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Palpatine's appearance
"Palpatine, who has delved extensively into Sith lore, was using an almost-forgotten technique to hide his true self."

- Gary M. Sarli

During his confrontation with Mace Windu, Palpatine's appearance changed as he was hit with his own Force lightning, which was reflected by Mace Windu's Vaapad, which acts like a channel for dark energy, back at him. Palpatine went from being a handsome middle-aged man to having a deeply lined face with burning yellow eyes, scarred grayed skin, rotten teeth, and long black fingernails. What caused this radical change of appearance has been the subject of much debate.



On the website for the official Star Wars Roleplaying Game, published by Wizards of the Coast, "Jedi Counseling" representative Gary M. Sarli was asked what exactly happened to Palpatine's face, given a choice between the scarring theory and the disguise theory.

"There are problems with both these ideas: The idea that he was physically damaged by the Force lightning doesn't match Return of the Jedi. Luke was being hit by Force lightning for some time, and he wasn't scarred like that. On the other hand, if Palpatine was using an Illusion-assisted Disguised check&hellip; he couldn't possibly keep it up continually. Moreover, Illusion is a mind-influencing Force power. It doesn't work on droids or recordings (in other words, someone might notice that he doesn't look the same in recorded speeches), nor would it work when projecting a holographic image across the galaxy. Finally, one would wonder why he maintained the illusion in his earlier holographic appearances as Darth Sidious. It would seem more prudent to "turn it off" to preserve the Palpatine identity."

- Gary M. Sarli

Sarli concluded that Palpatine was using Sith alchemy to hide his face under a younger-looking facade. The technique Sarli identified was given the name "mask," which used Sith alchemical techniques to alter the user's features, either to make them appear more horrific or to conceal them with a fairer appearance. According to the roleplaying game stats he presented in response to the question, this was considered different from a mundane disguise (which was temporary) or cosmetic surgery (which needed much more time to use). Instead, this alchemical mask altered the subject at the molecular level, rendering the subject's genuine appearance undetectable by sensors or even by a medical examination. The mask could be dispelled by another dark side power&mdash;in Palpatine's case, Force lightning&mdash;and should the subject fail to repel the dispelling power, the mask would be dropped and the subject's true face would appear. The sudden transformation would physically distort the subject with dark side energies, making any future attempt to use the "mask" ability, even to create a mundane disguise, far less successful. According to Sarli, Palpatine may have voluntarily failed the save and dropped the mask when it no longer served his purposes&mdash;he used the damage both to sway Skywalker into intervening on his side, and to convince the Senate and the galaxy at large that the Jedi had attempted to murder him. The consequence of this is that Darth Sidious's true face, whatever it was before this point, was distorted into the ruined countenance that would be seen for the remaining Star Wars films.

Sithisis depicts Sidious literally changing his face from with a Sith ritual. Further, in The Unifying Force, Luke Skywalker muses that Palpatine had been "prematurely wizened by years of calling on dark power". Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary also mentions that his usage of the dark side of the Force had kept him alive well beyond his natural lifespan, and that he was still powerful despite his aged and sickly appearance. Moreover, Sidious's hands (and presumably his entire body) remained unchanged after the disfiguration of his face. The next time he was seen though, he had pale, swollen hands with long, black fingernails. Ian McDiarmid also stated in an interview that his healthy-looking appearance was in fact a disguise, and the disfigured visage was his true face.

Name


There has been a great deal of speculation among fans concerning Palpatine's name. When Steve Sansweet, director of Lucasfilm's content management and a member of the corporation's inner circle, was asked about this issue on the official website (2003), he responded with:

"Palpatine's first name, if he even has one, has yet to be revealed. That's not so unusual even in our own galaxy. For example, in one of the world's most populous countries, Indonesia, many people go by one name. And even some last names are just that, not family names. In the Star Wars universe, we doubt that there are many in the know for whom just plain "Palpatine" isn't enough.&hellip;"

- Steve Sansweet

The matter was settled in James Luceno's Darth Plagueis, which, though it did not go so far as to actually reveal Palpatine's full name, did reveal that Palpatine chose not to have a first name in order to spite his family, and in particular his father. The novel established that Palpatine was in fact a family name. In keeping with various sources that have described Palpatine as a noble, the book also established House Palpatine, the Emperor's family of origin, as one of many Naboo noble families, and placed it into the context of wider Naboo society. Palpatine's Sith name, Darth Sidious, is believed to be derived from "insidious," a word with multiple meanings, such as "treacherous," "cunning," and "seductive".



The real-world origin of the name "Palpatine" is not known, but the in-universe origins of the name were revealed to be obscure in James Luceno's novel Darth Plagueis&mdash;in Palpatine's own time, it was considered to be either an ancient name of state among noble families of Naboo, in accordance with the previously established Naboo custom of noms de règne (like "Amidala"), or perhaps borrowed from one of the ancient regions of the planet. The name is not unique in Star Wars canon: Lieutenant Colonel Palpatine Essex Yerac of the Rebel Alliance shares it with the Emperor (as well as the possibly pseudonymous editor and broadcaster for the Galactic Weekly NewsStack named Palpatine II).

In his article Speak Like a Sith, published in the 134th issue of the Star Wars Insider magazine, Ben Grossblatt, the creator of the Sith language (of which the Emperor has been established as a master in both speech and writing) for Book of Sith, remarked that, assuming that the name "Palpatine" had the same roots as the verb "palpitare," meaning "to throb," then one way it could be translated in Sith (by hypothetical "creative Sith scribes") would be Chirikyât ("chee-ree-kyatt"), meaning "He Who Causes Them to Throb and Tremble in Fear". In the same article, Grosblatt also established that a native Sith speaker with a heavy accent would be unable to properly pronounce "Palpatine" in its proper form, rendering it as "Marmûtin" ("mar-muh-tin") because of the limited phonetic palette of the language, which lacks a "p" sound, an l between consonants, and an "ee" sound in a closed syllable.

First death
In the Dark Empire series, Palpatine tells Luke that the Battle of Endor was not his first death, and that he had started transferring his spirit into clone bodies years prior to that, when his original body had degenerated as a result of heavy use of the dark side. However, Lucasfilm official Leland Chee has stated that Palpatine was lying to Luke about having died previously, and that Palpatine's demise on the second Death Star was definitely the first time he died.