We were all deceived by a lie.

That one line explains it all. The Jedi ended up fighting in a war to protect the Republic when the real end of the war was to make the Jedi vulnerable and set them up for Order 66. Palpatine, who came into power on the promises of cleaning up the corruption in the Senate and later vowed to lay down his emergency powers when the crisis was over actually manufactured the crisis to gain those very powers and hold on to them forever.

In some respects, the single greatest target of the lie was Anakin Skywalker himself. Palpatine pretended to be his friend from the beginning, taking the boy under his wing, and acting as a confidant. In truth, Palpatine was merely playing the boy, using him to achieve his own ends. What makes the story so tragic is how Anakin, blinded by his need to keep Padme alive failed to see through the transparency of what Palpatine was telling him.

Anakin turned to the dark side in an effort to gain the power he thought would help him stop Padme from dying. Keeping her alive was what drove his every action, but that obsession blinded him to what was really going on. Palpatine put the finishing touches on his plot when he told Anakin of how the Jedi feared to lose their power, filling Anakin's head with visions of these stodgy, old stubborn fools who refused to let some young punk take their power from them. What Anakin failed to see here was how the Sith are just as afraid of losing their power. A Padawan becomes a Knight when he passes the trials. A Knight becomes a Master when he trains a Padawan to Knighthood. Since the Sith are a dark version of the Jedi, the apprentice becomes the Master by killing the Master, just as Dooku was trying to do with Obi-Wan on Geonosis and later with Anakin on Grievous' flagship. Vader would later do the same thing with Luke on Bespin. Palpatine indicated to Anakin that he was the one who killed Darth Plagueis.

Anakin figures that he can learn this power, kill Palpatine and then take his place as Master, just as he indicates to Padme. The mistake Anakin makes here is in underestimating Palpatine. Does he really think that Palpatine is going to be taken out so easily? The irony here is that much of his ego as to how strong he really was at this point comes Palpatine's constant suggestions over the years that he was more powerful than other Jedi. I'm not saying here that Anakin was not powerful, and perhaps more powerful than other Jedi his age. But I am saying that Anakin was not as powerful as he thought he was. In other words, at this point, much of Anakin's power still lay in his mind.

The lie further deepens when Palpatine tells Anakin that he learned the power to cheat death from his old Sith Master before he killed him. This is crucial because he promises Anakin that he will teach him how to stop Padme from dying if he joins him. So, Anakin disarms Mace, enabling Palpatine to kill him, then agrees to go and slaughter all the Jedi in the Temple, including the younglings to gain the power necessary to stop death. What I cannot fathom is how Anakin rationalized that causing more death, including the death of younglings not much older than the baby his supposed soon to be dead wife is carrying, would give him the power to stop death. But beyond that, later on Palpatine tells Anakin that together we can learn the power to stop death. In other words, Palpatine has contradicted himself. Earlier he said I will teach you the secret that I learned from my Master. Now he's telling him that we will learn the secret. I thought Palpatine already knew the secret, but apparently not. I've come up with three possibilities as to what is going on here. Does he know how to cheat death or not? Since most of what Palpatine is built on is a succession of lies, I think he was, once again, lying to Anakin. He didn't tell the boy the truth, but instead told the boy what he wanted to hear. Palpatine really could care less about saving Padme. In fact, I think he'd rather see her dead given her political views and opposition to what he's doing. No, what he really wants here is for Anakin to embrace the dark side and help him wipe out the Jedi, to turn his most dangerous enemy into his strongest ally.

So, what of Palpatine's claim that Plagueis created life? Did Plagueis create Anakin as some sort of super Sith to wipe out the Jedi? If so, that was a stupid move. Why create a weapon that your enemy could find and corrupt before you can even get a chance? Because the Jedi found Anakin they were able to teach him. In other words, if Plagueis created Anakin, the future ultimate Sith was corrupted from the beginning by love and service, which corruption would end up betraying the Sith in the end when Anakin turned back to the light. The other problem I have with this idea is why didn't Palpatine go off in search of this future super Sith. If this is why Anakin was created, then why isn't Palpatine trying to find him so he can train him? Why is just sitting there hoping the Jedi don't find the kid before he does? The Sith have waited nearly a thousand years for this moment. I can't believe that they're going to leave the discovery of their ultimate weapon to chance, especially not when they're this close to achieving what they have waited for all these years. It just doesn't make sense. The Sith, while evil, are not stupid.

So, while I do not believe that Plagueis learned how to create life, did he learn the power to stop death? Once again, it just doesn't add up. The Sith are very secretive about their power. They also are very desirous to hold onto said power. So, I have a hard time believing that Plagueis was so reckless in his actions. If he has learned this power, why tell his apprentice? That knowledge would be key in retaining his power, and telling Sidious would only make Plagueis useless to Sidious, setting up Sidious as the Master. Something just doesn't add up here unless Plagueis is a complete fool, especially in light of Palpatine's contradictory statements regarding whether or not he's really learned this power. Given his history of lying to everyone, I simply don't believe Palpatine. I don't think he ever learned the power to stop death, nor do I think Plagueis learned this power.

In the end, I think that Sidious did kill Plagueis, not after he learned the power to cheat death, but instead in an effort to learn the power to cheat death. With cheating death as his end goal, I think Sidious believed that Plagueis was holding him back, so he killed him in his sleep in an effort to gain that power. He would later tell Anakin the same thing. Join me to gain that power.

But I do not think he ever really had that power. If he did, why didn't he save himself from dying when Vader hurled him down the shaft? If Plagueis learned that power, why didn't use use it stop his own death? Again, are the Sith so stupid as to gain this incredible power and then never use it. These are people who don't trust anyone, not even their apprentice. But whether or not Palpatine really had that power doesn't really matter because he got what he wanted. Anakin joined him and he destroyed the Jedi, right?

Well, not quite. We all know what happened in the end. Palpatine's foundation of power was built on a lie. A lie cannot be true. The dark side did not give Anakin the power to cheat death. It did not make him the most powerful being ever. But to be fair, the dark side did give him some things. It gave him the heart break of knowing he caused his wife's death. It gave him a new body complete with robotic limbs and an iron lung. It gave him the reminder that his power could never be complete because to channel the Force most effectively, you need a physical body, and Vader had lost most of his. And last, but not least, the dark side gave him years of misery and being completely and truly alone because he had betrayed and/or killed his only friends in the world. In other words, the dark side promises of happiness were, in the end, just a lie.