Which Empire To Root For?

So I'm reading The Two Towers and it got me in a big LOTR mood. Now I do have a tendency to side with the bad guys in settings and LOTR is no exception, but the trope namer of Rooting for the Empire, the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, never appealed to me. They seemed not only cartoonishly evil, but incompetent. I saw nothing in them that would be alluring.

Now M Ordor isn't so bad, even if it appears worse on the surface. The movies did kinda fuck up some parts by constantly talking about the "Age of Man" coming to an end and constantly portraying every battle as monsters vs. poor humanity. Men have served Dark Lords since the beginning and they aren't doing it so orcs can have better lives.

Anyway, the question. Given only two bad choices, who would you rather side with and why? The Dark Lord Sauron or Emperor Palpatine?

Palpatine. He only loses because Lucas said so. If it were real, well, let's just say the side with the Death Stars, Star Destroyers and the other big huge space battleships that they have access to would rofl stomp those rebel scum. Therefore, I would rather be on the winning side. I think he is a damned sight more competent than any of his opposition, and it would be nice to work for a leader who knoweth of what shitteh he is doingeth.

I have no idea what Sauron's deal is, and Palpatine's evil usually seems restricted to untermensch, so I guess him. Though he does have a tendency to be cartoonishly evil for the sake of it, and if you're on a planet that he doesn't like he might just blow it up because he gives zero fucks.

edited 26th Jun '13 11:26:41 PM by CPFMfan

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Sauron's deal is to bring everyone and everything under his personal control, and destroy everyone and everything he can't control. However, while he started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wanted to bring order to a chaotic world, it's pretty clear the present-day Sauron cares nothing for those under his rule (note the exchange between Mook Lieutenants Shagrat and Gorbag in last chapter of the book!Two Towers- the orcs clearly hate their boss nearly as much as they hate their enemies, and the men under Sauron's rule serve him because they believe he's a god and fear to cross him). Though he's not as bad as his former boss Morgoth (a sadistic Omnicidal Maniac), Sauron seems a very, very odd villain to root for- he's basically the personification of tyranny. Eh, to each their own, I guess.

''All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us..."

I'd rather not root for either of them, but if I had to support one evil overlord, it'd probably be Kane.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

I root for the guy who will eventually die at some point, as compared to the one who will cover the world in Shadow forever.

Yeah, but those damn EU clone banks were meant to ensure Palpatine would be around for that thousand-year reign.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

I root for Thrawn.

Or rather, I root for the Empire's Pragmatic Villainy side, as even Palpatine admits to himself that Utopia Justifies the Means. Thrawn just exemplified that even further.

Then again, after reading The Last Ringbearer, I can no longer look at an Always Chaotic Evil fantasy race with the same attitude, so I'm interested in what Sauron would be portrayed as by an author on his own side. Cracked made him out as a "giant mace wielding folk hero", which doesn't sound illogical at all.

edited 26th Jun '13 11:45:00 PM by indiana404

Even with the clone banks, Palpatine's going to time out sometime. And even if he doesn't, he's still potentially killable. Sauron Victory is pretty much eternal and nothing short of the Valar is going to be rumbling him once he gets his Ring back (and the collateral damage from that will vape the entire civilized world, which is precisely why the Valar didn't step in already). So, yeah, given a choice between evil that will last pretty much for-fucking-ever and evil that will die eventually, obvious vote is obvious.

I root for Riddick.

Definitely seconding Thrawn. Sure he's still ultimately a fascist, but a but a very sensible and practical one that commits atrocities not for shits and giggles, but instead overall strategic and political victories.

Which Empire? Cyrodil by a landslide.

...oh, wait, that's not what the question was about. Eh, Palpatine didn't seem that bad to me. I mean, from what I can tell, the non-militaristic parts of the galaxy never even really noticed all the regime changes, it was just that their taxes went to a different name. That's not too bad. By comparison, everyone notices when Sauron burns your home down and blankets your civilization in orcs.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

So I want to point out something.

I've asked this topic a couple places and a lot of people say the Empire was better because it was human-centric.

Why isn't it a plus for Sauron that he was Equal-Opportunity Evil? From The Silmarillion:

"…All living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save the Elves only. They alone were undivided and followed Gil-galad. Of the Dwarves few fought upon either side; but the kindred of Durin of Moria fought against Sauron."

Sauron will let anyone join up as a soldier, be they orc or human or even an elf if one of them was so inclined. He's not discriminatory even though he hates Elves.

Y Ou also have to factor in the body count. I think the Empire killed more people in a day than Sauron managed in all three Ages.

edited 27th Jun '13 9:54:05 AM by NIkkolas

Being equal opportunity evil still means your evil. Its not exactly a virtue.

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It's actually kind of worse, in the sense that wanting to kill or enslave everyone is worse than wanting to kill or enslave only a specific group of people.

edited 27th Jun '13 11:54:02 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I wouldn't mind rooting for Sauron, really, but I too am not quite certain what his whole Take Over the World shtick is supposed to accomplish in the long term. Wanting power for power's sake may be a staple of fantasy villains, but it's also a sign of Bad Writing. The same goes for the Always Chaotic Evil races that fight under such villains.

Got me thinking though - Sauron's forces aren't just equal opportunity, but also much more cohesive, with orcs and goblins having no problem fighting alongside trolls and men of the East and South. To contrast, western societies are racially segregated, barely managing some Teeth-Clenched Teamwork when direly needed to, and ultimately relying on the MacGuffin to solve the crisis. All while being manipulated by meddlesome magicians, and holier-than-thou elves. Why indeed would anyone fight against that.

edited 27th Jun '13 12:33:03 PM by indiana404

Sauron's worse. When favorites are played and discrimination comes into the picture, you know who's in the better position, and whether you'll ever amount to much in that system. Racism builds its own resistance movements. With equal opportunity? Not so much.

Palpatine, definitely. There's some great career opportunities in that Empire.

A different shape every step I take A different mind every step of the line

The orcs at the tower of Cirith Ungol would laugh at you, if they hadn't already killed each other fighting over some spoils of battle.

I didn't write any of that.

Well they were fighting over Mithril. I think a group of regular soldiers might start fighting each other if a million dollars or something fell in their lap too.

Especially if it was supposed to be a million dollars they were holding for a superior and the dutiful had to fight those who yielded to temptation

At the end of the day, we have to remember that Sauron was once the Bringer of Gifts. That was how he got on the side of the High Men in the first place and how he got them on his side. By his hand the major Rings were also major forces of good before their owners caught wind of what he was plotting in the background. There was clear and present benefit to siding with him right up to the point where he put on the One Ring and started pulling on peoples' mind-chains.

There's also a scene, in the films at least, where Saruman convinces the Dunlendings to strike back at Rohan for driving them from their lands and into the mountains - a legitimate transgression. Makes me think the global conflict was nowhere near as black and white as the books paint it to be, nor was Sauron so clear cut a villain. But then again, Black-and-White Morality is one of my pet peeves.

As for the Empire, there is an essay dubbed "The Case for the Empire" outlining the failings of the Republic - a corrupt bureaucracy enforced by a paramilitary cult with child-soldier recruits - as well as noting how the most oft cited signs of the Empire's evil have no context to be held against. The planet of Alderaan for instance is only stated to be peaceful and defenseless, nonetheless by Princess Leia, who had lied about everything up to that point, and was in fact travelling there precisely in order to launch an assault. For all we see, they might have had a bigger gun just waiting for orders to fire. Later on, with the Emperor's death and the Imperial Fleet in disarray, we never see the ensuing chaos and decades of civil war that would logically follow such an event - an Endor Holocaust on a galactic scale.

Still, the essay does disregard the Expanded Universe, showing mercy to the non-geek readers out there. However, taking the EU into account can actually make things worse. For one, the Declaration of Rebellion itself is signed by the Alderaanian ruler, and worded as an initiation of total war - giving the Empire ample legal justification to act against him in any way imaginable, including blowing up his sovereignty to space dust. And post-Endor novels do outline the rather quick dissolution of the violently unstable New Republic into a loose federation, with the remnant of the Empire as a full-fledged constituent state. And shockingly, this federation is constantly overwhelmed with large scale military threats - precisely the kind the Empire was designed to go against. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.

All in all, the more you see of both conflicts, the grayer they become, and the more reason you get to root for the so-called bad guys.

edited 4th Jul '13 12:22:00 AM by indiana404

This is one of those essays that deliberately ignores all the bad things the Empire does like murdering children, burning two civilians to death, and seizing a small, unimportant mining colony just to be more of a dick to it's coordinator, isn't it?

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

The essay did come out before Episode III so the children murdering bit wasn't yet seen. And, as I noted, these children were explicitly trained as soldiers by the jedi - who at the time of the incident had just turned traitors to the Republic. Not exactly a morally clear-cut premise.

And again, we don't see the context of Owen and Beru's death. For that matter, the plans R2 had were very much a matter of national security - as it's become painfully clear nowadays, more than a few governments would act quite similarly in such situations, and not without good reason. As for Lando's operation, he's noted to have conned somebody out of it, and coordinating some pretty shady deals with it, which would warrant legal action anyway.

edited 4th Jul '13 5:02:03 AM by indiana404

You're distorting the facts again; the clones were soldiers, the Jedi only served as officers due to the crisis. Normally they're just peacekeepers. And they weren't traitors just because a scary man in a cloak said they were, I'm sure a lot of Jedi killed had nothing but good feelings about the Republic; didn't matter, they were Jedi so they had to be killed.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great