Palpatine
fictional character from Star Wars
Sheev Palpatine ( PAL-pə-teen) is the main antagonist of the Star Wars franchise. He first appeared in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back as the Emperor. He is also known by his Sith name, Darth Sidious, which was first used in the novelization of the 1999 film The Phantom Menace.
Palpatine appears in all three film trilogies in the Skywalker Saga, and is portrayed by Ian McDiarmid in all five films in which he physically appears. In the original trilogy, Palpatine is Emperor of the Galactic Empire and the master of Darth Vader. In the prequel trilogy, which chronicles his rise to emperor, Palpatine is a senator from the planet Naboo who plots to become Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. He masterminds the Clone Wars to turn the Republic into the Empire, destroys the Jedi Order, and manipulates Anakin Skywalker into becoming his apprentice, Darth Vader. In The Rise of Skywalker (2019), the final film in the sequel trilogy, a resurrected Palpatine is revealed to be the grandfather of Rey, a Jedi-in-training who is the protagonist of the sequel trilogy. He is also the mastermind behind Snoke, whom he created to lead the First Order against the New Republic and seduce Skywalker's nephew, Ben Solo, into becoming Kylo Ren.
Palpatine's story was inspired by real-world examples of political strongmen and democratic backsliding during the rise and rule of dictators such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q51770. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1999 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palpatine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.