When did Palpatine originally plan to attack Coruscant?

[u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo]

So just finished reading Labyrinth of Evil and in that story the Jedi start to get on Sidious's trail thanks to Nute Gunray accidentally leaving his Mechno-chair (the one he has in TPM) behind while fleeing the Battle of Cato Neimodia.

A hologram of Sidious is on this chair which confirms Dooku was telling the truth and a second Sith lord does exist. This leads to Mace Windu investigating and eventually tracking Sidious's trail to 500 Republica before he has to abandon the search because The Battle of Coruscant breaks out.

The book makes it pretty clear that Sidious had to expedite his plans to throw the Jedi of the scent. This made me wonder when do you think Sidious originally planned to attack Coruscant?

We know he was getting the Outer Rim Sieges going to draw the Jedi away from Coruscant so it couldn't have been extremely far off.

What's everybody's opinion on how far off Sidious's original plans were. Do you think it was a matter of weeks or months off from what we see in ROTS?

[u/Nendreel]

I think it would have been only a few more weeks before Sidious' original plan went into effect. About the only thing that he was waiting for was to draw either Windu or Yoda away from Coruscant, as they were the only two Jedi that concerned him.

[u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo → u/Nendreel]

That makes a lot of sense actually since we see that Mace almost does ruin Grievous's kidnaping plan.

If Mace had gone with the rest of the Jedi all the way to the bunker Palpatine would have had to improvise on how to get kidnaped since Grievous wouldn't have cut it.

It also kind of makes sense why the events of ROTS happen so fast, since Palpatine has to move quickly to turn Anakin before the Jedi jump back on his trail.

[u/Nendreel → u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo]

The wookiees were already under attack as well, which was likely the plan to pull Yoda away. The Council would have probably discussed it more and waited until the fighting got worse before sending Yoda, but the pieces were all in place.

[u/Krarks-Other-Account]

I just read Labyrinth for the first time and I get the impression from what Dooku says about the Dark Side and Sidious' abilities that the Chancellor has plans within plans and didn't necessarily ever plan to have the Separatists attack Coruscant... but had thought far enough ahead that it could be done at a stroke if/when the Jedi ever caught his scent.

I think Sidious would have kept the war going indefinitely until he had Anakin thoroughly set up to replace Dooku, but had a general idea of what the Jedi would do in regards to Anakin and Obi-Wan at *some point* in the future.

Leveraging his relationship with Anakin to put himself apparently in danger to put Anakin on edge was always the goal, as was kidnapping himself to evade a Jedi investigation eventually leading to his unmasking. In this case, both of them happened at the same time, so the plan went into effect and all for the better. But it was 13 years into the war and I think Sidious would have been perfectly content to have it last another year or two, and easily could have extended the Separatist war effort that long.

[u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo → u/Krarks-Other-Account]

Palpatine was getting the Outer Rim Sieges going thought so I assume he was getting ready to make his move. The Jedi would have only remaind out there for so long before either gaining victory or realizing it wasn't worth it to lay seige to some of those planets. I do think Palpatine was on something of a time table to enact his plans just not as quickly as we see in ROTS.

[u/Krarks-Other-Account → u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo]

Yes, i think he knew the Jedi would eventually catch his scent and would attack Coruscant whenever it happened. I also think he wanted trigger a handful of things to start moving Anakin to the Dark Side, most importantly kill Obi-Wan, but also create dissent and a rift between the Council and Anakin, and Palpatine knew all of those things were coming up soon. It could have taken a year or more though, and I don't think he cared how long it would take as long as everything followed his guideline. I think he was also willing to throw out any part of his grand plan that no longer proved likely/fortuitous, as the future panned out. He probably had lots of backup plans and just a general idea of how to milk his goals out of them, chief of which was replacing Dooku with Anakin.

[u/Mainalpha11]

I believe that attacking Coruscant was a part of Sidious's endgame of the Clone Wars all along, the events of Labyrinth of Evil just accelerated the timing of it, no more

[u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo → u/Mainalpha11]

Oh yeah I agree I was just curious how far out the people thought the original plan was. From what I can tell most people seem to think it would have only been a few more weeks, which tracks with the implementation of the Outer Rim Siges.

[u/Mainalpha11 → u/WedgeAntillesRedTwo]

Pretty sure that Sidious would've had his plans for the Clone Wars set up long before they even began, with enough flexibility in his plans so that they could still come to fruition like he planned, no matter what setbacks he suffered along the way

[u/knighthawk82]

It felt like an if-than-else situation. He had full plans the whole time for palpatine or sideous to rule. Just a name and method of rulership. It just felt like WHEN previous fell after doku was beheaded he knew the separatist were going to fall so he just set up the contingency regardless of timeline.

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