Loftwings and Demons

Palpatine is like if one of those supernatural serial killers from a slasher movie decided to go into politics. Star Wars is a horror story.

Which is why 'somehow Palpatine returned'. 

I once heard about there being a discarded idea for the original trilogy that the Emperor wasn't evil and it was actually just like, his advisors and and such who were evil (and Darth Vader, obviously).

Now, I think this would have been a terrible idea, and substantially worse than what Lucas actually ended up going with, but it gave me an idea that does interest me.

What if Palpatine was exactly the same, but if, because of the enormously positive propagranda for him during the Clone Wars, and because he had and has a lot of charisma, there were people who thought that he was actually a good guy. Like "oh, Palpatine's the best leader we ever had, such a good and brave man--this Empire business must all be Mas Amedda's fault" or something like that.

Obviously people like Obi-Wan and Yoda would know, but very few other people would have.  Obi-Wan's message doesn't even explain why the Republic became the Empire, so it's possible that even some Jedi might not have worked out that it was Palpatine himself who had it in for them, and not someone else who was advising him.  It might even be that some of the Jedi who became  Inquisitors came to him willingly because they thought they could fix things if they 'rescued' him from the Sith who must be holding him hostage or something.  It seems that not many people knew that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, or that Palpatine was a Sith himself.  Even after he offed the Jedi, Palpatine seemed to prefer to perpetuate the subterfuge that he was just an ordinary guy and not a Sith Lord.  So only select people in the Empire would likely know the truth.

I just think that could be an interesting twist, for example if some of the Neo-Republicans in the Rebellion think they can fix the issue by appealing to Palpatine and it's the Separatists in the secret Rebel meeting who have to be like, no, that sounds like the worst idea ever.  Or what if Luthen had to be like "Oh, yet another Rebel cell that wants to try to 'rescue' the Emperor again.  Can I afford to tell them that won't work?"

The Darth Plagueis novel gives a lot of background on the Sith, and one detail we learn from it is how Darth Maul becomes a Sith.  And how that happens is that his mother Kycina gives him away to Palpatine as an infant.  Here's the scene in the novel where this is explained:

“Clearly I am not, as I suspect you have already intuited. But you still haven’t answered my question. Why are trying to rid yourself of the infant?”
“To spare the one for the sake of the other,” she said after a moment. “Half a clan pair, this one is. And I want one to live freely, since the other can’t.”
“Who poses the threat?”
“Talzin is her name.”
“Who is Talzin?”
“The Nightsister Mother.”
Palpatine filed the information away. “Where is the infant’s father?”
“Dead—by tradition.”
He snorted. “Will the infant not be missed?”
“Talzin knows only of the one, not the other.”
“You delude yourself.”
Gently, she pushed the shoulder bag toward him. “Then take him. Please.”
“What would I do with him?”
“This one is strong in the Force. In the right hands, he can become a powerful asset.”
“Servitude of a different sort.”
She ignored the remark. “Take him. Save him.”
Palpatine regarded the newborn again. “Have you named him?”
“Maul, he is called.”

Of course Palpatine is the worst parent ever, so Maul never really gets the life his mother wanted for him.  Maul is unusual in that he's the only known Rule of Two Sith who was explicitly raised to be one from infancy.  Which is a pretty horrific childhood to imagine.  This seems like a pretty tragic situation to me, because it sounds like either way his life was going to be pretty awful.  

One thing I noticed reading this over again is that Maul is supposed to be half of a clan pair.  So is that supposed to mean he has a twin?  Who knows?  That never comes up again in this novel.  I guess if you wanted to tie this into The Clone Wars continuity you could say that the twin was supposed to be Savage, though my understanding is that when that character was first conceived, he wasn't intended to have anything to do with Maul.  At the same time, given when this was written and the fact that Legends EU often tied in things from other stories, I'm guessing that probably was the intent.

We Sith are an unseen opposition, Tenebrous had told his young apprentice. A phantom menace. Where the Sith once wore armor, we now wear cloaks. But the Force works through us all the more powerfully in our invisibility. For the present, the more covert we remain, the more influence we can have. Our revenge will be achieved not through subjugation but by contagion.

--from the Darth Plagueis novel by James Luceno