My Sith Wars are completely realistic and have real-life parallels just like the Rebellion from the original trilogy was based on World War II and the American Revolution. I’m no historian, but I can’t think of a single war where a guy created two armies only to make them fight each other (simplest least convoluted Clone Wars explanation).
Well, there was that one time Satan rebelled in Heaven…
And theological connections vis-a-vis Palpatine do seem to have been on GL’s mind in the prequels. Darth Plagueis’ name, for instance, is a Paradise Lost reference.
I can’t tell what your first comment means. Are you saying the Rebellion is like Lucifer? (Lucifer became Satan AFTER rebelling) Do you think Lucifer created two armies and made them fight each other?
More like God in the backstory to the Bible, who created a host of angels who proceeded to divide into warring two camps - one made up of rebels led by Lucifer, the other of loyalists led by St. Michael - and fight each other. This kind of makes Palpatine comparable to the Gnostic idea of the Demiurge.
As I said above, the name “Darth Plagueis” comes from Milton’s poem Paradise Lost. Specifically, it comes from Book II, lines 170-174, where the demon Belial counsels against renewing war with Heaven on the grounds that God has terrifying powers of revenge:
What if the breath that kindl’d those grim fires
Awak’d should blow them into sevenfold rage
And plunge us in the flames? or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us?
The “red right hand” mentioned here is actually that of God. Compare Palpatine’s assertion that Plagueis could use the Force to create life in quasi-divine fashion. (Virgin birth, anyone?)