Sidious or Mace

[thekingofgondor]

I'm not positive whether Palpatine was feigning losing to Mace before Anakin came in, but I don't see the logic in it (not that much of the second half of that film had much to begin with) for Palps, since he pretty much knew he already had Anakin hook, line, and sinker with his whole "I can help you prevent death" pitch. Anakin had no misconceptions about who was "good" and who was "evil" - he was even the one to out Palpatine as a Sith Lord and wanted him arrested. However, he believed his being able to save his wife and unborn children hinged on Palpatine's help, and after Mace rebuked Anakin's plea to simply arrest Palpatine rather than kill him, Anakin decided saving his wife was worth selling his soul to the Devil, so to speak. Palpatine was still very powerful, so I would still have expected him to be able to make a quick recovery after taking a beating from Mace and finish him off quickly (which I think was to destroy any shot at Anakin making amends, since I'm sure at least some of the Jedi Council would have agreed that murdering the Chancellor of the Republic, Sith Lord or not, was against everything they stood for).

Seeing as Mace was counted among the best lightsaber duelists in the galaxy, if not *the* best, it wouldn't be implausable that he could have beaten Palpatine when Yoda could not. I'd imagine the fact that someone as wise as Yoda being completely fooled for so long and in such a devastating way probably crushed his spirit (not to mention the death of so many other Jedi, friends, and even children at the hand of one of their own star pupils) enough for Palpatine, who was probably at his most-confident with all he'd just accomplished, to defeat him. Prior to that, Palpatine was still "in hiding," trying to manipulate the galaxy from behind-the-scenes, and I'm sure there was enough chance for failure that he was still a bit nervous about something going wrong when he fought Mace.