be the franchise's most iconic villain, there is perhaps no character anywhere in pop culture more utterly evil than Palpatine. Given his status as the ultimate villain, it may come as a surprise to learn that this was not always how Lucas envisioned his Emperor.

Lucas' vision for the Star Wars saga changed drastically and repeatedly as his original screenplay underwent multiple rewrites to become the epic space fantasy that is beloved by fans today. One character who took on many forms throughout this process of rewriting and fine-tuning was the Emperor of Lucas' distant galaxy. The Emperor was always intended to reflect real-life politicians and political machinations in some form or another, but originally, he wasn't the ultimate authoritarian he would eventually become.

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Emperor Palpatine Was Much Different in Early Drafts of A New Hope

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The Emperor does not appear in the original Star Wars, now titled Episode IV - A New Hope. In that first film, Palpatine exists only in the whispers of his Imperial Officers. As these bureaucrats gather aboard the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin informs them that the Emperor has dissolved the Imperial Senate, officially ridding the galaxy of the final remnants of the Republic. The Emperor himself, however, is never seen. There isn't even any indication that the Emperor is Darth Vader's Sith master. The original novelization of A New Hope may offer some explanation as to why Lucas had only Vader and Tarkin serving as that first film's primary antagonists.

The original Star Wars novelization was ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, with official credit going to George Lucas. The book was based on the film's screenplay and featured a few notable differences from the finished film. Chief amongst them was the inclusion of a prologue, which quoted from "The Journal of the Whills" -- a framing device Lucas had initially intended to use to present the Star Wars saga as a narrative being retold following the films' events. The passage taken from the Journal of the Whills revealed the origins and nature of Emperor Palpatine as Lucas imagined him at the time.

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According to the novel's prologue, Palpatine had been an ambitious senator in the dwindling days of the Republic, who utilized growing corruption in the Senate and the power of commerce to have himself elected President of the Republic, subsequently declaring himself Emperor. This isn't too far removed from the origins of the Emperor, as revealed in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. However, the prologue goes on to reveal that once in office as Emperor, Palpatine became "controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears." In this vision of the galaxy, the Emperor was nothing but a pawn to the likes of Tarkin and the Imperial officers glimpsed in A New Hope.

Palpatine's Original Plan Would've Created a Drastically Different Star Wars

Had George Lucas stuck to this vision of the Emperor, there can be no doubt the entire Star Wars saga would have been radically altered. Plans from even earlier in Star Wars' development may offer some indication of the direction in which Lucas originally intended to take Palpatine following A New Hope. In the first draft of the Star Wars screenplay, the Emperor was named Cos Dashit and was no Sith Lord. This Emperor would have seen his own senior officers, Darth Vader amongst them, turn on him in a plot to seize power. The decision to recast Palpatine as the absolute authority in the Empire and the Dark Lord of the Sith undoubtedly created a far more compelling villain for the Star Wars saga and the perfect representation of evil and temptation in a film series Lucas always intended as a space-faring morality tale.