Emperor's Throne Room

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Death Star, Death Star II

• Affiliation:
  Empire

• 

From the Movies

Located at the pinnacle of a slender command tower at the second Death Star's northern pole, the Emperor's throne room served as the base of operations for Palpatine during his visit to the battle station. From this lofty locale, Palpatine could survey the cosmos itself and reflect on the order he had carved from a rotting Republic. A circular viewport lined with a web-like framework provided a stunning view.

Palpatine would sit in contemplation in his throne, banks of armrest controls keeping him in touch with his countless underlings. Entrance to the throne room was monitored by the Emperor's Royal Guards, loyal and deadly sentinels robed in crimson. The stark interior of the throne room overlooked the industrial guts of the battle station. A narrow walkway spanned a seemingly bottomless reactor shaft.

During the Battle of Endor, the tumultuous last confrontation between Jedi and Sith occurred in the Emperor's throne room. There, the last of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker, faced the Emperor and Darth Vader. A deadly lightsaber duel ensued, and Luke, bolstered by the hateful energies of the dark side, managed to cripple Vader. But in the end, Luke refused to succumb to the dark side. When the Emperor unleashed deadly Force lightning into the young Jedi, Luke's pleas for help reached deep into Vader's forgotten past. The Dark Lord renounced his connection to the dark side, and turned against his master.

Emperor Palpatine plummeted into the reactor shaft of the second Death Star, dying in a blaze of blue energy.

From the Expanded Universe

The Emperor's throne room is far more than a figurative gesture to Palpatine's power. It is a fully functional command center with complete access to all the systems aboard the station. Furthermore, the Emperor held such esteem that Imperial command ships featured throne rooms as well, in anticipation should Palpatine ever deign to visit a starship.

Aboard the Death Star, the 100-story throne room command tower was more shielded than any other part of the station. The surrounding hull was doubly reinforced, rendering the tower virtually impregnable from outside attack.

Beneath the throne room were a series of royal living quarters for the Emperor, his bodyguards and advisors. All entrances to the throne room were lined with security scanners and traps to prevent unauthorized personnel from gaining admittance.

Behind the Scenes

In its earliest incarnation, the Emperor's throne room was not aboard the Death Star at all, but rather deep below a palace on the capital world, overlooking a lake of lava. An early sketch of the exterior of the second Death Star had the Emperor's throne room as a contained sphere held away from the station by two bracketing arms. In another early sketch, the throne was suspended from above by a thick cylindrical arm. Other art showed the throne in a central elevated disk connected by a bewildering array of curving catwalks.