#galactic republic

1) Dooku - and, by extension, the CIS, which he led - started the Clone Wars. He was building an army and preparing for war before the Republic had made any move. For all practical intents and purposes, the fact that the Republic happened to have an army ready to go to counter Dooku's first move was a fortuitous (if sketchy) piece of luck given that the Jedi and the Senate were completely unaware of said army until mere days before the attack.

2) Dooku - and, by extension, the CIS - was never planning on peacefully withdrawing from the Republic.

3) Palpatine - and, by extension, Dooku - WANTED war. And they got it. Again, there was no chance for peaceful secession. Tawni Ames spoke the truth - though perhaps she didn't realize just HOW true it was - when she said "Peace was never an option."

4) The CIS staged hostile invasions of neutral and Republic-sided planets. They did NOT limit themselves to defending against Republic attacks. The Republic and the CIS BOTH engaged in offensive maneuvers, as well as defensive maneuvers.

Shaak Ti meditation

Angelos Karderinis

Art director at EC Henry Pictures, Illustrator, 3d Modeler.

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a 14-year-old queen devised and executed a plan to save her people, all by her own, a 9-year-old boy and an astromech blew up a trade federation station, disabling the droid army, and gungans risked their lives to distract the droid army long enough to free the prisoners and infiltrate the palace. oh, and obi-wan killed darth maul, i guess

the only contribution the republican senate made to this victory was chancellor volorum's request to send the jedi to negotiate with the fascists, and the only contribution the jedi council made was fulfilling the senate's request and sending one jedi and one padawan to negotiate with the fascists and help the queen reach the capital so she could ask senate for more help, and that's basically it — their idea to solve the problem didn't even work because the senate is fucking useless and the trade federation somehow has a seat there and a bunch of paid allies. when qui-gon and obi-wan go to the planet for the second time, the council emphasizes that they are going there to kill the mysterious sith lord. would the jedi council have sent them to naboo and help its young queen with the occupation if there weren't any sith business there to resolve? honestly, that's an open question

people so often defend the galactic republic and the jedi order on the grounds that 'if the sith hadn't secretly seized power, everything would have been fine, so you can't blame the poor poor senators and jedi for the formation of the empire', even though tpm exists precisely to address this very point. palpatine didn't even need to be a sith to create an empire; he used his talent for politics and manipulation to get his way. in fact, if palpatine wasn't a sith, it would make the jedi in tpm even more useless than they are in canon, since in that case obi-wan and qui-gon wouldn't be needed there to defeat darth maul

and this is all very funny, because 'yes, anakin was groomed and abused by a sith lord for 13 years, but he still had a choice and is responsible for the bad things he did' is a pretty popular and widely accepted reading of canon, but god forbit you say that the senators and the jedi council were responsible for the shitty state of the republic, the prevalence of slavery and the inability to deal with problems like naboo blockade, god forbit you say that the jedi council is responsible for the creation of the empire, since having received information that the senate is under the control of the sith and their enemies are the ones who ordered the creation of the clone army the republic going to use, decided to let that slide, because if you dared to say all that, you're becoming Public Enemy Number 1 immediately. and all these people had infinitely more power than a sleep deprived emo boy with all mental illnesses known to man btw

palpatine exploited the existing problems in the republic to gain power, and he rarely lied, really, that's the thing: reading the novelization of rots you can find yourself agreeing with a lot of his talking points even knowing that he is the main villain of the story, because he knows perfectly well how to use the insecurity, irritation and frustration of people with the existing system to his advantage — that's why he is such a dangerous scary person!! honestly, he is a politician first and a sith second

Can you imagine the caverns in their chests they would’ve felt after losing so many brothers in a war that they don’t even fully comprehend. The darkness in their minds would’ve spread so fast, their youthfulness corrupted immediately. So many wouldn’t have coped at all.

yeah, so here's the thing: even without the sith, the galaxy was already horrifically corrupt to start with. palpatine was only able to rise to power in the first place because the galaxy was so corrupt; he just took advantage of existing systems and worsened the rot.

in TPM, the trade federation inexplicably has its own seat in the senate despite it being an interplanetary capitalist organization that already controls many planets and systems in EU material. slavery is still booming in the outer rim. and none of that has changed by AOTC and the clone wars: the separatists are led by even more interplanetary capitalist organizations, but its member-systems comprise of mainly exploited and struggling mid and outer rim worlds and many of them hold justifiable grievances towards the republic (e.g. sluis van seceded shortly before AOTC out of disgust for corruption and injustice in the galactic senate, clak'dor 7 aka bith opposed the republic for moral corruption and apparently tried to stay neutral before being coerced into joining the separatists, etc.).

and then there's the jedi order and their stagnation: their anti-attachment policies can and have caused a lot of psychological harm (case in point: anakin in canon) and they're generally so bound to the republic and the senate that they'd rather fight a war and be complicit in the enslavement of millions of soldiers than grow a spine and object to all that. and also handing off their padawans to a skeevy old politician for political brownie points and failing to protect them from abuse (e.g. grooming): we don't need sith lords for that to be a major scandal in itself.