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But is truth really this simple? I believe there’s far more to it. Factual truth is certainly necessary for a society to function. Merchants and craftspeople need to represent their products accurately if they want to keep their customers. No legal system can function without factual honesty—witnesses in court swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and are punished if caught in a lie. On a more personal level, trust is one of the most important ingredients of relationships.

But telling the truth isn’t as easy as simply reporting facts, as anyone who’s had to deal with an opinionated boss, an insecure friend, or nosy in-laws can confirm. People lie for many reasons: to make themselves look better, avoid blame for something they’ve done, protect a loved one who’s fallen afoul of the law, or gain something they can’t (or won’t try to) get through honest means, among others. This is particularly true when a society’s leaders fail their people or commit a wrongful act. Those holding power are usually unwilling to relinquish it, and seldom hesitate to cover up their error. This drama manifests in Star Wars as the decline and fall of the Old Republic-era Jedi Order.

In Attack of the Clones, the Jedi have found themselves in a terribly awkward position: they’re losing their connection to the Force. The Jedi are peacekeepers, an order of religious knights not unlike the Templars of European history or the Round Table of Arthurian legend, and if it became known that their powers were fading, they would also lose the awe and respect previously accorded them. (That the Jedi are indeed viewed this way is established by the Trade Federation officials’ reaction to Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace.) In order to carry out their duties as the “guardians of peace and justice,” they feel they’re forced (no pun intended) to break their own moral code. How long the Jedi would’ve been able to maintain this pretence is uncertain; the illusion of power seldom lasts very long with nothing to back it up. Later, we’ll examine whether or not this deception is justified; but it’s unquestionably a lie in the simplest and most straightforward sense.

Then there are the Sith. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who was very interested in both truth and power, and enjoyed questioning traditional morality, could easily have had Palpatine in mind when he wrote:

The intellect . . . unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves . . . In man this art of simulation reaches its peak: here deception, flattery, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the role and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.152

Here we begin to see that truth is not so simple. While Palpatine for the most part doesn’t tell direct falsehoods, his words are always layered with hidden meanings, most of them for the benefit of the audience members who know exactly what he’s really after. (So much of what Palpatine says in Episodes I and II seems directed at the audience, rather than his fellow characters, that I’m tempted to suspect that his Sith powers include the knowledge that he’s fictional and the ability to read ahead in the script!) The best example of this, interestingly, is his acceptance speech upon being granted “emergency powers” by the Senate in Attack of the Clones—the very speech that appears to be his most blatant lie.

“I love democracy,” Palpatine proclaims. Of course he loves it! Democracy is the tool that granted him a smooth and bloodless rise to absolute power. Just because he discards the tool when it’s no longer necessary doesn’t mean it didn