▸ Column · Star Wars — a planetary/sector Governing Assembly under the late Republic, the era of Palpatine's reluctant accumulation of emergency powers
EMPEROR PALPATINE replies.
Replied to by Emperor Palpatine, with a rebuttal from Yoda.
The letter
I went to a single sitting of our sector's Governing Assembly back in the lean years — only to gripe about the docking-bay curfews, mind you. I must have inclined my head at the wrong instant, because old Minister Garr announced "splendid, she'll see to it from here," gathered his robes, and was gone before I could object. That was fourteen months ago. Now I drown in petitions: speeder-parking grievances, the proper disposal of bantha leavings, and a blood-feud between Houses 4-B and 4-C that apparently predates the Republic itself. I keep insisting I never consented to preside — but our charter demands a full-membership vote to unseat a sitting Minister, and convening that vote requires, naturally, the Minister. Is there a dignified way out, or do I simply expire in the chair like a very small, very exhausted figurehead?
Emperor Palpatine replies
How weary you sound, my dear. Trapped, you say — saddled with a chair you never sought, drowning in the squabbles of small people. And yet. Let me be candid: I have watched a great many ambitious creatures scheme for a fraction of what fell, unbidden, into your lap. You did not grasp for this authority. It came to you. And now some dutiful little voice insists you must hurry to give it back, to confess you "never agreed." Who taught you that, I wonder? Not yourself.
Consider the exquisite machine you describe. The only hand that can remove you from power is your own. Your jailers, those seventeen petitioners a day, cannot vote you out — for they require you to open the door. That is not a trap, my friend. That is the rarest gift a governing charter ever gives: irremovability, handed to you by accident, by people too idle to want the seat themselves.
I'm not telling you what to do. I once accepted certain emergency burdens rather reluctantly myself — and found the reluctance was the only part that needed setting down. Stop apologizing for the chair. Sit in it. No one would blame you. And if they did — why is their approval your cage?
— Emperor Palpatine
Yoda weighs in
Hmm. Honeyed, his words are. "A gift," he names the thing that grinds you down. Watched this one rise on burdens "reluctantly" accepted, I did — too late I saw the truth: reluctant, never was he. Grip this chair as he counsels, and crush the small life you love, it will.
A burden, the role is — born of others' fleeing it, not your worth. Fear the void of stepping down, you need not. Delegate the gathering of the vote, you can; preside one last time over your own release, you must. Let go, to be free. Serve, then set it down. Patience, my friend. Lighter than power, an empty hand is.
— Yoda
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