Emperor's Throne Room

The Emperor's Throne Room was a room reserved for Darth Sidious, the Galactic Emperor of the Galactic Empire aboard the DS-2 Death Star II Mobile Battle Station. It was located at the pinnacle of the Emperor's Tower in the north pole of the battle station. 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 the fateful duel between Darth Vader and his estranged son Luke Skywalker.
==Description==
Contrary to Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine'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.Ultimate Star Wars 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. 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. There was a holding room, in which visitors seeking admittance in the throne room waited for the authorization.
The room was not only Palpatine's ceremonial seat of power on the battle station, as it also served as the Emperor's command center, and Palpatine was able to send orders to his forces from the room. Located atop the highStar Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition Emperor's Tower on the second Death Star, the throne room gave Palpatine the chance to watch over the destruction unleashed during the Battle of Endor. The room also featured some red lighting, as the Emperor favored using decor in that color. This also allowed for Imperial Royal Guards to blend into the room.
==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. 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.
After the Death Star's destruction, the wreckage of the throne room crashed into the oceans of the moon Kef Bir. Luke Skywalker's Jedi apprentice, the scavenger Rey, came to the wreck in 35 ABYStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary dates the events of Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker as taking place one year after the Starkiller Incident, which Star Wars: Galactic Atlas dates to 34 ABY. Therefore, the events of Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker must take place in 35 ABY. to search for a Sith wayfinder that would lead her to the resurrected Sidious on Exegol. After she encountered a Force vision of herself fallen to the dark side, First Order Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Sidious' new enforcer, appeared in the ruined throne room and destroyed the relic, and a duel between the two ensued, which ultimately led to Ren renouncing the dark side of the Force.
==Behind the scenes==
===Conception===
The Emperor's Throne Room was not aboard the second Death Star in the Rough Draft and Revised Rough Draft of the script for Return of the Jedi and the corresponding concept art conceptualized by Ralph McQuarrie, but rather was a subterranean room in the Imperial Palace on Had Abbadon, overlooking a lake of lava.The Making of Return of the Jedi 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.
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.How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise
===Inconsistencies===
In Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker, the layout of the throne room is inconsistent with its Return of the Jedi appearance. There is a hallway leading into it instead of the turbolift shaft, and an entire hidden vault was added at the right hand of the throne. The presence of said vault is also inconsistent with the external appearance of the tower containing the throne room depicted in Return of the Jedi, and contradicts the tower cross-section illustration in the 2016 reference book Star Wars: Complete Locations.Star Wars: Complete Locations
==Appearances==
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*Star Wars: Return of the Jedi junior novelization
*Return of the Jedi: Beware the Power of the Dark Side! 
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*Shattered Empire 1
*Aftermath: Empire's End 
*Star Wars: Hunters 
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*Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition 
*Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: A Junior Novel 
*Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes 
===Non-canon appearances===
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*LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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*LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
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==Sources==
*Ultimate Star Wars 
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*Star Wars: Complete Locations
*Star Wars: Galactic Atlas
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*Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition
*Ultimate Star Wars, New Edition
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*Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – The Official Collector's Edition 
*Star Wars: The Secrets of the Sith 
*Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy
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==Notes and references==
Category:Death Star II locations
Category:Emperor's throne rooms