Revenge of the Sith/WMG

General Grievous was supposed to turn out to be Jar Jar Binks, but Lucas chickened out at the last minute

If you assume that Jar-Jar was just pretending to be stupid, then this is horribly plausible.

Jar Jar was an alien general, and he DID help Palpatine. The only In-Universe explanation for Jar-Jar surviving the battle with the battle droids is if they were programmed not to hit him.

Jar Jar has a cameo at the end of Star Wars 3... explainable as Lucas chickened out of the ultimate Fan mind-screw. That, or it was his Force Ghost.

• Storywise, this would make more sense if Jar-Jar had had more screen time and more of a friendship with Obi-wan.

Padme's death was caused by the severing of a strong Force Bond with Anakin.

Well, it's better than a broken heart, and a metaphysical bond was implied earlier in the film.

• In reality, she had the Force. Since she never attempted to use it, it probably just flowed with Anakin's Force at the moment he choked her; thus, it was an accidental "suicide by Force".
• This, and the hypothesis below, also mesh well with the "Force Roofie" WMG.
  • The shock of the broken bond/"Force Roofie" theory gets even more plausible if you're a KOTOR 2 player. Even the most scrupulous version of the Exile is pulling a massive Force Whammy on all the party members, save Canderous/Mandalore and the droids without realizing it. (Kreia's the one manipulating the Exile, making the whole thing one hell of a Mind Rape conga line - gotta love that misplaced Reverend Mother). Gets Lampshaded in a massive way if you're playing a Magnificent Bastard Exile, as you have your party committing cold blooded murder, snapping out of it long enough to go "what are you making me do?!" only to keep following you anyway. Closet-case Sensitives like the majority of Exile's party, have all the disadvantages and almost none of the advantages. If Padme was an untrained Sensitive, and Anakin imposed a force Bond, that would explain just about everything, including why she died and the doctors couldn't explain why - a multiple-birth pregnancy, losing everything she fought to defend (the Republic and rule of law) would be stress enough. An undetected Force Bond transmitting the insane levels of pain Anakin was in, and essentially draining her life so that he could live? That would explain the rest, including some impressions that she left on Leia. (ROTJ)
  • Or it could have had something to do with her being strangled and slammed onto a rock. Just tossing it out there.
• This also explains why Jedi aren't supposed to form romantic bonds; doing so risks a hazardous force bond.

Alternatively, Padme's death was caused by the strong Force Bond not breaking.

Padme didn't die because the bond was broken, she died because it wasn't. All the pain and agony that Anakin was going through when he 1)Got his arm and legs chopped off 2)Burned into a crispy critter 3)and was apparently operated on without anesthetic when he got his Darth Vader suit, was all reciprocated onto Padme through the Force Bond. And since Padme had already been roughed up by Anakin and she was probably in a more vulnerable condition being at the end of her pregnancy term, the psychic shock was enough to kill her.

The reason Order 66 proceeded so quickly and smoothly was because of the Clones' loyalty to the Republic, rather than in spite of it, in a process otherwise referred to as fragging.

The Jedi were astonishingly bad leaders; every battle with Clones, Jedi, and Separatists seems to involve Clones getting massacred en-masse and the Jedi walking away unscathed.

• One example off the top of this troper's head from the Clone Wars cartoon would be the Battle of Munnilist, where the elite elite Arc Troopers kick ass and capture the HQ. Then the Jedi show up, and then the Clones die horribly.
• Later, in Mygeeto, the attitude seemed to be "Hey everyone! Let's charge across a narrow bridge with no cover at a fortified heavy weapons position", made worse by the fact that the commander ordering the charge is the only one who can survive being shot at.
• And who can blame them? It's not like they were trained for it. To sling another theory out there: Palpatine knew it was natural for them to fall into that role, and knew they would prove incompetent at it. That little plot would basically have written itself.
• Or maybe it had more to do with them actually liking the Jedi. Many times over, the Clones go out of their way to save the Jedi, and a lot of the Jedi feel guilty about using them and when they die. It's like every General has an emotional twinge every time any of the soldiers die or get hurt severely. Especially the ones they always work with.
  • Further WMG: The soldiers are trained to serve the Republic, just like the Jedi. When 66 goes out, the Jedi are now enemies of the Republic. The fact that they earned the trust of the Jedi made it that much easier to take them out swiftly.

Padmae died of medical malpractice

Come on, who in the civilized world dies of childbirth?

• And it was actually was key component of Palpatine's gambit, as he rose to power based on the war, the Jedi revolt, and a platform of strong healthcare reform.
• No it's made very clear that she died of a broken heart.
  • It's made very clear by the doctors, who of course would grab any excuse to cover their own asses.
    • Doctor Ball Agrees. What's your degree in? Poetry?
    • Their degrees were in archeology. They didn't even have time to change out of their digging clothes.

Padmae died of respiratory complications.

Trying to give birth after having her trachea crushed? Broken heart, my ass...

Palpatine's un-scarred human face was a disguise

As we thought from the days of Return Of The Jedi, Palpatine's pale, craggy face is the real him after decades of Dark Side mastery. He didn't have the power to fight off Mace Windu and maintain the illusion, so he just used the attack as an excuse to drop it for good.

• This is actually canon.
  • No it's not. Palpatine's databank entry specifically states that he was disfigured by his Force lightning.
    • Then why didn't it happen to Luke when Palpatine blasted him full-on in the face with it? Aside from being in horrible pain at the time, he was no worse for wear afterwards.
  • Two things: first, Palpatine was very blatantly making a point of torturing Luke to death in that scene, so he would have been deliberately using a low voltage, and therefore it would have a slower effect. Second: it's possible that Mace's saber beam increased the effect of the force lightning when it made it ricochet, added some juice to it with its own heat or energy. Anyway, I think that while Palpatine's skin was definitely human-looking before that incident, it is certainly possible that his eyes were yellow to begin with and he had been wearing contacts over them to make them look normal. The films make it seem that using the dark side somehow deforms you that way.
• I think it was just Palpatine overdrawing on his power. He could have shut the lightning off but he keep it going so Anakin would feel sorry for him being ?beat up by big bad Mace Windu?. However, to keep the lightning going for so long he needed to draw on his own lifeforce. Kind of idotical but Anakin fell for it and Palpatine probably considered his own looks secondary to gaining a powerful apprentice.
• Actually, it's implied in the novelization that because Mace Windu's customized lightsaber technique draws him uncomfortably close to the Dark Side, he was able to redirect Palpatine's lightening back at him, causing them both to become stuck in a loop that could only be broken when one of them won the "battle of wills," if you will. Thus, Palpatine ended up drawing much more than he had originally thought to, causing the scarring.

Absolutes are drugs or illegal slaves.

Thus why Obi-Wan was able to say "only the sith deal in absolutes." Nothing ironic about that.

• By the Force, you have a point! Apparently Galactic Republic is into prohibition.

Palpatine killed Padme by exploiting her Force Bond, not Anakin

Palpatine just told Vader he killed her to make him angrier and more hateful. Palpatine really used Sith Alchemy to heal Vader partially using Force Drain to drain Padme of her remaining strength and transferring it in order to prevent Vader from any potential uprisings. The neck wound was just a mask.

• Or on a lighter, sweeter note; Padme sacrificed herself to save Anakin by transferring her remaining strength to Anakin through their Force Bond.

Darth Plagueis never existed

Palpatine made the whole thing about creating life up just to tempt Anakin to the dark side. Furthermore, Anakin was not immaculately conceived, rather Palpatine used the Jedi Mind Trick to force Schmi to sleep with him and then forget about it. Anakins high midichlorian count is a result of Schmis own (average human) midichlorians being in a state of excitation (from the mind trick) at the point of conception. Palpatine probably did this loads, bedding random women left right and centre just because he could. There's probably dozens of chosen ones out there, Anakins just the one that happened to be found.

• There's a canon picture of Plagueis.
• This troper has come to believe Darth Plagueis never existed too. Palpatine/Sidious is a master liar/manipulator. He tells people what they want to hear, how they want to hear it. And Anakin is no different. He wants Anakin on his side. So he tells this tale to earn Anakin's trust.
  • Well, he probably existed; I mean, someone has to have taught Palpatine how to use the Force. That doesn't mean he had the power over life and death that Palpatine claimed he did.
    • Excactly, it's even possible that he "created" Anakin by using the Midichlorians but that the stuff about him being able to prevent death was just bait for Anakin to trick him into obeying Palpatine.
  • Canon shmanon. The films are in their own continuity: Word of God has confirmed that. The idea that Darth Plagueus might never have existed occurred to me too. It might also be that someone by that name existed and maybe even trained Palpatine (after all, someone must have taught him, though Palpatine makes it sound like the story is older than he is) but everything else about the guy is made up. As for Anakin's birth, we have only Schmi's word to go by that he was immaculately conceived. We don't know if it's true. And if it is, it might have nothing to do with either Plagueus or Palpatine. Really, the whole thing is a mystery, and Lucas explicitly said that's what it's meant to be.
    • It does bear mentioning that when Anakin finally falls and asks Palpatine to teach him Darth Plagueis' secrets, Palpatine's answer is basically "If we work together, we can figure it out," which would imply that, contrary to hints he dropped earlier, he doesn't know any of said secrets.
    • Word of God my butt. George Lucas has contradicted himself on the Expanded Universe/film continuity relationship more times than one can count. The fact is, that Lucas has had a direct role in the story writing for stories such as the New Jedi Order series, the Darth Bane trilogy (in fact, the character of Darth Bane was created by Lucas himself), and The Force Unleashed. And Word of God has confirmed that Darth Plagueis did exist, and that he did create Anakin.

Padme Lives!

As stated before, who the hell dies in childbirth? No...

• Being known as "Vader's Moll" probably isn't very good for someone look to advance her career as a rebel. No, she went on to become...
  • Some ex-Senator from some nothing world called Chandrilla. I think her new identity was Mon Mothma.
    • Deleted scenes in Episode 3 show Mon Mothma and Padme together. The book has them work together, too.
  • Handmaiden to the Queen of Aldeeran. It's not like she doesn't have a lot of experience with that disguise. And it lets her keep an eye on Leia.
    • Ah sweet Irony; looks like Vader managed to kill her twice.
    • Not necessarily; some of the household staff and retainers were offworld when the attack occurred, such as Winter. (Winter herself is too young and Padme probably doesn't have her eidetic memory.) She could still live. Creepily enough, with the medical technology on hand, it's possible she's around well into the New Jedi Order...
• Being a Rebel is for losers. The crushing fist of the Empire is more the style of...
  • Admiral Daala. Turns out the crushing fist of the Empire is rather sexist.
• You know what, screw politics. Independent operator is the way to go for...
  • Guri. We all though she was an android/Human Replica Droid. Turns out Star Wars cybernetics and bioscience is a lot more advanced than we thought.
• Or, all of the above. Took her a while to figure out what she wanted.
• Which was fishing on some backwater world, far away from all that galactic power politics. Why get burned again?
• She could have stayed on Tatooine, where it was almost certain Darth Vader would never return to. She could even check on Luke in disguise.
  • So that means she was Aunt Beru! Fortunately, she still had one of her stunt double retainers hanging around, allowing her to slip away in the disguise of a Twi'Lek dancer, before gettign another Twi'Lek to cover her shift at Jabba's palace so she could go to Anchorhead to find some paint to brighten up that garish Han Solo carbonite statue Jabba had put in.

"General" is actually a fairly low rank in the Star Wars universe.

I mean, seriously, the Republic and the Alliance hand out this rank like flyers for a strip club, regardless of military experience. Any young Jedi fresh out of apprenticeship? General. A drug smuggler indebted to a gangster? General. An oily con artist who sold his best friend to the Empire and only switched sides because Vader went back on his deal? General! Generally, there's too many generals in the good-guy organizations of the Galaxy. The actual leaders must have like twenty-five stars.

• • Compare to the historical practice of handing out the rank of "Colonel" casually in various state militias in the US. Do something good for the Rebels, get known as a person their core membership can rely on to get things done? The Rebels' central command always needs reliable agents they can send around the galaxy to keep the local rebel cells on the same page. But to do that, they have to give you a high enough rank to overawe the guerilla movement on Backwater Planet #52038. Boom! You're a general.
  • Alternately, it seems that Generals get front-line duty for suicide missions a lot. Maybe Rebel Generals have similar life expectancies to Imperial Admirals. I can imagine Ackbar and Madine going down the line of long-term rebels offering them the job. Lando and Han were the last on the list. The just happened to be badass enough to survive.
  • We must also remember that both armies, during the Clone Wars and during the Rebellion, were spread incredibly thin throughout the galaxy. They needed people in charge, and one of the fastest ways to ensure that was probably to grant them a high rank that the clones (and people on Backwater Planet #52038, after the fall of the Republic) were expected to follow.

Padme did die of a broken heart

Or rather more accurately the strain from being force choked and childbirth aggravated a preexisting congenital heart defect. As a result she suffered from a massive heart attack and died. The broken heart bit was just cause the medical droids were programed to talk weird like half the stuff in Star Wars.

• There's also the shock from realizing her own husband has turned evil.
  • Depression and other such negative emotions do have a strong negative impact on the immune system; its possible that by "no will to live" Doctor Ball meant "her immune system and ability to recover from was so weakened by her depression that she succumbed to wounds she would otherwise have easily recovered from".
    • Then why did they say that medically she was completely healthy?
      • A peculiarity of how diagnostic categories are classified in the Star Wars universe. Emotionally, she's on the breaking point. Medically, she's healthy. The doctorbot didn't feel the need to specify this, as it was patently obvious even to him.

Luke and Leia were adopted the way they were because Obi-Wan didn't know Anakin was still around.

Bail Organa offered to adopt one of them, and the other got sent to the next of kin. Simple as that.

• How is this not canon?
• This raises the interesting question of when exactly Obi-Wan found out Anakin/Vader was still alive. Conceivably this could be as late as when he ended up on the Death Star in A New Hope. So maybe he actually wasn't lying to Luke when he told him that his father was dead. In fact, the "certain point of view" that "Vader betrayed and murdered your father" actually makes a whole lot more sense if you assume Obi-Wan thought at the time that Anakin/Vader had died on Mustafar. It was probably easier for Obi-Wan to tell Luke this half-truth than explain the whole story of how he himself ended up killing Luke's father (or so he thought).
  • It is canon. Obi-Wan doesn't find out until the epilogue of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, set a few months after RoTS, when he hears a news report about Vader's recent doings. He immediately realizes that having Luke on Tatooine is a bad idea, until Qui-Gon reassures him that Vader will never be able to return to his homeworld.

Palpatine used Mind-Affecting powers to make Anakin kill Padme.

Palpatine already knew of Anakin's plot to overthrow him and rule with Padme, so therefore he used his deep skill in manipulation to Mind Trick Anakin to killing Padme, even unintentionally.

• Better yet, he also used mind-affecting powers to brainwash Anakin into Darth Vader; This explains why Anakin's shift in personality is so sudden.

Palpatine suffered brain damage during the battle with Mace Windu.

Seriously: in the last two and a half films leading up to the event, Palpatine was - at least in this troper's eyes - a reasonable and fairly benevolent leader who just happened to see his underhanded schemes and the Dark Side of the Force as the best ways of securing peace. Obviously, when Mace Windu reflected his blast of lightning back in his face, his brain also sustained damage, for he transforms into a cackling megalomaniac with no subtlety or patience. Of course, he spends the next few decades trying to recover, hence his more subdued performance in Return of the Jedi - but by then it's too late for the countless innocents that have died in the meantime. Nice job breaking it, Windu.

• Another possibility: Palpatine's extensive use of the Dark Side causes him to suffer from a severe case of This Is Your Brain on Evil. Over time, his power corrupts him and turns him into a cackling sadistic fiend.
• What's the evidence that Palpatine was benevolent? He was scheming to sell out his homeworld to the Trade Federation and lay the groundwork for a major galactic civil war ten years before he got into a fight with Windu. He may have claimed to want peace and seemed like a good guy, but his entire strategy revolved around making everyone in the Republic think he was a good guy to begin with. And if he could fool the galaxy, is it any wonder he can fool the audience?
• For what its worth, Thrawn thinks at least part of his motivation was to be able to build up the millitary to prepare for the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. If Palpatine wasn't fooling Thrawn, then he was corrupted by either the dark side or the lightning brain damage. But chances are, Palpatine was just using the impending invasion to lure the galaxy's greatest tactician to his service.
• Thus,Palpatine used to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist,who wanted to bring order and stability,and believed the Jedi were a threat to that.He saw himself as a Necessary Evil,and even held Anakin as a sort of Morality Pet.When Mace lightning zapped him,it caused him to become Drunk on the Dark Side.Trying to stop the Yuuzhan Vong is the only thing left of his humanity
  • If Palpatine gave a damn about the incoming Vong invasion, why did he allow the massive anti-alien sentiment? I would imagine having as many species united would serve the interests of the Galaxy if only to have as many warm bodies pointed at the incoming invasion instead of most likely joining them out of bitterness caused by 40 years of oppression.
    • Look at Vader and Caedus. The time between "starts to use Dark Side for good purposes" and "so utterly Drunk on the Dark Side and forgetful that you're a caricature of yourself doing everything solely For the Evulz" ranges from three weeks to three minutes. By the time he was actually in a position of power, even if he had had good intentions at some point, they were long gone and replaced by evil nuttiness. And if this guess is right, he was severely brain damaged shortly before making those xenophobic policies, which explains his atrocious long-term planning skills.

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"

Was just Obi-Wan being being ironic. It kinda fits his subtly amused persona in the original series.

• Either that, or it was a big Late to the Punchline moment for him; "Oh! Hey, now I-" * lightsaber*
• Might as well bring it up, Obi-Wan isn't saying "Only Sith use absolutes" he's saying "Only Sith deal in absolutes." Anakin had made the unambigious statement that any opposition would be met with as an enemy. Obi-Wan, while certainly anticipating his Duel to the Death with Anakin, still made an attempt at negotiation and bring his friend back to the light side. Obi-Wan is smart enough to know there are some people you can't negotiate with and you can't let yourself become a victim of their violence, but the entire conversation wasn't Anakin resigning to kill Obi-Wan, but the other way around. Anakin had already made his choice.

Anakin fulfilled the Prophecy by carrying out the attack on the Temple

The Prophecy stated that the Chosen One would bring balance to the force, during the prequels there were only two Sith while there were signifigantly more Jedi. By killing the Jedi at the temple and hunting down survivors of the purge, Anakin did bring balance to the force, from a certain point of view.

• • While the meaning of 'balance to the force' has been discussed endlessly it's worth pointing out that even after Anakin/Vader's purges the jedi numbers never dropped below at least 3 (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Jedi_Purge#Known_survivors_or_unaccounted_Jedi_as_of_the_end_of_the_Purge.3B_1_BBY). Ignoring EU this explanation might work (though the balance is disrupted as soon as obi/yoda die, leaving it 2 sith to 1 jedi, then 1 jedi to 0 sith later) but any hint of balance = same number goes out the window as soon as the EU is included as a large number survive from the clone wars to the NJO.
• Welcome to a very dramatic misinterpretation of the Force and the whole issue with the Balance Between Good and Evil. The Jedi religion is based on Taoism; the code of the Jedi is essentially Taoism with the serial numbers filed off. The Dark Side is not literally a matter of yin or yang (to use the classical terms); it is an imbalance in the natural balance. The Jedi, by contrast, represent the proper balance, not an extreme of one side or another.
  • But the old Jedi were out of balance. They had become stagnant, inflexible, corrupt, and tyranical. To bring proper balance to the force, both the old Jedi and the Sith had to be destroyed, and a new, in-balance, Jedi Order had to be established. Anakin's entire life is the fulfillment of the prophecy, in stages. He destroys the old Jedi and the Sith, and produces the two children who establisht he new Jedi Order.
• Anakin/Darth Vader throws Sidious into the bottomless pit, kills him, stops being Sith and thereby destroys the Sith, fulfilling the prophecy. It's as simple as that. Lucas just went with the interpretation that came up later because it made him look more sophisticated.
  • It's attitudes like that which makes Star Wars a Broken Base. None of the above theories on what "Balance to the Force" means (2 Sith / 2 Jedi or the revised Jedi Order) has been expressly stated by Lucas, but extrapolated from what was actually in the movies and related comments. He was actually pretty tight lipped on most every major plot point during the filming of the prequels including the prophecy of the chosen one, which was never brought up in the original trilogy (One of the few things he spoke out on was that Qui-Gon not fading away would be a plot point). The novelization of Revenge of the Sith supports the theory that balance required the Jedi to evolve, as Yoda realized the Sith evolved in order to survive and for there to be any hope for the Jedi Order they must do the same thing. The Old Jedi Order may not have needed to be as completely destroyed for such an act to happen, but without something as drastic there would be no reason to change.

Anakin balanced the force by wiping out all Sith and Jedi.

Ignoring Lucas and his Word of God, we enter the prologue with a Dragonlance situation much like right before the Cataclsym. The world was heavily unbalanced in favor of the Jedi who were damaging in their actions if even unintentional. Anakin turns Sith and destroys, effectively, all Jedi. This disrupts the order, again, massively in favor of the Sith. Luke, we see in the Prologues, may be a force user after Yoda's training, but far from a Jedi. He takes the Jedi name up, but he is something new. Vader kills Palpatine and in the process dies removing the last two Sith. In short, Vader wiped out all of the old order himself, save Yoda, leaving something new to form.

• See objection above.

Either Yoda or Obi-Wan killed Padme.

Force-killing somebody wouldn't leave detectable damage, right? Let's take into account that she still believes there's some good in Anakin left. What if she went after him again with her two Force-sensitive kids? No, it's better she dies now, for the greater good.

• The greater good.

Padmé died because of the birth of the twins.

It´s not like this hadn´t happened before in the Real World. The doctor droid giving this stupid explanation of no will to live probably was an attempt to be friendly to the Jedi and their beliefs, but because he was a medical droid he knew nothing of that and simply made something up.

Yoda didn't initially choose Dagobah as a place of hiding.

... ever wondered how they managed to make Padmé still look pregnant at her funeral? You're welcome.

The Clones that shot Aayla Secura had their Blasters on Stun to try and hide her.

They didn't want to kill her, but knew they had to lest other troopers come and do it. So they decided to merely stun her and claim they had done it, as would be shown on camera and thus not looked into. The Stun Shots at the time resembled regular shots because when they wished to capture someone, it would look like they had been shot and killed and thus dissuade anyone else from rescuing them, allowing the Troops to encounter no resistance when they collected 'the corpse'. The shots wouldn't leave blast marks on them, explaining her lack of burn marks. However, they hadn't figured how many of them would stun her, too many stunnings being fatal, thus when the first guy shot, the rest followed suite and accidentally killed her anyway, albeit painlessly, unlike just shooting her. Or, if you like her, the plan succeeded and she's still alive. I dunno, I'm just trying to Hand Wave the lack of marks for them.

Anakin's dreams of Padme's death were induced by Palpatine.

Padme wouldn't have died without the visions, and Anakin wouldn't have turned. The Force itself, being nominally good or at least neutral, wouldn't have any reason to induce them, but Palpatine certainly would.

• Palpatine is shown to be aware of the dreams, but there is no indication that Anakin ever told him on or off-screen.

Padme subconsciously used the Force to kill herself after giving birth.

She knew Anakin would never stop looking for her if she survived, and that Palpatine would either corrupt or kill their kids if he ever learned of their existence. Only if Vader and the Emperor heard she was dead, and imperial agents confirmed it was her actual body at the funeral, would infant Luke and Leia ever be safe. Weighing her own broken-hearted future against such a threat to the twins, she tapped into her children's own Force gifts and channeled it to assault her birth-weakened body, committing suicide by a means the medical droid couldn't perceive or diagnose.

• Or it may truly have been subconscious: after everything that's happened, she really did lose the will to live. It's been stated further up the page that severe depression does affect your physical health, and either her latent Force sensitivity or her children's intensified that effect due to her mental/emotional distress. While she probably would have survived (albeit after a serious Heroic BSOD), her having just given birth to twins weakened her to the point where this could push her over the edge. So in effect, she was so depressed that she wished she was dead, and the Force granted that wish.

Mace Windu was not just reflecting Force Lightning back at Palpatine.

He was using Drain Life on Palpatine as well.

Palpatine used the force to weaken Dooku

He only lasted like five minutes. why? he was alone with Palpatine, he could do something to dooku before the battle(or in the middle of the battle) to made dooku lose. Why? because it was his plan all along, with dooku defeated, the jedis showed just how powerful they are, Palpatine was able to use it against them. Specially since Dooku was a jedi, once. He knew that the only way to deffeat them is made them a public menace. Of course, since the phantom menace his objective was to have anakin as his disciple and dooku was only a puppet.'

• • If we go by only the movie, it's clear that Dooku was actually doing pretty well in, all things considered, a one-on-two fight by incapacitating one of his opponents and largely keeping Anakin at bay until he taunted him and Anakin channeled the Dark Side and promptly severed both of Dooku's hands. I don't think Palpatine did much at all during the actual battle, he set everything up so that Dooku could be conveniently removed (among many other steps he took to neatly wrap up the Clone Wars and start the Empire), his greatest role in the battle was in making absolutely sure that Anakin finished Dooku. Then we get into the theory that Dooku threw the fight as posed by the ROTS novelization, though that's almost a disputable thing.

Mace Windu didn't die.

In the lightsabre battle he only lost a hand, and we never saw his body after he was thrown out of the window. Jedis have telekinetic powers, which he used to slow down his fall. It took him a while to heal and escape Coruscant, and during that time Obi-Wan and Yoda already gone into hiding, so he didn't know where they were. As far as he knew, they, as well as all the other Jedis, were dead. He decided to go to exile to some remote planet. The planet was so remote that he only heard about the Rebel Alliance and Luke Skywalker once they'd already beaten the Empire, which is why he didn't join them during episodes IV, V, and VI.

Wiping C-3PO's memory was not only in everyone else's best interest. It was for his own.

We know that C-3PO is not the best droid at keeping his mouth shut. No one wanted him spilling the beans about Luke and Leia or anything else important. That knowledge could make him a rather important target for the Empire eventually if anyone figured out he knew this stuff (of course, so would R2-D2, but he can acually keep a secret). But anyone who still complains about how unfair that would be for him, there's another aspect to remember.

He was built by Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. He was literally made by the enemy. Even if he was made years before the guy went to the Dark Side, that is still a rather concerning tidbit of information for the random Rebel member. They'd likely worry about ideas like C-3PO being a traitor passing on information to his "Maker" or that his whole personality was simply an act to disguise his true competence as a credible threat. Undoubtedly, anyone who figured that out would likely prefer to blast the possible threat and replace him with a droid with a less unnerving origin. The only way to prevent this type of situation would be to prevent the knowledge of C-3PO's connection to Darth Vader from being known.

This also explains why R2-D2, at no point in the original trilogy, gives any indication that he or C-3PO have ever dealt with or know anything about several characters. The closest he ever comes is claiming that he used to belong to Obi-Wan in order to pass on Leia's message, which leads to Obi-Wan instantly denies ever owning him (and is correct technically). The two droids might argue and insult each other (at least, it sounds like R2-D2 returns some of C-3PO's comments...), but they are best friends at the end of the day. The little droid is not going to let C-3PO get destroyed by a trigger-happy Rebel if he can help it, so he keeps quiet about any information that could be used to connect the protocol droid to Darth Vader. Hence, R2-D2 acts ignorant of Yoda's identity and why he never points out "Hey, Luke. By the way, I used to hang out with your dad and he's actually the evil guy on the Death Star." Because digging around in R2-D2's past could lead to questions about C-3PO's.