Darth Plagueis/Legends

Darth Plagueis, sometimes called Darth Plagueis the Wise, was a Sith Lord, heir to the lineage of Darth Bane, who lived during the century leading up to the Battle of Naboo. It was Plagueis who trained Darth Sidious in the ways of the Sith.

The rise of Darth Plagueis
For all the influence he had on galactic events, very little is known about Darth Plagueis. Only his apprentice, Sidious, has said anything, and that amounted to very little. In any case, little of what Sidious said can be taken at face value. Fortunately, more objective sources have begun to shed slightly more light on the biography of this shadowy figure.

The birth name and early life of this man remains a complete mystery. What can be surmised is that at some point, he was found to be very strong in the Force by an existing Sith Lord, who at the appropriate time placed him on bended knee and took him as an apprentice, declaring that from that point onward, he would be known as Darth Plagueis.

Eventually, Plagueis became a master in his turn and sought an apprentice of his own to carry on the Sith tradition. Though the exact chain of events is unknown, it is clear that a gifted young man from Naboo named Palpatine caught his eye. Seeing his potential, Plagueis took him on as his apprentice, naming him Darth Sidious. It is possible that Plagueis found in Sidious what the Sith Lords had long awaited, a Sith born with the power to finally implement the final stages of Darth Bane's thousand-year-old plan, and bring the revenge of the Sith to fruition.

Plagueis and Sidious
At this point, there is no way of knowing exactly how long Sidious' apprenticeship under Plagueis lasted. It is clear that he learned much from his master. As Palpatine later claimed that his mentor (not naming him as Plagueis) taught him all about the Force, including the dark side, the possibility exists that Plagueis knew -- and therefore taught Sidious -- as much of the light, Jedi disciplines, as well as the dark, the ways of the Sith, as this would have been very useful knowledge in their plans to destroy the Jedi Order from within. Sidious possibly became more powerful than Plagueis. But he was also more ambitious than Plagueis anticipated, and there are strong indications that there were frictions betweeen the two Sith.

For instance, it has long been assumed that Sidious awaited the death of his master before taking on an apprentice of his own, but it has been recently discovered that Sidious raised and trained the infant Darth Maul without Plagueis' knowledge. There could be little reason for Sidious caring what Plagueis knew or did not know, unless he was doing this behind his master's back, possibly preparing a secret apprentice in anticipation of his own eventual ascension to mastery. This also indicates that Plagueis was still alive as of 50–60 BBY, since this Darth Maul was born 54 BBY. In fact, he may have lived even longer than this.

Beyond simple ambition on Sidious' part, it is not specified what the source of this intrigue was, but it is strongly implied that a particular arcane discipline of Plagueis' drove a wedge between master and apprentice, leading eventually to that master's death.

The murder of Darth Plagueis
Lord Plagueis, obsessed with the possibilities of spontaneous generation and immortality, was a practicioner of some of the deepest, darkest secrets of the Force, apparently seeking to create a being of incredible power, one that he could twist to his designs. It is these secrets that have stirred the greatest controversy about Plagueis, for they are crucially connected with the central enigma about another young man destined to become a Sith, Anakin Skywalker.

It was believed that Skywalker did not have a biological father; his mother simply carried and gave birth to him. Sidious later used Plagueis' supposed powers to cheat death and create life -- at the same time implying that either Plagueis or himself was responsible for Skywalker's "miraculous birth" -- in an attempt to seduce Skywalker, so it is difficult to take his words as objective fact. An examination of Sith lore, however, makes it clear that, beyond Sidious's deception, the Sith themselves firmly believed that Skywalker was the byproduct of Sith experimentation, that in his study of the dark arts, Plagueis had somehow developed a method of inducing the midi-chlorians, microscopic life-forms found in the blood of all living beings, to produce life from nothing. If what the Sith believed is true (and there is currently nothing that contradicts this), than it must be assumed that, circa 43 BBY, either Plagueis or Sidious, using the Force to will the midi-chlorians to begin the cell divisions in the womb of Shmi Skywalker, brought about the conception and later the birth of Anakin Skywalker.

This implies that it was the creation of Skywalker that broke the back of the relationship between Plagueis and Sidious. What Plagueis' ultimate intentions for the experiment were remain unclear, but Sidious understood that a being as powerful as the one created could only amount to a replacement for himself.

The exact thought process of Darth Sidious at this point can only be guessed at, but he definitely had a decision to make: He could not suffer a challenge to his position as Sith master-to-be, but how to eliminate that challenge? If Plagueis created Anakin, he could just kill the experiment -- possibly meaning the pregnant Shmi -- but Plagueis would probably keep trying to create another if he lost the first, and if the child promised to be as powerful as Plagueis claimed, it was wise to keep it alive and available for his eventual use. Also, he already had an apprentice, Darth Maul, in the wings, and his own plans for infiltrating the Republic government were proceeding splendidly. The most superfluous part of the equation, the one the Sith could most afford to lose, was Darth Plagueis himself. If Sidious created Anakin himself, then the plans to kill Plagueis whould seem to have been in his mind for a longer time.

Palpatine told Skywalker that Plagueis' apprentice (not naming himself as such) killed Plagueis in his sleep. Though it is difficult to determine how much of what he said about Plagueis was real and how much was fabricated, there seems no reason for him to have lied about what would be, for Skywalker, an irrelevant point. The murder implement itself is unknown, though it likely would have been his lightsaber. It is also worth noting that, as cold and ruthless as he was, Sidious looked back on this moment of triumph, of his attainment of mastery at the cheap price of his outdated master, with a self-satisfied smile.

The legacy of Darth Plagueis
Plagueis' apprentice Darth Sidious went on to become the Sith destined to take the final steps, to walk among the Jedi unseen, to bring about their destruction and the fall of the Republic they served.

Palpatine later related the so-called Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise to Anakin Skywalker, luring him to the dark side with the possibility that he could learn Plagueis' secret of saving beings from death. Skywalker, plagued by disturbing visions of the death of his wife, was soon corrupted. As Skywalker swore allegiance to him, Sidious declared that together they could rediscover Plagueis' lost secret.

The irony is that, of all his supposed powers, the power to save others from death might not have existed at all. Because of the nature of Darth Sidious, who told his own apprentice the power had died with Plagueis while he had earlier stated Plagueis taught his apprentice everything he knew, it remains unknown whatever became of the power, if it wasn't a trick to draw him to his side in the first place.

As for Plagueis' special experiment, that being of astounding power, it seems likely that it eventually did manifest itself in the form of Anakin Skywalker. No one knows why or how Sidious became separated from the experiment, but as soon as he rediscovered it, Sidious attempted to turn this being to his purpose. If he did create Anakin, then the ultimate irony would be that Plagueis had unknowingly done a good he did not intend: by interfering with the natural processes of life, he brought about the fulfillment of the Jedi prophecy of the Chosen One, the being destined to bring balance to the Force and destroy the Sith altogether.

Behind the Scenes
Darth Plagueis was named as early as the first draft of Revenge of the Sith (April 2003), and possibly earlier than this. Lucas always named his Sith characters in a way that summed up their characters, and though he was never seen, the name does indeed say a lot. As a derivative of the word plague, the name implies his interest in arcane biological experiments. It could also be argued that, in the person of his apprentice Darth Sidious, he had unleashed a plague that proved fatal to the body politic of the Republic.