Reasons for Palpatine's actions during Thrawn's Campaign and Imperial Mutiny

[Lord Xizer]

Okay, lotta people look at the Thrawn Campaign and say, "Where was Palps? Why didn't he help? Why did he even help the campaign fail according to some? Why did he allow the Imperial Mutiny?"
Many chalk these things up to Craziness, megalomania, Social Darwinism etc(And to a degree they are.) However there are some very logical(Though in hindsight self destructivly fatal) reasons Palpatine did what he did during both.
First off with Thrawn. Thrawn returned and reunited the rim factions into a confederation with himself at the head to save the Empire. During this time let us look at Thrawn's actions and how Palps would have interpereted them.
Thrawn returns, reunites the factions but makes no contact with Byss(Possible he didn't know palps was alive, but suspicious to Palps point of view). He immediately begins rallying and personally becoming an icon of the Empire(Which Palps had been very careful to avoid Thrawn doing until now) He procures HUGE amounts of Ysalamiri gains cloaking tech and clone facility to build and army loyal to HIM. Thrawn tells many that HE is the ruler of the Empire now, not some long dead Emperor(Thus stating his independance publicaly) Finally he gets a mad VERY powerful Dark Jedi and plans to clone him as a future Emperor(Now we have moved into what looks VERY much like Thrawn countering every advantage the Emperor would have had, thus making him VERY dangerous to the Emperor)
Thrawn was loyal to the ideal of the Empire, and his OWN version of that ideal differed from Palps vision, so why would he submit when he now held the power?
So of course Palps would not want Thrawn to succeed if it meant he would be supplanted by him.

Now for the Imperial mutiny. Why didn't Palps just come out and say, "Here I am! I am the Emperor, listen to me again!"? Simple. Each Warlord was independant, yes they were VERY loosely allied to take Coruscant(Most likely because each thought that they could benefit from it and then take power) During the Emperor's reign he always had a leash on these Admirals, Moffs and Generals via the Stormtrooper Corps, the ISB and the Inquisitorious. Now, that leash no longer existed. Most Stormtroopers were recruits or Army troopers loyal to their Warlord or sector. The Inquisitorous was largely destroyed and the ISB was a pale shadow of it's former self.
As a result all these commanders now held vast amounts of Military power in their hands, not Palpatine's. What was to stop them from refusing his orders? Or outright trying to kill him? Nothing but Palps own forces, which while powerful were not equal to the Entirety of the combined Warlord Fleets. Also while they were called the IMPERIAL Warlords they were each seperate nation states that were exceptionally hostile to any outside control. These were not Allies, they were ALL enemies as much as the NR to any power other than their own. His solution? Have them destroy one another and then step in as the dominant power when they are weakened. It's easier to fight one enemy than dozens. So he funnelled their hatred of each other so they would fall into internecine conflict. The result, they were devastated, badly mauled and weakened and to boot they had chased the NR away from the Core. Then Palps made his appearance in full force. With his superweapons, centralized stability and the rewards he gave the survivors of the Mutiny they submitted to him. His plan worked very well. He was back in charge, his enemies had torn themselves apart and with his clones, essence transfer, and the superweapons Palps had no doubt he could destroy the rebels who had been pushed to the corners of the galaxy anyway. This can be largely attributed to his ego, having cheated death and his enemies being so scattered and weak in comparison to him now. All things considered Palps plan was very efficient and well conceved for destroying Rival Factions....the problem was that everything hinged on HIM surviving as the center of the Dark Empire...without him it went back to factions...factions that were badly weakened and badly bitter toward one another for what each saw as the others fault for their own weakened state. With this divided and badly weakened Empire spread out over virtually the entire Galaxy it was relatively easy to reconquer especially as fed up as most of the Galaxy was with the madness that passed for Imperial Warlords and what insanity had been the Dark Empire. Add to this no legitamate Heir to the Throne, internecine thoughts and dwindling resource pools the Empire was dealt a death blow as a direct result of Palpatine's schemes.

[tlmiller]

Eh, I disagree wtih Thrawn.  Even as psychotic as Pally was, he was to the galaxy at large, dead.  I think he just didn't help because the timing of it wasn't right yet, and in the end, he didn't care if his underlings died, and was perfectly content to allow Thrawn to disrupt the new republic while he solidified his power before making himself known.  If Thrawn succeeded then I have no doubt he believed Thrawn was acquiesce to him, and if Thrawn failed, then so be it, he at least had the NR on the back foot to make it easier when Pally did make his rebirth known.

As far as the warlords, that I agree on.

[CaptainPogo]

I think Thrawn would be a double edge sword to Palpatine. While Thrawn did put the Empire back on the same page on taking on the NR than to fight themselves, he's showing that you don't need Palpatine to run the Empire as it was before Endor.

...And Palpatine wouldn't really like that. Even if Thrawn swore loyalty and meant it, he could potentially be used as an example that Palpatine isn't needed as a leader and sadly...Thrawn kinda of proved it unlike Isard (who failed so badly at this, especially planning Pestage, a Pro-Palps/Sith Supporter, to fail which only caused problems making any sense of unity).

[Revanchist]

I think regarding Thrawn there were several reasons to avoid joining him. As was pointed out, he proved that the Emperor was not needed for the Empire to thrive, so he HAD to fail in order for his plan to succeed. Second, Thrawn was a testing ground of sorts, letting Palpatine see the current condition of a United Imperial Fleet. It would either crush the Rebellion (win), severely weaken it (less win, but a win), or give them a false sense of security (win-sorta). Third, the forces were already loyal to Thrawn, returning actually could have been COUNTERproductive to the war efforts. Finally, he may not have been well enough to lend a hand.

I fully agree with the Imperial Mutiny though, except with one added reason. In addition to weakening the Warlords militarily, it woulld also have lowered the respect many of the officers that were formerly loyal to the Warlords had for them when they saw what total jerks they really were.

In the end , it was Palpatine's own ego that led to much of this. I find it ironic that the plan, which required him to survive as the sole leader of the Empire, when all was said and done made him no different than the very Warlords he despised so much.

[CaptainPogo]

Another feeling of mine is that other than weakening the Warlords, he was willing to take only the strongest, those who sacrifice a lot and pretty much just kept on ticking. He will not take deadweights or people whose loyalty to him obviously means squat with trust being nearly nonexistent (I doubt he will ever take Isard for example, as she is proven both harmful to the Empire and trusting her after all that crap is not something Palps can look forward to).

But of course, he's only willing to use their skills if that means he can put a gun behind their head and pull the trigger if they weren't up his expectations or if they were planning to use the forces he gave them against him and they can't do anything about it.

[Lord Xizer]

Palpatine's main thing was that he saw HIMSELF as the Empire. Without him it was just another potential enemy. His sole purpose was his own aggrandizement. He was also very much in the "If I can't have it, then no one will" mindset. He wanted absolute power for eternity. Everyone else were either tools or obstacles to him, not living beings.
I think yes, even if he trusted Thrawn, at least as much as Palps was capable of trust, he still would have had a lot of misgivings about Thrawn showing that the Empire could function without Palpatine, because he only held power by being indespensible. I think this also led to his fall due to betrayal because after Vader had succeeded in killing him, it showed he COULD BE beaten even as powerful as he was he was still fallible and Thrawn had shown that the Empire COULD function without the Emperor. Many of the conspiritors on the council may have also very much been aware that Palps had fed the Imperial Mutiny and would replace the Empire's officials with Mind enslaved Dark Jedi(Which he did intend to do) While almost all of them acted out of ambition, some undoubtably were VERY disturbed by Palpatine's true side and mental state. Some may very well have seen themselves as saving the Empire from a madman.