I don't own anything to do with Star Wars. This is just my view of what Palpatine, otherwise known as Darth Sidious and later the Emperor of the Imperial Galactic Empire was thinking as he watched the phalanxes of Clone troopers board those ships at the end of Attack of the Clones.
Please let me know what you think.
Closer to the Dawn of the Sith Empire.
As he stood overlooking the clone army marching up the ramps of the large starships, admiring their gleaming white blast armour which gleamed in the sun, Chancellor Palpatine was struggling not to burst into triumphant cackles as he beheld one of the most visible victories to the Sith Grand Plan orchestrated by Darth Bane coming to pass. But right now he was schooling his features while he wrapped himself partially in the Force to appear despondent as if the sight of the army was a necessary evil as the galaxy spun and spiralled out of control; it was essential for his continual role as the benevolent, mild-mannered Sheev Palpatine to appear as if the Clone Wars pitting the Republic against the Separatists was his worst nightmare.
But his true identity as Darth Sidious, heir to the legacy of the Sith and of Darth Bane was struggling not to be delighted.
When Darth Bane realised the follies of the Sith, he had found an ingenious way of solving it. Instead of multiple Sith, he would create a balance by making sure there would only be two Sith; a master and an apprentice.
At the same time, the Master and the Apprentice would work towards the undermining of the Republic and the Jedi, destroying the latter both in number and philosophically while transforming the former into a Sith Empire through stealth and subterfuge instead of invading the Republic as Palpatine's Sith predecessors done in the past. The Sith Master would be the pinnacle of the Dark Side, the true power the apprentice would envy and work towards seizing for themselves. Palpatine personally despised the Rule of Two because he believed it had served the purpose it was made for wonderfully.
For years the Sith Rule of Two had been moving to undermine the Republic and bring about the destruction of the Jedi Order while creating a new Sith Empire in its place, but while Darth Sidious respected some of the Sith Lords of that entire pantheon - Darth Bane and Darth Zannah, the original master and apprentice of the Rule of Two, Darth Gean for preserving the Sith legacy when her master went insane when he touched the Light Side of the Force, Darth Tenebrous for being the stepping stone for the advancement of the Sith cause and to a degree Darth Plagueis, he was dismissive of a few of them since it had taken a thousand years for the Order to reach this point. But since the days of Darth Tenebrous, going through to the days of Darth Plagueis and now to himself, the final triumphs of the Sith Grand Plan was only coming closer.
For a moment Palpatine turned his mind towards his own Sith Master, whom he had murdered brutally on the eve of his election as Supreme Chancellor of the Galaxy, the only Sith Lord to reach such a position, and inside the heart of the Senate himself.
That moment had been critical to the Sith plan.
As a Senator, Palpatine would be closer to the goals of the Grand Plan while all of his fellow predecessors in Bane's Order had managed to undermine the Republic and cause severe damage to the reputation and public perception of the Jedi over the centuries until now the Dark Side of the Force was now being favoured. He had little doubt in his mind that was one of the reasons why Plagueis had indoctrinated him into the Rule of Two; his talents for politics and his instinctive grasp of the ins and the outs of political scheming, and his manipulative abilities. Sidious viewed his master with contempt, such a thing was normal for a Sith. But Plagueis had been under the delusion that he would be the ruler of the galaxy, while Sidious would only be co-ruler.
Fool!
Plagueis had forgotten one of the basic realities of the Sith; power and domination were all that mattered to a Sith Lord, and Palpatine had not worked for so long as a Senator of Naboo and undermining the Senate from behind the scenes, orchestrating many plans and schemes aimed at solidifying power for the Sith cause and making the galaxy ripe for his tenure as Supreme Chancellor only to be in the shadow of a Sith Master who had served his purpose.
But Plagueis had served his purposes. As the respected if reclusive banker, Hego Damask, Plagueis had been manipulating hundreds of people throughout the galaxy without the Jedi's knowledge. But one of his greatest contributions to the Grand Plan had been the creation of the Clone Army through the manipulations of, ironically, a Jedi Master who had wanted to protect the Republic at all costs. Palpatine always got a laugh out of the irony that a Jedi would be responsible for his Order's self-destruction.
It was one of the greatest plans Palpatine and his former master had come up with, and it would go a long way to advancing the Grand Plan many a leap forwards. While Tenebrous and his own master had spent many years working on a virus which would deprive the Jedi of their connection with the Force, a plan which Sidious had discounted the moment he had learnt of it for the first time.
The theory might have been sound, but there had been the risk of the Sith themselves being subjected to the virus. That was bad enough, but to make the virus effective, every single Jedi in the galaxy would need to be infected. The Jedi never told anyone of their missions and assignments, so the Sith Master at the time would have needed to arrange the services of hundreds of bounty hunters to track down and infect as many Jedi as they could.
That would be impossible for two reasons; the first was the Jedi would not be easy to infect, they might be weaker in the Force now than ever since they refused to change or evolve while the Sith had been evolving constantly over the last thousand years, but they were no slouches. The bounty hunters would have trouble approaching them and they would be caught.
The second problem was there was a likelihood of the bounty hunters talking, and if they did that simultaneously across the galaxy it would not take long for the Jedi to realise someone wanted them dead, and they had the knowledge of depriving the Jedi Order of their connection to the Force.
But the biggest flaw had been while the Jedi would be affected, the Republic would not be. No, for the Grand Plan to succeed both the Jedi and the Republic had to be affected. Plagueis and Sidious had realised a galactic war would be the key to winning, and the Clone Army was a twist in the old Sith tactic of organising an army to invade and conquer the galaxy and destroy the Jedi in one fell swoop.
Palpatine had to truly resist the urge to laugh. The Clones would be joined by Jedi, masters, knights and apprentices in the fight against the Separatists, and at the end, they would turn on the Jedi and cut them down. A nice little twist of the age-old way of the Sith; form an army and use it to try to take over the galaxy, except now the army he and Plagueis had formed would work alongside the Jedi until the right moment. Right now the wars were only just beginning, but Palpatine knew as the wars carried on, many of the Jedi would be killed. However, Palpatine hoped and knew the true victories of the Sith plan in this event would be philosophical, although the death of so many Jedi would be a victory in itself, more than anything else; with the Jedi pushed into the war, commanding essentially a slave army, it would devastate their image as Guardians of Peace and Justice.
Palpatine planned to do whatever it took to driving the galaxy closer to the Empire he wished to create. He would work covertly behind the scenes and using his public persona to push the Grand Plan closer to fruition. However right now he was planning on waiting for the initial battles to be fought, so he could consolidate and discover new ways of furthering the Grand Plan. One of his priorities was the turning of Anakin Skywalker or any other Jedi who was teetering on the edge between light and dark. His current apprentice Dooku was formidable and powerful enough to ensure the end of the Jedi, but the induction of Anakin would make the transition smoother and ensure the rule of the Sith.
But Palpatine wasn't stupid. He knew to rely on the turning of one man was a big mistake. Anakin was powerful and Palpatine had been spending years pushing the young Jedi to the Dark Side. It was so pathetically easy; Anakin was highly insecure, poorly viewed by the Jedi - indeed, many of the council disliked and distrusted and feared him and Anakin knew it, and he was struggling with Jedi philosophy and that ridiculous code. The death of Shmi Skywalker, arranged and orchestrated by Palpatine after his spies sent to Tatooine had learnt about the woman's new life now she had been freed from slavery before he'd paid a bounty hunter to capture her and dump her near the Tusken raiders had been a major turning point for Skywalker.
All Palpatine had needed to do was to tempt Anakin, and the boy had fallen for it. The Dark Side was growing stronger with Skywalker, and while it had sparked disastrously during the confrontation with Dooku on Geonosis, the boy still had much to learn.
All it would take would be a number of battles where he would be forced to throwing off the restrictions of the Jedi with his urging and tempting through the Force, and Skywalker would be his for the taking. His upcoming relationship with Senator Amidala would also help Sidious, but it would be a mistake to solely rely on Skywalker turning. What if something happened to him? What if Skywalker was killed by accident in battle? Years and years of planning and manipulation would be lost for good. That was why the Sith Master had several candidates, and he would slowly begin to quietly push them towards the Dark Side and depending on the circumstances, one of them would be his.
Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, Heir to the legacy of Darth Bane, Sith Master and soon to be Emperor and ruler of the galaxy watched as the ships slowly lifted off of the ground and headed out into space.
The Clone Wars was now begun.
The way was paved for the Sith usurpation of the galaxy.