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This article is about a throne room in the second Death Star. You may be looking for another throne room in the first Death Star.
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The throne room of Emperor Palpatine aboard the second Death Star was located at the pinnacle of a tower. A lofty locale, the throne room was designed for the sole purpose of intimidating those who entered it. Four years after the Battle of Yavin, as a decisive encounter raged both in space and on the surface of Endor, the Emperor's Throne Room hosted a fateful duel between Darth Vader and his estranged son Luke Skywalker.

Description

Contrary to the Emperor's personal quarters and offices, both on the battle station and back in the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, the second Death Star's throne room was devoid of ornaments and symbols of plush comfort. The bleak, industrial design was meant to frighten all those would enter the chamber, be it prisoners, Imperial subjects, or even dignitaries.[4] To approach the Emperor, visitors had to cross a narrow bridge that extended over a vast chasm. A mile below, the main reactor of the Death Star glowed an eerie blue color. Several sets of stairs had been placed in the room for no reason other than their own inconvenience.[3] The throne itself was a simple, contoured swiveling chair set in front of a large circular viewport lined with a web-like framework and equipped with magnification scanners. The dais before the Emperor was flanked by viewscreens linked to the station's computers and communications systems.[4] There was a holding room, in which visitors seeking admittance in the throne room waited for the authorization.[3]

History

When the Emperor visited the Death Star shortly before his death during the Battle of Endor, the throne room had only just been finished.[3] The ultimate confrontation between Jedi and the Sith took place in the throne room when Luke Skywalker, last heir of the Jedi ways, faced Palpatine and his apprentice Darth Vader. The Emperor taunted and tempted Skywalker, leading to duel Vader, who was in fact the young Jedi's estranged father. Although Skywalker managed to cripple Vader, he refused to succumb to the dark side. Enraged at the young man's denial, the Emperor unleashed deadly Force lightning into Skywalker. The Jedi's pleas for help awakened the good in Vader, who then chose to renounce his connection to the dark side, and turned against the Emperor. While he had suffered fatal injuries from the Emperor's lightning, Vader managed to hurl him into the reactor shaft, which killed the tyrant, releasing a blaze of dark side energy.[2]

Behind the scenes

McQuarrie throne

Concept art for the Emperor's Throne Room by Ralph McQuarrie.

The Emperor's Throne Room was not aboard the second Death Star at all in its earliest incranation conceptualized by Ralph McQuarrie, but rather deep below the Imperial Palace on Had Abbadon, overlooking a lake of lava. An early sketch of the exterior of the second Death Star had the throne room as a contained sphere held away from the station by two bracketing arms. In other of McQuarrie's early sketches, the throne was suspended from above by a thick cylindrical arm. Other McQuarrie art showed the throne in a central elevated disk connected by a bewildering array of curving catwalks.[5]

When he discussed with Ian McDiarmid about his role as Emperor Palpatine during filming of 1983's Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, George Lucas pointed out that the throne room was oval-shaped as a reference to the Oval Office, and more specifically former President of the United States Richard Nixon's occupancy in it.[6]

Appearances

Non-canon appearances

Sources

Notes and references

  1. Star Wars: Galactic Atlas
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Return of the Jedi: Beware the Power of the Dark Side!
  4. 4.0 4.1 Ultimate Star Wars
  5. Databank title Emperor's Throne Room in the Databank (content now obsolete; backup link)
  6. How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise
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