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Count Dooku is a character that causes some problems when contemplating the SW universe.
He's a member of the Republic aristocracy, a Jedi who resigned from the Order, and a Sith. His surface goals are noble -- the Separatist movement had a lot of sense behind it in hindsight, even if the leaders were mostly loathsome and self-interested -- and yet he's working for one of the most calculating and devious of politicians.
But from the movies themselves, it's very hard to tell what his motivations are. He's more of a stock villain than anything else, and that makes for a thin backstory at best.
Personally, I think he was listening to the will of the Force, filtered and distorted through his own emotions. He'd gotten caught up in the Jedi habit of thinking the ends justify the means, and the end he wanted (a renewed Republic?) justified some very nasty means, indeed.
Dooku must have been magnificent once, as he was Yoda's students and Qui-Gon's master, and I doubt that you could deal with either one of them, let alone both, without being something quite amazing yourself. He's still quite impressive when Obi-Wan encounters him in AotC, as he's managed to get all the diverse interests that make up the Separatists following *him*.
The fact that he and Palpatine were running a two-man con on such a massive scale was pretty damned impressive, even if Dooku was foolish enough to believe that Palpatine wouldn't turn on him when it was convenient. I wonder if Dooku thought by causing an external problem, that the Republic would sort itself out and revitalize?
Was he also hoping to shake the Jedi Order up? Destroy the Sith from the inside? He actually asks Obi-Wan to join him to that end in AotC, which suggests that Dooku still thought of himself as not-a-Sith. He tells Obi-Wan the exact truth, that the Republic is under control of Darth Sidious -- neglecting to mention that Sidious is Palpatine -- and yet goes to Palpatine and happily confirms that war has started.
Combine with the implications that Dooku was the one to arrange for the creation of the Clone Army ten years before AotC -- or shortly after TPM if you are keeping your eye on the timeline -- the sense I get out of all this is that Dooku was a rogue agent.
He was *trying* to bring down the Sith, and trying to reform the Republic by force. It's just that his method was to go outside the Jedi Order and the Senate authority and act as a lone wolf.
In the end, he was magnificent and brave and so wrong-headed as to make one weep. His failure was a failure of the Jedi as a whole -- arrogance to the point of horror, self-reliance to the point of foolishness, and callous indifference to suffering to the point of disaster.
He's a member of the Republic aristocracy, a Jedi who resigned from the Order, and a Sith. His surface goals are noble -- the Separatist movement had a lot of sense behind it in hindsight, even if the leaders were mostly loathsome and self-interested -- and yet he's working for one of the most calculating and devious of politicians.
But from the movies themselves, it's very hard to tell what his motivations are. He's more of a stock villain than anything else, and that makes for a thin backstory at best.
Personally, I think he was listening to the will of the Force, filtered and distorted through his own emotions. He'd gotten caught up in the Jedi habit of thinking the ends justify the means, and the end he wanted (a renewed Republic?) justified some very nasty means, indeed.
Dooku must have been magnificent once, as he was Yoda's students and Qui-Gon's master, and I doubt that you could deal with either one of them, let alone both, without being something quite amazing yourself. He's still quite impressive when Obi-Wan encounters him in AotC, as he's managed to get all the diverse interests that make up the Separatists following *him*.
The fact that he and Palpatine were running a two-man con on such a massive scale was pretty damned impressive, even if Dooku was foolish enough to believe that Palpatine wouldn't turn on him when it was convenient. I wonder if Dooku thought by causing an external problem, that the Republic would sort itself out and revitalize?
Was he also hoping to shake the Jedi Order up? Destroy the Sith from the inside? He actually asks Obi-Wan to join him to that end in AotC, which suggests that Dooku still thought of himself as not-a-Sith. He tells Obi-Wan the exact truth, that the Republic is under control of Darth Sidious -- neglecting to mention that Sidious is Palpatine -- and yet goes to Palpatine and happily confirms that war has started.
Combine with the implications that Dooku was the one to arrange for the creation of the Clone Army ten years before AotC -- or shortly after TPM if you are keeping your eye on the timeline -- the sense I get out of all this is that Dooku was a rogue agent.
He was *trying* to bring down the Sith, and trying to reform the Republic by force. It's just that his method was to go outside the Jedi Order and the Senate authority and act as a lone wolf.
In the end, he was magnificent and brave and so wrong-headed as to make one weep. His failure was a failure of the Jedi as a whole -- arrogance to the point of horror, self-reliance to the point of foolishness, and callous indifference to suffering to the point of disaster.
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The Sith master and apprenticeship recalls (for me) somewhat the relationship of Roman Emperor and Head of the Praetorian Guard, as obtained in the later empire, when being Head of the Guard in fact meant, next Emperor as soon as you could get rid of the old one.
In studying "Sith" for the purpose of a possibly Palpatine backstory fic, I think the comparisons with Ancient Rome howl at one.
There's two threads to the "join us" thing.
1. It's a con. You make that appeal to an enemy you wish to destroy - give him the choice, and if he agrees to join, you have his measure and can defeat him. That's what it was with Dooku and Obi-Wan - Dooku was seeking out Obi-Wan's weaknesses, as I see it.
2. It's a test. You make the appeal to an enemy you wish to recruit and his initiation is to take the place of your apprentice. That's Sidious's speciality. His apprentices are not strictly that, because he is never going to surrender the mastership voluntarily. His apprentices are to a greater or lesser extent, merely tools. Maul is sacrified to eliminate the very dangerous Qui-Gon. Dooku is sacrificed at the precise point when he may be a danger of giving away the secret of Darth Sidious, and also at the point when a more powerful tool is ready: Anakin.
Palpatine is actually two people. I believe Sidious is the product of his own lust for power and the outcome of the inevitable journey to the dark side. Palpatine is not some mad psycho (though Sidious may be), he's urbane, cultivated, and able to effortlessly interact with and fool everyone. He's far more socially functional than a psychopath. He can do that because he's playing himself as Palpatine.
Sidious is "stored" inside Palpatine - they are however inter-aware.
In the interests of a possible Palpatine backstory fic, I'm currently tracing the machinations of the senator, and later Chancellor. It's actually politically masterful, like a game of Dejarek.
Palpatine was playing a very long game indeed. That call to create order out of chaos is very seductive politically.
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As for the Old Republic, I think it was doomed, whether or not there was a Palpatine to take power or not. The Republic was a society past its flowering and into its decline. It would have taken a major cultural shift to revitalize it.
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I disagree with the idea that Sidious is 'stored' inside Palpatine. There is no division between Palpatine and Sidious, they are one and the same person. Palpatine is just Sidious being urbane and cultured to present his actions in the best light when he doesn't quite have the political power to take the velvet glove off his iron fist.
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"He could destroy us."
Hmm. Palpatine keeps Vader around because he is indeed powerful in the Force, and what Vader is utterly and completely focus on goals givens to him- one of which is to destroy the decadent Jedi, who then cannot ris eup a new rival. With no Jedi around, no rivals, except for Vader....
and then there is Luke, who is the sabot in the works. Palpatine sends Vader to confront Luke; "He could destroy us" is what Palpatine says. Vader see Luke as a mechanism for finally seizing power for himself- until after the confrontation, where it may have stirred his feelings. Palpatine sees his own end unless 1) Luke kills Vader, and becomes his apprentice or 2) Vader kills Luke, and keeps the status quo.
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2. It's a test. You make the appeal to an enemy you wish to recruit and his initiation is to take the place of your apprentice. That's Sidious's speciality.
Right. I wonder if Dooku and Palpatine were once at loggerheads, and then joine up together in the manner you suggested.
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I wish I could find Palps more interesting, but meh. Same for Maul, just meh. Now Dooku... *runs off to write last scene*
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Dooku, I really do think, ruined himself trying to follow Jedi ideals -- justice without compassion is a sword that cuts back on the wielder in the end. And his telling the exact truth was a brilliant tactic, though poor Obi-Wan completely failed to see it.
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See, the Jedi are compassionate in my thinking, but to the point where their compassion for the many fails to let them see that the few or the one sometimes needs special attention as situations warrent. To me, they had good basic ideas, but were poorly executed and had become too rigid and brittle ton see individual problems. They were too group-oriented as opposed to individual-oriented.
It a shame that Obi-Wan failed to see the truth, but even he questioned it later on.
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But yes, the Jedi had a bad habit of seeing the big picture, and forgetting that a big picture is usually made up of many small pictures. Change at the small scale can often blossom into transformation on the large.
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I think part of the problem is that Old Republic Jedi were a culture, and one that limited attachment to outsiders from a very young age. They knew Senate politics and overarching social concerns, but I doubt many of them got sent on missions as simple as helping building schools and hospitals, or anything that got them in touch with regular people much.
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Was he also hoping to shake the Jedi Order up? Destroy the Sith from the inside... if Dooku thought by causing an external problem, that the Republic would sort itself out and revitalize.
You make some great points here. It makes a lot of sense that he wanted to shake the Order up. Someone had to initiate Qui-Gon's maverick attitude, and it probably was Dooku. He said it was a shame he never had a chance to know Obi-Wan, so he could have easily assumed that Obi-Wan would be as much a maverick as his former master. That would be an encouragement to Dooku, he probably naturally assumed Obi-Wan would listen to his 'voice of reason.'
I can't agree with Dooku wanting to destroy the Sith from the inside, I do think he thought the Sith was the best way to change the Order. I wonder if Dooku thought to rebuild the Order, not as Sith, but after what he thought the Jedi should be. He was one of the Lost 20, which, in my mind, means he made some dramatic exit from the Jedi Order to be labeled as such. But that leads to the question, how did Dooku expect to get rid of the Sith?
Personally, I think he was listening to the will of the Force, filtered and distorted through his own emotions. It's scary that only a rogue Jedi could actually hear the will of the Force and follow it. I agree that he knew the Order needed changing, and I wonder why he heard it, when so many others couldn't.
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I know there is at least one EU book out there that covers their relationship as Master and Apprentice, but I haven't read it. The EU is something I regard as quasi-canonical, for a lot of reasons.
But I do think that Dooku was a major influence on Qui-Gon, and possibly vice versa. Dooku certainly sounds fond of Qui-Gon when he speaks of him in AotC.
I can't agree with Dooku wanting to destroy the Sith from the inside, I do think he thought the Sith was the best way to change the Order.
He was trying to force change by presenting them with a vital threat? I could see that. I think he might have been arrogant enough about his skills to think he could walk away from being a Sith. It's not like we haven't seen arrogance from Jedi before, including Yoda who thought he could take on Sidious single-handedly.
It's scary that only a rogue Jedi could actually hear the will of the Force and follow it. I agree that he knew the Order needed changing, and I wonder why he heard it, when so many others couldn't.
I wonder if it was just a matter of not looking towards the future, but keeping himself in the now? Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan to be mindful of the future, but to keep himself in the moment in TPM, which makes me wonder if a lot of Jedi spend so much energy trying to see the future, that they miss what is happening right under their feet in the present.
It could just be that little difference of perspective that opens Qui-Gon and Dooku (and Luke, later on) to the will of the Force.
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Oh, I like that, and yes, that's what I was thinking and didn't express clearly. (sorry, been gone all day - parent's anniversary and all that.)
wonder if it was just a matter of not looking towards the future, but keeping himself in the now?
Does it list anywhere what affiliatio with the Force the Jedi have? I know Obi-Wan leans toward the Unifiying part, and Qui-Gon toward the Living, but what about Dooku and the rest of the Jedi? I had the impression that Qui-Gon was a rarity and I'm curious of a second opinion.
And yes, I've read most of the EU novels, and one of the young adult one covers Dooku and Qui-Gon, but it doesn't give a lot of detail.
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I think Dooku genuinely wanted to reform the Republic, but did he want to bring down the Sith? The trouble is, as ROTS illustrates quite neatly with the parallel images of Anakin holding Dooku at swordpoint and Windu doing the same with Palpatine, that by the time the Clone Wars began, the Jedi and Sith weren't all that different. Dooku may have come to the conclusion that the Sith's independence and their lack of compunction about the means they used to reach their ends would make them more likely to achieve the reform he wanted to carry out, and that the Jedi's self-image as "the good guys" was just hypocrisy and a refusal to acknowledge their own flaws.
I don't have a very high opinion of him, despite the justice of this assessment, because he was so ruthless in using the people he needed to use -- most obviously the Separatists, but (in the Clone Wars/EU materials) people like Asajj Ventress and Sora Bulq as well.
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While I don't read the EU currently, and definitely don't consider it canon -- a nifty source of ideas, but not true canon -- I think it's easy to see that Dooku's flaws are pride and arrogance. He basically oozes it during AotC.
Dooku may have come to the conclusion that the Sith's independence and their lack of compunction about the means they used to reach their ends would make them more likely to achieve the reform he wanted to carry out,
But what were his goals? Restoration of the Republic? Creation of something new and stronger?
Ruthlessness is not a new trait for Jedi, nor is arrogance. Qui-Gon is one of my favorite characters in the prequels, but he uses people all the time.