The rule of two is a power game. The Sith rules are that in order to win, you have to have secret power over everything. You don’t want to share the power, but you need a powerful lackey. This totally makes sense in an evil Machiavellian way. You can hand out positions to the rest of the organization that each give power of authority, but the power is attached to the position, so the only ones in the organization with true power are the Sith. The rest are forced to be subservient.
Check out Ingo Swann’s The Secrets of Power Volume 1 for more about that.
In your parental calculations you’ve missed something: teenage daughters. Some days I’m pretty sure mine would run me through then happily gallivant off to Chipotle.
1) There used to be a lot more Sith. But all that did was attract more attention to them, make what they could do more public knowledge, and didn't actually increase the amount of mayhem because they were still all paranoid and infighting. Since Sith are supposed to act largely undetected, more numbers actually makes less sense.
2) With only two in an entire galaxy, it means even having hundreds of Jedi doesn't really significantly increase the chances of finding them without solid leads - and easier not to leave trails. All more Jedi do is give them more points from which to counter the armies Sith lead from shadows.
So essentially it's just enough to perpetuate themselves; two is the fewest there can be without the entire line being constantly at risk, and more doesn't make them more effective in any way. They have to manipulate others for that.
In one of the EU novels, Sith Apprentice Plagueis mortally wounds Sith Master Darth Tenebrous when they're exploring an asteroid for some reason. The dying Tenebrous congratulates Plageuis on his successful use of deception and misdiretion -- then he finds out something has gone wrong with their ship. He spends his last moments berating Plagueis for killing him in such a way that risks his own life and the end of the Sith Order.
And then there's ROTJ itself where Vader renounces the Dark Side, kills the Emperor, and dies himself, ending the lineage entirely.
In the lore, there were a lot of Sith Lords, but the raw power of the Dark Side comes at a cost -- you want more of it and you'll backstab one another to get it. The Jedi kept beating the Sith because of the Sith's chronic infighting.
To that end, Darth Bane killed all the other Sith Lords and came up with the Rule of Two -- one Master and one Apprentice, "one to embody power and the other to crave it." This helped them hide from the Jedi, who thought the Sith were extinct. Furthermore, since the main way the Apprentice becomes the Master is to kill the Master, it is in both Master and Apprentice's interest to become as powerful as possible -- the Master to deter the Apprentice and the Apprentice to overthrow the Master. As a result, the Sith Order grows stronger each generation.
(And the Master needs an Apprentice to carry out his will -- Maul was Palpatine's assassin while Palpatine played the grandfatherly politician and Dooku created the terrorist army Palpatine needed "emergency powers" to defeat -- even though the Master knows the Apprentice is someday going to kill them.)
And you're not the only one to get creeper vibes off Palpatine -- someone else said Anakin had been "groomed by a fascist psychopath since the age of 10." And there's a YouTube video that suggested Palpatine's various mistreatments of Vader (you see a lot of this in the comics) are because he's *bored* and gets off on messing with Vader.
(AKA "what do you do when you've WON? Especially since your Apprentice is too psychologically broken and dependent on you emotionally to try to kill you and take your place." For an adrenaline junkie like Palpatine -- who raced speeder bikes in his youth and in one of the comics admits to Vader he's missed physical combat -- this must not have been much fun.)
As a rule, dual pairings of men rarely lead to anything good (e.g. the adventures of virtually all two man comedy teams going back to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza).
There was an essay called "Seduced by the Dark Side of the Force" that criticized SW on the grounds that the ultimate evil was an abusive "same-sex pairing" and the redemption of one of the two was accomplished by him saving the product of his prior heterosexual relationship.
If you look at it that way, you can summarize the whole Palpatine-Vader-Luke plot as follows:
"A geriatric psychopath and an emphysemic depressive plot to seduce a third man -- who is the second man's son -- into an unnatural relationship that will end with the death of one of the two of them."
The Sith rule of two has always been a nonsensical addition to the story. Leaving aside that they could be accidentally killed a spaceship crash or something (unless they have strict rules about not travelling together) think of how much fun George Lucas could have had with multiple Siths kicking around in the prequels. As it happens, that's pretty much what happens in the Clone Wars, but they just don't call them Sith. Just people with red lightsabres (which makes them Sith in my book, rule of two be damned).
It wasn't a total Rule of Two. There was Darth Sidious, Darth Tyranus (Dooku), Darth Maul, Darth Vader. Assaj Ventress was being groomed for Sith sisterhood.
Well these are wicked people spiritually prone to backstabbing. Dooku might've been planning to gang up on Palpatine with Ventress and Palpatine, in the EU at least, was training Maul before he took out Plagueis.
(And Plagueis's master Tenebrous had a secret rival apprentice too.)
Vader had a couple secret apprentices in the EU -- Starkiller, Lumiya, and maybe more.
The rule of two is a power game. The Sith rules are that in order to win, you have to have secret power over everything. You don’t want to share the power, but you need a powerful lackey. This totally makes sense in an evil Machiavellian way. You can hand out positions to the rest of the organization that each give power of authority, but the power is attached to the position, so the only ones in the organization with true power are the Sith. The rest are forced to be subservient.
Check out Ingo Swann’s The Secrets of Power Volume 1 for more about that.
Those footnotes though. 😘🤌
Thank you! Writing footnotes is my favorite part 😆
In your parental calculations you’ve missed something: teenage daughters. Some days I’m pretty sure mine would run me through then happily gallivant off to Chipotle.
So true! 😂
Alright; Rule of Two
1) There used to be a lot more Sith. But all that did was attract more attention to them, make what they could do more public knowledge, and didn't actually increase the amount of mayhem because they were still all paranoid and infighting. Since Sith are supposed to act largely undetected, more numbers actually makes less sense.
2) With only two in an entire galaxy, it means even having hundreds of Jedi doesn't really significantly increase the chances of finding them without solid leads - and easier not to leave trails. All more Jedi do is give them more points from which to counter the armies Sith lead from shadows.
So essentially it's just enough to perpetuate themselves; two is the fewest there can be without the entire line being constantly at risk, and more doesn't make them more effective in any way. They have to manipulate others for that.
I know nobody watched it, but, in The Acolyte, the Jedi did come across as a bunch of tools so maybe the Sith were actually fully justified 🤔😳
The rule of two still makes no sense though 🤷♂️
One of my favorite parts of The Acolyte is how it called into question stuff we just accepted about the Jedi.
The almighty TVTropes has a whole discussion about the Rule of Two, which pops up in other media as well, as well as the ROT's flaws:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfTwo
In one of the EU novels, Sith Apprentice Plagueis mortally wounds Sith Master Darth Tenebrous when they're exploring an asteroid for some reason. The dying Tenebrous congratulates Plageuis on his successful use of deception and misdiretion -- then he finds out something has gone wrong with their ship. He spends his last moments berating Plagueis for killing him in such a way that risks his own life and the end of the Sith Order.
And then there's ROTJ itself where Vader renounces the Dark Side, kills the Emperor, and dies himself, ending the lineage entirely.
In the lore, there were a lot of Sith Lords, but the raw power of the Dark Side comes at a cost -- you want more of it and you'll backstab one another to get it. The Jedi kept beating the Sith because of the Sith's chronic infighting.
To that end, Darth Bane killed all the other Sith Lords and came up with the Rule of Two -- one Master and one Apprentice, "one to embody power and the other to crave it." This helped them hide from the Jedi, who thought the Sith were extinct. Furthermore, since the main way the Apprentice becomes the Master is to kill the Master, it is in both Master and Apprentice's interest to become as powerful as possible -- the Master to deter the Apprentice and the Apprentice to overthrow the Master. As a result, the Sith Order grows stronger each generation.
(And the Master needs an Apprentice to carry out his will -- Maul was Palpatine's assassin while Palpatine played the grandfatherly politician and Dooku created the terrorist army Palpatine needed "emergency powers" to defeat -- even though the Master knows the Apprentice is someday going to kill them.)
And you're not the only one to get creeper vibes off Palpatine -- someone else said Anakin had been "groomed by a fascist psychopath since the age of 10." And there's a YouTube video that suggested Palpatine's various mistreatments of Vader (you see a lot of this in the comics) are because he's *bored* and gets off on messing with Vader.
(AKA "what do you do when you've WON? Especially since your Apprentice is too psychologically broken and dependent on you emotionally to try to kill you and take your place." For an adrenaline junkie like Palpatine -- who raced speeder bikes in his youth and in one of the comics admits to Vader he's missed physical combat -- this must not have been much fun.)
My favorite rendition of the Palpatine / Vader relationship is from Robot Chicken, which leans into the abusive vibes you mention.
As a rule, dual pairings of men rarely lead to anything good (e.g. the adventures of virtually all two man comedy teams going back to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza).
There was an essay called "Seduced by the Dark Side of the Force" that criticized SW on the grounds that the ultimate evil was an abusive "same-sex pairing" and the redemption of one of the two was accomplished by him saving the product of his prior heterosexual relationship.
https://www.academia.edu/882679/Seduced_by_the_Dark_Side_of_the_Force
If you look at it that way, you can summarize the whole Palpatine-Vader-Luke plot as follows:
"A geriatric psychopath and an emphysemic depressive plot to seduce a third man -- who is the second man's son -- into an unnatural relationship that will end with the death of one of the two of them."
The Sith rule of two has always been a nonsensical addition to the story. Leaving aside that they could be accidentally killed a spaceship crash or something (unless they have strict rules about not travelling together) think of how much fun George Lucas could have had with multiple Siths kicking around in the prequels. As it happens, that's pretty much what happens in the Clone Wars, but they just don't call them Sith. Just people with red lightsabres (which makes them Sith in my book, rule of two be damned).
It wasn't a total Rule of Two. There was Darth Sidious, Darth Tyranus (Dooku), Darth Maul, Darth Vader. Assaj Ventress was being groomed for Sith sisterhood.
Well these are wicked people spiritually prone to backstabbing. Dooku might've been planning to gang up on Palpatine with Ventress and Palpatine, in the EU at least, was training Maul before he took out Plagueis.
(And Plagueis's master Tenebrous had a secret rival apprentice too.)
Vader had a couple secret apprentices in the EU -- Starkiller, Lumiya, and maybe more.