The Problem of Count Dooku

[neotoma]

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.

Comments

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

I think the old "Join us and we will bring order to the Galaxy" is the ultimate poisonous siren song of all the Sith.

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.

[imadra-blue.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this is interesting. I'm one of those people who find Palpatine utterly boring, I just couldn't get enough interest in him to even yawn. But Dooku is sort of interesting, isn't he? All very good theories. I always thought he wanted Obi-Wan to join him so they could overthrow Palpatine and Dookue could become Master with Obi-Wan as his apprentice. The way he plays with truths is more clever than Palpatine's twisted lies to me. Yes, I think I can work with Dooku.

I wish I could find Palps more interesting, but meh. Same for Maul, just meh. Now Dooku... *runs off to write last scene*

[ceria-taliesin.livejournal.com]

here from jedi_news-

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.' junediamanti makes a good point about you make the appeal to an enemy you wish to recruit and his initiation is to take the place of your apprentice. If Dooku saw or heard of Obi-Wan actively looking for the Sith, taking his advice, I wonder if he would have approached him again.

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.

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

he thing about Dooku is that like Palpatine, he is a masterful Chess player with his ideas, Masterful Chess players often know when to expose themselves and when not to, and so I like to see Dooku as such.

[ariss-tenoh.livejournal.com]

You raise a lot of interesting points. I always wonder what would have happened if Qui-Gon had survived the duel with Maul and confronted Dooku in AOTC. I do believe Dooku was playing his own game, though he made the mistake of thinkinghe could both outsmart a Sith and trust him at the same time. Dooku's arrogance was his downfall I think. He was an expert on politics as seen from him holding the separatist movement together, a great swordsman, and a master tactician. But he was something of an elitist as well.

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

My apologies for jumping into this so late, but I was interested by your Dooku speculations and wondered whether you had ever read the Clone Wars novel Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart, which goes into the relationship between Yoda and Dooku. It's a fascinating read, by turns laugh-out-loud funny and achingly moving. According to Stewart's take, Dooku's major flaw (as you surmise here) was pride, and even though Yoda saw this when Dooku was a child and tried to lead him away from it, he never managed to let it go. I could rave for ages about how brilliant this book is, but not without spoiling it or quoting huge chunks, so I'll refrain, but I highly recommend that you check it out if you get the chance.

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.