Yeah, I just read Dark Lord, and it basically gave the same explanation: The power of the Dark Side comes from bad feelings. This is why Yoda said, "hate leads to anger, anger leads to the Dark Side."

So according to the book, Palpatine WANTS his apprentice to be jealous and want to overthrow him. Those types of feelings make the apprentice more powerful. He fully expected Vader to try to overthrow him after the battle with Obi Wan. Several times in the book, it speaks of Vader hating his new position and wanting to overthrow Palpatine. This, of course, explains his "rule together as father and son" speech to Luke in TESB.

One of Palpatine's goals was to make sure Vader is as powerful as possible. Apparently, his identity as Sith Lord was still hidden. He thought the fact that someone as powerful as Vader so respected Palpatine would have made Palpatine's status that much more powerful.

As for the promise of eternal life to Amidala, Vader seemed to acknowledge the fact that he killed Amidala, so he didn't blame Palpatine. He did have a lot of hatred towards Obi Wan in particular and to the Jedi in general for holding him back.

As for the book, it takes place right after Episode 3. Most of the Jedi were killed in Episode 3. This book covers one group of Jedi and how they reacted after the order. It also covers Vader as he chases the Jedi through the galaxy.

It was not very well written. So as a general science fiction book, I wouldn't recommend it. But since it is part of he Star Wars canon, it does shed a lot of light on the internal thoughts of Palpatine and Vader.

The 9 parts thing is true, because it always used to be mentioned in STARLOG magazine back in the day.

I think this is all part of Lucas' revisionist "The Star Wars movies are about Anakin, not Luke" b.s.

The "Jedi" in "Return of the Jedi" refers to Luke, not Vader. The Jedi order is restored through Luke. This is exactly how it went down in 1983. Anybody who says otherwise is wrong or a Luca$ employee.

Thought I'd give some more thoughts about the book. This will be full of spoilers.

Wookieepedia says that the book was not supposed to be about Vader. You can tell. I would guess that the book was originally about the Jedi running from the Empire with only peripheral contact with Vader. But it seems like the parts about Vader were grafted on. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem. But it presents a lot of growth in Vader without actually laying out how it happened.

When we first see Vader, he is surprised by a Jedi, whom he kills. The problem, from Vader's perspective, is that the Jedi struck him. As you will remember from the films, Anakin was very strong with the force and was also one of the more accomplished swordsmen in the Jedi Order. From Vader's perspective, this ordinary Jedi never should have been able to land anything on him. But the constricting suit led to Vader not being able to move as fluidly as he should. (Basically a way of explaining why Vader in Ep 4 was much slower than Vader in Ep 3.)

The next time we see him in action, he's going against 6 guys at once. But he's described as being able to anticipate all other movements and basically being unbeatable.

Then, his last battle, the guy realizes that Vader is protecting his torso and is able to hold Vader to a draw until Vader starts using the force to throw a bunch of stuff at the Jedi.

So you can explain the difference between the second and third battle as the fact that the Jedi in the third battle was simply much better than the guys in the second battle (one of whom was a librarian and none of whom seem to have much combat experience). But what about the difference between the first and second battle? He went from having trouble with 1 guy to effortlessly defeating 6 guys. But he had no training in between.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/4/17...an-jon-favreau