Star Wars: The Comedy of Darth Sidious

So, I want to share a large excerpt of the book Darth Plagueis with you guys. It's a very interesting segment that could potentially upgrade Emperor Palpatine / Darth Sidious significantly.

It's the very beginning of the book, too:

The Excerpt

A tremor took hold of the planet.

Sprung from death, it unleashed itself in a powerful wave, at once burrowing deep into the world’s core and radiating through its saccharine atmosphere to shake the stars themselves. At the quake’s epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return. But the moment didn’t constitute an ending so much as a true beginning, long overdue; it was less a transformation than an intensification—a gravitic shift.

A welter of voices, near and far, present and from eons past, drowned his thoughts. Raised in praise, the voices proclaimed his reign and cheered the inauguration of a new order. Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he came back to himself, his gaze settling on his manicured hands. Returned to the present, he took note of his rapid breathing, while behind him the room labored to restore order. Air scrubbers hummed—costly wall tapestries undulating in the summoned breeze. Prized carpets sealed their fibers against the spread of spilled fluids. The droid shuffled in obvious confliction. Sidious pivoted to take in the disarray: antique furniture overturned; framed artwork askew. As if a whirlwind had swept through. And facedown on the floor lay a statue of Yanjon, one of four law-giving sages of Dwartii.

A piece Sidious had secretly coveted.

Also sprawled there, Plagueis: his slender limbs splayed and elongated head turned to one side. Dressed in finery, as for a night on the town.

And now dead.

Or was he?

Uncertainty rippled through Sidious, rage returning to his eyes. A tremor of his own making, or one of forewarning?

Was it possible that the wily Muun had deceived him? Had Plagueis unlocked the key to immortality, and survived after all? Never mind that it would constitute a petty move for one so wise—for one who had professed to place the Grand Plan above all else. Had Plagueis become ensnared in a self-spun web of jealousy and possessiveness, victim of his own engineering, his own foibles?

If he hadn’t been concerned for his own safety, Sidious might have pitied him.

Wary of approaching the corpse of his former Master, he called on the Force to roll the aged Muun over onto his back. From that angle Plagueis looked almost as he had when Sidious first met him, decades earlier: smooth, hairless cranium; humped nose, with its bridge flattened as if from a shock-ball blow and its sharp tip pressed almost to his upper lip; jutting lower jaw; sunken eyes still brimming with menace—a physical characteristic rarely encountered in a Muun. But then Plagueis had never been an ordinary Muun, nor an ordinary being of any sort.

Sidious took care, still reaching out with the Force. On closer inspection, he saw that Plagueis’s already cyanotic flesh was smoothing out, his features relaxing.

Faintly aware of the whir of air scrubbers and sounds of the outside world infiltrating the luxurious suite, he continued the vigil; then, in relief, he pulled himself up to his full height and let out his breath. This was no Sith trick. Not an instance of feigning death, but one of succumbing to its cold embrace. The being who had guided him to power was gone.

Wry amusement narrowed his eyes.

The Muun might have lived another hundred years unchanged. He might have lived forever had he succeeded fully in his quest. But in the end—though he could save others from death—he had failed to save himself.

A sense of supreme accomplishment puffed Sidious’s chest, and his thoughts unreeled.

Well, then, that wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought it might be …

Rarely did events play out as imagined, in any case. The order of future events was transient. In the same way that the past was reconfigured by selective memory, future events, too, were moving targets. One could only act on instinct, grab hold of an intuited perfect moment, and spring into action. One heartbeat late and the universe would have recomposed itself, no imposition of will sufficient to forestall the currents. One could only observe and react. Surprise was the element absent from any periodic table. A keystone element; a missing ingredient. The means by which the Force amused itself. A reminder to all sentient beings that some secrets could never be unlocked.

Confident that the will of the dark side had been done, he returned to the suite’s window wall.

Two beings in a galaxy of countless trillions, but what had transpired in the suite would affect the lives of all of them. Already the galaxy had been shaped by the birth of one, and henceforth would be reshaped by the death of the other. But had the change been felt and recognized elsewhere? Were his sworn enemies aware that the Force had shifted irrevocably? Would it be enough to rouse them from self-righteousness? He hoped not. For now the work of vengeance could begin in earnest.

His eyes sought and found an ascending constellation of stars, one of power and consequence new to the sky, though soon to be overwhelmed by dawn’s first light. Low in the sky over the flatlands, visible only to those who knew where and how to look, it ushered in a bold future. To some the stars and planets might seem to be moving as ever, destined to align in configurations calculated long before their fiery births. But in fact the heavens had been perturbed, tugged by dark matter into novel alignments. In his mouth, Sidious tasted the tang of blood; in his chest, he felt the monster rising, emerging from shadowy depths and contorting his aspect into something fearsome just short of revealing itself to the world.

The dark side had made him its property, and now he made the dark side his.

Breathless, not from exertion but from the sudden inspiration of power, he let go of the sill and allowed the monster to writhe through his body like an unbroken beast of range or prairie.

Had the Force ever been so strong in anyone?

Sidious had never learned how Plagueis’s own Master had met his end. Had he died at Plagueis’s hand? Had Plagueis, too, experienced a similar exultation on becoming a sole Sith Lord? Had the beast of the end time risen then to peek at the world it was to inhabit, knowing its release was imminent?

He raised his gaze to the ecliptic. The answers were out there, coded in light, speeding through space and time. Liquid fire coursing through him, visions of past and future riffling through his mind, he opened himself to the reconfigured galaxy, as if in an effort to peel away the decades …

Explanation

So, there's a lot to consider and analyze there, so I think we need to highlight the most important quotes. The book's prologue describes the immediate aftermatch of Sheev Palpatine's assassination of his master Darth Plagueis, and the consequences of his ascension into Darth Sidious.

A tremor took hold of the planet.

Sprung from death, it unleashed itself in a powerful wave, at once burrowing deep into the world’s core and radiating through its saccharine atmosphere to shake the stars themselves. At the quake’s epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return.

As Plagueis is slain, a Force-tremor takes hold of the planet they were in, shaking it to the core and simultaneously radiating through the atmosphere to eventually reach and "shake the stars themselves". This is explicitly noted to be the result of Sidious' newfound power.

Yellow eyes lifted to the night sky, he saw the trembling stars flare, and in the depth of his being he felt the power of the dark side anoint him.

Sidious opens his eyes and gazes onto the night-sky, and he sees "trembling stars flare", knowing that his is anointed by the power of the Dark Side. This is the direct result of the previous tremor in the Force. Stars shook and "flared" (Either released Solar Flares or outright exploded) as a result of Sidious' power.

Rarely did events play out as imagined, in any case. The order of future events was transient. In the same way that the past was reconfigured by selective memory, future events, too, were moving targets. One could only act on instinct, grab hold of an intuited perfect moment, and spring into action. One heartbeat late and the universe would have recomposed itself, no imposition of will sufficient to forestall the currents.

The Past and Future are explained to be transient things that can be reconfigured by one's actions, with the universe itself "recomposing itself" by the result of certain events.

Two beings in a galaxy of countless trillions, but what had transpired in the suite would affect the lives of all of them. Already the galaxy had been shaped by the birth of one, and henceforth would be reshaped by the death of the other. But had the change been felt and recognized elsewhere? Were his sworn enemies aware that the Force had shifted irrevocably? Would it be enough to rouse them from self-righteousness?

Darth Sidious' assassination of his master affects the entire galaxy, causing the Force itself to shift irrevocably out of balance across space. Sidious ponders if his enemies will have felt this great disturbance in the galaxy.

His eyes sought and found an ascending constellation of stars, one of power and consequence new to the sky, though soon to be overwhelmed by dawn’s first light. Low in the sky over the flatlands, visible only to those who knew where and how to look, it ushered in a bold future. To some the stars and planets might seem to be moving as ever, destined to align in configurations calculated long before their fiery births. But in fact the heavens had been perturbed, tugged by dark matter into novel alignments.

The most revealing statement, in my opinion. Sidious raises his eyes to the stars and finds an ascending constellation, which people would believe would be moving in accordance to their alignment and orbit, but in fact is aligning in a completely new way due to Sidious' actions. "To some the stars and planets might seem to be moving as ever, destined to align in configurations calculated long before their fiery births. But in fact the heavens had been perturbed, tugged by dark matter into novel alignments."

Had the Force ever been so strong in anyone?

This new, immense surge of Dark Power flowing through Sidious causes him to question himself if anyone has ever been so powerful with the Force.

Further Explanations

In 1000 BBY, the Sith Lord Darth Bane invents the "Rule of Two", which holds that there can only be two Sith in the entire Jedi at a time: A Sith Master, and a Sith Apprentice, who would be trained by the Master until he exceeds him in power. At this point, the Master would have to die, and the Apprentice would become the new Sith Master, who would take a new Apprentice and train him, thus repeating the cycle. This would cause the Sith to grow in power over the decades, slowly strengthening the Dark Side while the Jedi foolishly believed the Sith to be vanquished.

Dark Bane's plan was ambitious, and it finally came to fruition in 67 BBY, with the ascension of Darth Sidious, as detailed above. Thanks to a thousand years of Sith strengthening themselves through Rule of Two, Sidious became the most powerful Sith Lord in the History of the Galaxy.

Vader imagined the power that could be his if he crushed Palpatine and established his own rule over the Empire. But first, he would need his own apprentice. By himself, he could not hope to defeat the most powerful Sith Lord the galaxy had ever known.

Source: Vader: The Ultimate Guide

Yoda went after Palpatine in the empty Senate chamber, but could not defeat the most powerful Sith Lord in history.

Source: The New Essential Chronology

The Sith have waited millennium for the birth of one who is powerful enough to return them from hiding. Darth Sidious is that one—the Sith's revenge on the Jedi order for having nearly eradicated the practitioners of the dark side of the Force.

Source: The Complete Visual Dictionary

The Sith Order, in hiding for a millennium, had awaited the birth of one who was powerful enough to return the Order to prominence. Darth Sidious was the fulfillment of that prophecy, capable of exacting the Sith's revenge on the Jedi for having nearly eradicated the practitioners of the dark side of the Force.

Source: The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia

Darth Sidious proved to be the grim culmination of a thousand years of Sith philosophy and teachings.

Source: Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

When the Sith finally emerged from a thousand years of watching and waiting, they numbered—in accordance with the tradition set down by Darth Bane—only two. The most powerful of these was Darth Sidious, an ice-cold, diabolically calculating genius equipped with the strength of the dark side of the Force, as well as an enormous wealth of Sith artifacts, equipment, and knowledge.

Source: The Dark Side Sourcebook

I could show you about 30 other quotes if you don't believe me, but the bottom line is: Darth Sidious is the most powerful Sith Lord in History, period. Thus such an insane feat would probably not be an outlier for him.

Furthermore, the Darth Plagueis novels isn't the only time where Sidious is described as affecting the whole galaxy and unbalancing the Force with his power:

For a decade, there was no physical signs of the remaining Dark Lord, but evidence of his power began to appear.

The Jedi ability to use the Force inexplicably began to diminish.

Source: Databank (2008): The Jedi Order

Depowered lampdisks were rings of ghostly gray floating in the gloom. The shimmering jewelscape of Coruscant haloed the knife-edged shadow of the chair.

This was the office of the Chancellor.

Within the chair's shadow sat another shadow: deeper, darker, formless and impenetrable, an abyssal umbra so profound that it drained light from the room around it.

And from the city. And the planet.

And the galaxy.

Source: Revenge of the Sith Novelization

To Mace's Force perception, the world crystallized around them, becoming a gem of reality shot through with flaws and fault lines of possibility. This was Mace's particular gift: to see how people and situations fit together in the Force, to find the shear planes that can cause them to break in useful ways, and to intuit what sort of strike would best make the cut. Though he could not consistently determine the significance of the structures he perceived—the darkening cloud upon the Force that had risen with the rebirth of the Sith made that harder and harder with each passing day—the presence of shatterpoints was always clear.

Source: Revenge of the Sith Novelization

The future was always in motion, and while other Sith always struggled to foresee the faintest, least specific hints of what was to come, Tenebrous had no need to see the future.

He could calculate it.

While still merely an apprentice, his analysis had shown him the inevitable end of the Banite Sith and its preposterous Rule of Two. His calculations plainly indicated the coming of a shadow so vast it would darken the galaxy entirely—so vast it would mark the end of both Jedi and Sith as the universe had known them heretofore. The rise of the shadow would be the end of history itself.

Source: The Tenebrous Way

Only Palpatine has been able to spread his darkness completely and totally over an entire galaxy.

Source: Dark Empire Sourcebook

So this is not an anomaly of the book. Instead, the book is simply depicting the beginning of an well-established event within Star Wars lore, Darth Sidious clouding the galaxy with his darkness and unbalancing the Force itself. Since the novel describes stars shaking and flaring, and constellations re-aligning as a result of Sidious' birth, we can attribute such feats to him.

Other Sidious Feats

As mentioned, Darth Sidious was not only the strongest Sith Lord, but the strongest practitioner of the Dark Side period. This, naturally, should include characters such as Aleema Keto, who could use Naga Sadow's Sith Corsair to destroy stars. Additionally, Sadow's own command of the Corsair could trigger supernovas, further reinforcing Sidious' own tier.

Finally, perhaps you don't know, but when Darth Sidious returns in the Dark Empire comics, he has actually grows in power a lot since last seen, so much so that he is only permanently defeated by the combined effort of the spirits of every Jedi who ever lived.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Yoda - even Luke and Leia’s father Anakin Skywalker - have all disappeared, gone from the Galaxy. Mysteriously, for reasons known only to themselves, they no longer appear to Luke, or offer him their guidance.

And yet… there’s a feeling… a sense of hidden nearness… as if they are watching him, sometimes frowning, sometimes nodding their heads. Others too - untold thousands of departed Jedi - are with them.

Luke feels a unity among the Jedi, reaching beyond “this crude flesh,” stretching back 25,000 years and more, to the beginning of the Jedi Knights. It is as if the attention of the departed Jedi can never be fully turned away from the Galaxy, until the great crimes of the Empire are finally undone.

Source: Dark Empire endnotes

His body mortally wounded by Han Solo, Palpatine tracked down the Solos and desperately sought to transfer his fading essence to the infant Anakin Solo. He was blocked and absorbed by the dying Jedi, Brand, who promised that he and all the other Jedi spirits would ensure the dark sider never returned—a fate Palpatine had feared above all others. The Emperor's reign was over for good.

Source: The Official Star Wars Fact File #120

As it took every Jedi ever to destroy Palpatine, at this point he should logically be far above what Jerec could achieve when empowered by the Valley of the Jedi, i.e, provoke supernovas with a thought.