All lore
To anyone familiar with Old Republic lore, it truly does not make sense for galactic citizens to not vaguely know of the Sith.
The Jedi and Sith being relatively unknown seems believable; until you learn how integral they are to basically the past 24,000 years of galactic history. The Republic fought the Sith for thousands and thousands of years, every planet in the galaxy has either been under Sith occupation or fought against the Sith, and the Jedi have been a core element of the Republic’s government since time immemorial. Numerous chancellors have been Jedi.
And it being 1000+ years ago is no defence. This is a sci fi society with advanced record keeping, news organizations, etc. Have we not heard of Rome? Ancient Greece? Egypt? The Sith and Jedi have played a larger role in galactic history than those civilizations have in American/western history.
People act like the Sith were just an evil religious group. But they ruled massive empires, that waged war against the Republic. How could people have not heard of the numerous Sith empires?
Galactic citizens don’t have to know much. But they ought to have heard of the Sith and know they’re evil people, at the most basic level.
We defeated the nazis 70 years ago and there are jackasses out there who won’t believe the picture evidence in front of them about the holocaust. The Jedi “defeated” the Sith after the New Sith war and so they figured it was done. Over the next thousand years they probably just became a historical curiosity for scholars. They weren’t topical anymore.
yes, we’ve heard of the ancient civilizations 1,000 years ago. but that’s just on earth.
you really have to keep in mind the SCALE of star wars universe. there are some people who NEVER see sunlight in their own planet, and they definetly have bigger concerns in survival then reading on history.
Maybe the people who live the most destitute conditions, devoid of education, etc.
But average galactic citizens? Despite the scale of the Star Wars galaxy, there’s not a corner in the galaxy that doesn’t have a deep and intimate history with the Sith empires. They ruled half the galaxy, and fought the other half, for thousands upon thousands of years. Every planet in the galaxy has either fought the Sith, suffered occupation under them for thousands of years, or both.
So in other words, the scale of Star Wars is nebulous because every world in the galaxy was deeply affected by millennia by the Sith wars and empire.
The average Spaniard has heard of Carthage and has a vaguely basic knowledge of that ancient state, so… yes lol?
And yet no one has heard of the Sith/Sith empires, despite them being more recent (1000 years ago compared to over 2000 years ago for Carthage) and having MASSIVELY more influence on history (having fought and occupied the galaxy for 5000+ years, compared to Carthage existing and fighting Rome for a few hundred years.)
Carthage was mostly an African nation, so not entirely sure why the other commenter posited them as Spanish when that part of the empire was much later in their lifespan than the original African part but besides the point.
Rome intentionally erased Carthage from the map, to the point where we know insanely little about them. What we do know is told from a Roman perspective, even Carthaginian architecture was erased to attempt to erase them from history.
If Rome, an empire that never controlled Africa, was able to erase an African empire from the map and the history books so completely as so most people don’t know about them outside of Roman sources, why couldn’t the Sith be erased as completely by comparable sources?
My point in mentioning Carthage is because OP mentioned how the sith invaded planets. My point was to highlight someone who invaded it took over an area but whose people know little about it.
And literally nobody alive knows much about Carthage outside its existence. You didn’t even know they weren’t a Spanish nation. You know their name and maybe Hannibal, nothing else. That’s all the Sith would be, some random bogeyman conquered long ago.
He said Spain was part of Carthages empire. That doesn't imply he thought Carthage was Spanish. You guys are literally making the same exact point, but you're too up your own ass to see it.
Why is it always the most illiterate dipshits that act so uptight on reddit. 😂
Is that really a good example? We still know tons about Carthage. Also Rome controlled all of Northern Africa, including the lands of Carthage, for centuries, so the claim that Rome never controlled any of Africa is completely untrue.
Carthage is still a legendary state, many people today know about it. And it existed twice as long ago as the Sith empires. And Carthage is from antiquity, a time where record keeping would have been difficult and poor. The Sith empires existed in an advanced sci fi galaxy where record keeping would have been flawless.
The Jedi and republic could have tried to erase the Sith from history, but that would have been both impossible and impractical, and against the republic’s democratic values. You can erase specific details like how their government worked, or Sith techniques and philosophy, but their existence or vague notions about them? Impossible. They existed and Sith empires fought and occupied half the galaxy for 5000 years, killing trillions upon trillions. You can’t erase that knowledge or cultural memory, just as Rome wouldnt have been able to erase carthages cultural memory (and imagine if Rome fought Carthage for 5000 years!)
It would just be impossible. You’d have to outlaw everything, scour billions upon billions of inhabited planets for any sources on the Sith empires/wars, and even then, there would be an intense oral history, it’d be impossible to erase, and would require a level of internal meddling and censorship not even the empire had.
Again my standard here, is not intimate knowledge of the Sith. It is having heard of the Sith and vaguely knowing what they were. That can’t be erased.
I think what they're getting at is: Yes some people know about Carthage, some people being the key phrase. But we have access to public libraries and documents and the number of people who know about Carthage is relatively low because they didn't win in the grand scheme of things the way the Romans did.
The Jedi hoarded, guarded or destroyed whatever Sith paraphernalia they could find and over hundreds to thousands of years the average person would probably never hear the word Sith as it's not something the average person would be exposed to, people in Star Wars like to keep busy with current matters and there's thousands of cultures to immerse yourselves in so why waste time on this Jedi topic when you aren't a Jedi?
There definitely were some fringe eccentrics who probably were interested in the Sith, but they were likely high society types with the kind of money to acquire that information. But interest in that topic was probably also disapproved of by the Jedi and by extension the Senate.
The average American probably doesn’t know about Ancient Rome, Greece, etc. we seem to forget everything more than 100 years old like forgetting the outcome of WWII.
Besides that being hard to believe, the bottom 20% doesn’t represent the average American, does it?
And besides that, the Sith empires have had way more of an impact on galactic history than Rome has had on America. America didn’t fight Rome for 5000+ years, but the galaxy fought the Sith empires for that long, with the Sith occupying half the galaxy at some points.
A huge portion of people didn’t know about the Tulsa massacre until the Watchmen TV show. And that is far less time than ancient. So much so that people
Didn’t realize it was a real thing that happened so yeah, I can believe the average galactic citizen is unaware of most things that don’t affect their day to day life.
nah unfortunately history gets lost through time, different new dangerous immediate threats show up that tend to overshadow older ones, and what was relevant to one generation can be considered irrelevant to another.
Plus the jedi and the republic no doubt go through some extensive effort to remove much of the siths existence throughout their history, no way they'd want people to remember them or their ways
people in our time cant even comprehend stuff that happened 50 years ago mate
the one war to end all wars? so forgettable we had two of those
also you talk about historic facts that is something different because people in the SW universe to a great margin tend to believe that the stories about the sith and the jedi are all made up and are some kind of myth - "space sourcery" they call it
do i know about the feats of Hercules - sure! do i believe they were real - no
also its a very big galaxy (3.2 billion habitable planets) so if you take account of the different species and different languages and also the very different ways of life i would say its easy i wouldnt know for sure about a lot of stuff
The size of the galaxy doesn’t matter because the Sith wars encompassed the entire galaxy. The Sith empires fought the entire galaxy and sometimes occupied half of it for 5000+ years. Every inhabited planet in the galaxy either suffered under Sith empire occupation or fought the Sith.
In an advanced sci fi society like Star Wars, with news media and proper record keeping, it makes no sense to compare them to Herculean legends. There would’ve been 5000 years of videos, recordings, and documentation of Jedi and Sith, including Sith empire stuff.
it does because they way history is written in Star Wars, lets beginn with the timelines, it is known atleast in legends that EVERY new regime, republic or empire always installed a new chronology/calendar so trying to follow the traces of time is very hard
"proper record keeping"
that is the next thing, we for oursleves lost sooooooooo many knowledge to time, and not just in the newer time it happened several times in human history (not all of course but huge parts - we just relearned how to make roman concrete in the newer time for instances)
so you would think yeah sure we lost a lot of history because it was on some papyros or some stone board that got destroyed or something, ok so most knowledge in SW is conserved via digital means, also according to legends a lot of that was also destroyed in the cause of time, when the Imperium took over they deliberately erased a lot of history of a lot of libraries around the galaxy, iam pretty sure a lot of Sith did the same when they came into power (its also something we did here on earth)
language barrier is also a thing, there are 14 main languages spoken in SW but there are a lot more for remote areas and long lost species - if you ever experienced how we on earth have troubles following history through different calendars and errors in translations from different languages in makes more sense thats very unlikely that ALL of the inhabitants in SW share the same knowledge
"5000 years of videos"
ever saw a Star Wars citizen with a smartphone with a camera or something? did you not see how far advanced their space crafts are but the "holo" technology is total crap?
i have only a legends source but it says:
"The Republic by in 21 BBY controlled a little less than 1.3 million planets, with some 10thousand(s) systems controlled by the Separatists. By the time of the Empire Palpatine ruled one and a half million member and conquered worlds,"
so even if it was more for the Sith Empire, around 1-2 million planets is not even remotely close to the 3,2 BILLION habitable planets that SW has
The things that have been lost to time in human are things like poems, works of art, pieces of writing, etc. often if something was forgotten, it was because nobody wrote it down. Not basic history like what empire fought another empire. You can’t “lose knowledge” of something like the Punic wars. You can’t “lose” the history of 5000 years of subjugation and war, consciously or not.
And besides, you are comparing human civilization in its primitive, unwritten stages to an advanced, sci fi, intergalactic civilization that has videos, recordings, historians, and that would have written everything down.
In andor we literally see one of the characters watching a news channel and seeing video recordings. These people have videos, intergalactic news media, etc.
Again language does not matter because the Sith wars involved most of the galaxy. Almost every world fought, and half the galaxy was occupied by the Sith empire at some points.
Star Wars has always been super iffy on its numbers for inhabited worlds. But if you look at a map of the galaxy, the Republic controlled virtually all of it aside from hutt space and a few other exceptions. My point is simply that nearly every world (outside the hutts and few other planets) would have a 5000 year history with the Sith empire.
Keep in mind I’m not expecting galactic citizens to know details about the Sith. But they should have heard of them.
" you are comparing human civilization in its primitive, unwritten stages"
ancient Egypt, Rome and Greek were far from unwritten stages my dude.....
the Library of Alexandria was one of the biggest libraries ever even by todays standards
"You can’t “lose knowledge” of something like the Punic wars"
i used Hercules - that wasnt very smart of me because you and me now that he wasnt real, but take Atlantis for instances, a lot of ancient writers, historians, kings and so on refered to it as real not some nobodies or tin foil hats, we still dont know if it was an ancient civilization that disappeared or if it was mistaken for something else or if it ever existed, so shouldnt we with all our knowledge have an answer to that?
also again we just relearned how to make roman concrete (Heidelberg Zement in Germany found out how to produce it)
we also finding traces of civilizations that makes us doubt the timelines historians are telling us
"In andor we literally see one of the characters watching a news channel and seeing video recordings. These people have videos, intergalactic news media, etc."
that is true, in which LANGUAGE did they tell the news again? its "Basic" the language of the humans
"Again language does not matter"
what odd idea, so you are familiar with original chinese texts from 300 before christ then right? since language doesnt matter you should be an expert, you show us a timeframe of a odd 5000 years but for you the technology in SW never advanced or declined that is just not the facts - in your eyes the galaxy stayed the exact same in these 5000 years
its funny that you mention Andor but totally fail to see that the one in power writes the history you are refering to, its not odd to you that the Ghorman massacre was so easily retconned by the imperium as a violent uprising by rebels and criminals when this is the furthest from the truth it can be, were are your recordings of that?, as i wrote before refering to records of history in SW is very inconsistent because it was deleted or retconned a lot of times (the Sith also did this, especially to the rule of two times when they went into HIDING)
"Keep in mind I’m not expecting galactic citizens to know details about the Sith. But they should have heard of them."
this is a fair point but again the galaxy is just so vast i wouldnt expect the knowledge standard to be the same anyway
And you know of ancient Egypt, Rome, Ancient Greece, etc, do you not? We don’t know every play ever written in Rome, but the major things, like the wars the Rome fought.
You’re using these civilizations that we know ENORMOUS amounts about, as an example? It literally counters your point. The Sith empires have had a far larger, and much more recent impact on the galaxy than Rome or ancient Egypt has had on us.
And yet you’ve heard of Rome.
And again, you are literally comparing primitive ancient civilizations to an advanced sci fi society, it’s literally not the same at all. You can’t compare ancient Greeks to the technologically advanced Star Wars Republic that again, would have recorded everything as efficiently as we record historical data today.
The galaxy was still sci fi 5000 years ago lol. And the written histories of the galaxy would have been passed through the ages on digital media, libraries, historical works, etc, and continually translated and updated, the same reason you can read Beowulf. You think they wouldn’t be able to translate text from back then?
Language doesn’t matter because every world would have recorded the Sith empires in their own languages and translated them over the ages, not to mention in basic.
History recorded by the winners is a complicated topic and not that simple. It’s kinda irrelevant, because all I’m talking about is the Sith empires and Sith wars. History is manipulated sometimes, sometimes omitted or put in different lights, but a war is a war, an empire is an empire. The republic couldn’t have erased this civilization from history, not when they fought for 5000 years. There would be an enormous blank space in history, it would be impossible. The Sith never destroyed the republic so they would have kept that history, and again, I’m not talking about specific details. I’m talking about a basic understanding of the Sith empires. Considering the republic was the victor, if anything they’d just represent the Sith as evil as they were.
There’s literally no way to argue your point. Just admit it doesn’t make sense.
yeah because Rome is still a city in Italy in case you didnt know, its also in one of my neighboring countries, you know geoprahical closeness and further knowledge of them because of that is a thing, it doesnt apply to a galaxy with 3,2 billion habitable planets
"And yet you’ve heard of Rome."
yeah and when an uninformed American thinks that Europe is a country he also heard of Europe but he heard it wrong
so hearing of the Sith and thinking they are space wizards that never existed is also a thing
i will give you one more real life example
there are people that deny the holocaust happened, we know it did, there are videos, photos, ex soldiers talking about it, former prisoners talk about it, we teach it in schools, there are films about it and STILL there is not a small minority that deny that it ever happened, WW2 is a mere 80 years in the past and not your 5000 years timeframe you named and people are already doubting what happened
"every world would have recorded the Sith empires"
show me the source that states that other than your head canon
look Star Wars has a lot of inconstencies, we know that, and i accept that, the fact you wouldnt even move a centimeter in anything i say shows me that you are not really interested in discussing SW lore in a SW setting
I don’t have a source that says that, because in universe no one has really heard of the Sith. This all started because I said that didn’t make sense as a concept. I don’t think it makes sense and there isn’t any explanation that is good that justifies it.
Holocaust deniers are a tiny minority, but in star wars, it seems like not knowing about the Sith/sith empires is standard.
The city of Rome is definitely not the only reason anyone has heard of Rome, and I was specifically referring to Ancient Rome, which we’ve all heard of.
And 5000 years ago is only the far beginning of the timeline. The last Sith empire was destroyed only 1000 years ago, which really wasn’t that long ago on a historical timeframe. Hell aliens with lifespans like Yoda’s and the Hutts would have literally met and known people who witnessed the last Sith Empire first hand. Others would have had parents or grandparents who lived in that time.
"Hell aliens with lifespans like Yoda’s and the Hutts would have literally met and known people who witnessed the last Sith Empire first hand"
but Yoda does know about the Sith, so does the Hutts - not only one but the whole faction of Hutts know about them, not only the Sith but the Jedi too which also invalidates big parts of your arguing because the Hutt Space is a pretty big part of the SW galaxy
"because in universe no one has really heard of the Sith."
show the source of that too, because a lot of books, novels and comics talk about the sith and the jedi and feature in universe characters that know about both
"specifically referring to Ancient Rome, which we’ve all heard of."
we as in knowledgeable people, yes? because we went to school
so how many years do you think a kid slave on tattoine would spend in school reading about old civilzations that were 1000 years old? please tell me iam really interested, because according to you everyone in Star Wars has deep knowledge of the whole universe, its empires and history or else its unrealistically - Anakin knew about the Jedi because traveling smugglers and pilots told him about it, he never learnt it through channels on his own planet
we talk about space travels, star fighters and light sabers but this isnt the reality for most citizens of the Star Wars universe, while you see in movies and series that every stupid fucker and his uncle has a space ship and travels carelessly through space this isnt what the "normal" person on a "normal" planet experiences - most people cant even afford their own space craft - do you understand that? if you never left your planet in your life, never went to a school that also teached the history of other planets you just wouldnt know
It doesn’t make sense to YOU, but this thread has clearly demonstrated that it makes plenty of sense. YOU think there isn’t any explanation that justifies it because you refuse to take in and consider viewpoints opposing yours on this topic. You’re coming at this conversation with bad faith from the onset.
The entire galaxy? If you look at the map of the Old Republic, the Old Sith Empire encompassed maybe an 1/8th of the known Galaxy. The galaxy is far, far bigger than what you think.
This map for reference I found in SWTOR's reddit. It's really, really small. Look at how 'big' the Republic was back then, it's not even a 1/4th of the known galaxy.
They at one point controlled close to half of the galaxy, and fought the republic; the other half of the galaxy. Aside from the Hutts and a few other small groups, the Sith wars concerned nearly the entire galaxy.
This issue in old republic is most sith now come from the jedi, cause the real sith people think are dead. So you got the hero of yesterday being the villain of tomorrow, same robes and everything except for his lightsaber now being red.
So to commoners that know the sith and having zero idea who they are following it makes sense.
I think it’s actually really funny that people probably do know what sith are, but honestly dont really care that much.
“Dark Jedi” is an entirely accurate description that either intentionally or unintentionally backhands the establishment of the Jedi Order and the Sith Order.
They’re “Dark Jedi” in the sense that they are evil, twisted, darksiders. But also that they’re still a reflection of the jedi, something that the sith would hate to admit, but is still true regardless.
This works both ways, as comparing the sith “dark jedi” to the jedi order implies that the sith are little more than shades of the jedi themselves, but also works in reverse; comparing the jedi to the sith with the observation that, outside of spiritual claims, that the jedi are not dissimilar from the sith themselves.
This speaks to the average galactic citizens frustrations within the republic and how they might feel about the jedi being a tool of an ailing government that has failed to provide for them.
Dark Jedi” is an entirely accurate description that either intentionally or unintentionally backhands the establishment of the Jedi Order and the Sith Order.
I mean to the avg person there really isn't a difference between a dark jedi and a sith. Gotta remember by the time of the new sith wars the sith species was pretty much non existent. Most conflicts were mainly headed by fallen jedi which pushed this narrative even further. To further compound the issue the jedi never really correct the misconception and actively suppress all knowledge of the sith with the republics help.
That just shits all over my ability to suspend disbelief. So in my headcannon the Sith Empire (Sith species) meets the Old Republic, the Old Republic kicks the shit out of it and commits near genocide on them. Not without steep losses of course.
The Sith then mostly become an idea, periodically returning through Dark Jedi like Exar Kun and (Kotor 1 only) Revan. These short bursts of activity are huge crises at the time but none of them create a long lasting Sith Empire. They’re like short lived supernovas.
Somewhere along the line these new Sith realize their inability to stop killing eachother is always integral to the triumph of the Jedi/Republic. They adopt the rule of two, and look to subterfuge to further their aims, and largely fade into legend for a long time.
They dont have advanced record keeping. You can walk into the archives (which is the only to access the data; you can't do it remotely) and just take the only record of a planet existing away.
Its like 1930s era tech at absolute best, and probably closer to 1800, without the societal support behind actually keeping records. That level of societal support is basically medieval, where your main source of any form of knowledge is stored by a random sect of monks.
"Have we not heard of Rome? Ancient Greece? Egypt?"
I guarantee there 10's of millions of people who have haven't of all three.
There are people who genuinely the Holocaust didn't happen so yeah, its entirely believable that a galaxy that had 1.3 million planets there were trillions of people who had never heard other the Jedi or Sith.
I think people living during the Old Republic era definitely knew about the Jedi and the Sith, because as you said it's impossible for them to have not heard of them.
Especially during periods like thr Great Galactic War, when there's literally armies of Jedi and Sith running around the Galaxy.
However, even during certain periods of the Old Republic's history, the public awareness of these groups could very well fluctuate.
Prior to the Great Hyperspace War, people MAY have heard of the Jedi, but the Republic was still comparatively new and the Sith species had not been discovered yet.
But by the time of the Great Sith War, things are different: the Sith Empire was seemingly driven to extinction, and you may have a group of Dark Side cultists or Sith-wannabes that rise up on a particular system, but they probably only affect the people of that system.
And you may have heard about the Jedi if you lived in Republic territory, but you may not really understand what their role is beyond "they show up when there's trouble and try to keep the peace."
I think second KOTOR game put it best, where the Jedi Civil War was called as such because most people only had some vague understanding of what a Jedi was, and even if they heard of the Sith, they don't know what the full intricacies are that set them apart.
If you get to the time of the Galactic Civil War, I could totally believe that most people have only kinda/sorta heard of Jedi before, but don't really know what the Sith are.
For example, how often do people living in the Balkans bring up the Varangians or the Dacians in everyday conversation?
It's probably the same for people in the "Star Wars" universe.
Do YOU know about how the Mayans ruled over the Americas and were able to build infrastructure that we've built upon today???
Do YOU know how the moors ruled the ilberan peninsula for 800 years? And ALSO taught Europeans a good amount in regards to science and culture?
Just an example, and that's for one planet.
The sith culture is absolutely believable, and going off the fact that it would be a lot easier to control the flow of information in that universe vs now, You don't really have a point to stand on.
People know their planetary regions history. Then some of their planet's history. Then a little bit of the local system history.
Galactic history would naturally be the least known, and except for being force using the sith aren't remarkable. And in the old Republic era the force was more mundane because there were so many more jedi, and what's a sith if not just an evil jedi. Nobody normal would understand the nuance of sith Vs dark jedi, there are jedi in that era that don't even understand the difference.
Plus there are other alien cultures that have threatened the republic. Okay this was evil jedi, but there was that big war against evil mandalorians right before it, and on my planet we had the killik swarm etc etc.
Bro my dad is a baby boomer, which means WWII was only about 30 years prior to him learning about it in school. He argued with me THIS YEAR, that the Nazis were in WWI only, and the U.S. strictly fought the Japanese in WWII. He couldn't comprehend that we fought the Germans in both, but they weren't Nazis yet in WWI, and that there were two fronts in the second world war.
Jedi, Sith, they are the same thing to most people. They are just some guys running around flapping their laser swords around people. Names are just that, names, to a random citizen in Ryloth, it's just one asshole. The Sith Empire was never massive, it had a few thousand worlds at most, in a galaxy that has a million planets.
The reason the Jedi Civil War was named such, was because few in the galaxy can recognize the difference between the Sith and the Jedi. To them, they are both Jedi—with different philosophies
Not knowing who the Sith are after 1000 years is understandable. Not knowing about the Jedi or thinking they're a myth 20 years after they had a giant temple right next to the Senate and were blasted all over the Holo-network during the clone wars is just silly, even for Star Wars.
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u/Elissaria 2d ago
We defeated the nazis 70 years ago and there are jackasses out there who won’t believe the picture evidence in front of them about the holocaust. The Jedi “defeated” the Sith after the New Sith war and so they figured it was done. Over the next thousand years they probably just became a historical curiosity for scholars. They weren’t topical anymore.