Alright my padawans, for this post, why don’t we meme it up?
Specifically, with this meme:
But was it actually treason? Was the attempted arrest of Palpatine by the Jedi illegal and treacherous? The short answer is yeah, kinda. When you really look into the details of the confrontation between the Jedi and Palpatine before the execution of Order 66, you’ll start to wonder yourself as to what the heck Mace Windu was thinking when he burst through the doors of Palpatine’s chamber.
So, long story short, Mace Windu is informed by Anakin Skywalker that Chancellor Sheev Palpatine is actually a Sith Lord (A fact that he should have seen coming from over 12 parsecs away). Anyway, so Master Windu hears this news and decides, “Alright, I’ll just take 3 other Jedi Masters with me and arrest the Chancellor”. Uhm, what?
Woah Woah, hold your horses there Mace. You’re just going to walk into the Senate building… and arrest the Supreme Chancellor? You’ve got to realize that the Chancellor is a democratically elected head of state, right? What authority did Mace, or even the other Jedi have? The most of the galaxy, they were nothing more than religious monks that the government worked with for tradition’s sake. And now the Jedi are just going to walk in and arrest the Chancellor? On what grounds? The Jedi had no evidence, no warrant, and the people definitely did not suspect Palpatine of much. While it is not evident from the movie, Revenge of the SIth, Mace Windu plays judge, jury, and executioner in a literal attempt to assassinate a head of government, and no less at a time of war. In many cases, that would not only amount to treason, but high treason.
It’s no wonder that Palpatine was able to make the people of the galaxy believe everything he said, because as evil as the dude was, he was kind of telling the truth. The Jedi definitely did attempt to kill him solely on the fact that they believed he was a Sith, and even if he was, there was no conrete evidence of Palpatine commiting crimes against the Republic (even though he totally did). As a result, The Jedi attack on the Chancellor opened the way for Palpatine to claim that from his point of view, the Jedi were evil, and that in order to stop the war, the Republic needed to be reorganized to bring peace, freedom, security, and justice to his new empire.