DuracellEnergizer said:

Sounds to me that the writers of TOR are so unoriginally crazy about making the Empire a modern incarnation of the Sith Empire that they're retroactively assigning Imperial motiffs to TOR's Sith Empire in order to make it look like Palpatine deliberately designed his Empire to emulate the Sith Empire.

Correct, and Palpatine never struck me as the emulating type. Last time I checked, Palpatine believed himself to be one and only person fit to rule. Furthermore, it makes the Republic and Jedi look stupid.