Seems to me that the clone body was deteriorating because it was not able to contain his immense power. So although he may have been physically weaker, that doesn’t mean he was less powerful at all.
The body was slowly deteriorating. It’s not like he couldn’t use the force or else his body would be destroyed. We saw him use his powers when he TK’d and drained the dyad.
It is possible that Palpatine's initial clone vessel may have still contained the entirety of his power -- hence Kylo's comment upon first encountering him:
(Which scales pre-dyad Palpatine above the likes of Snoke and Luke.)
However, his vessel was an imperfect/errored replica of the original, and therefore could not sustain the immense power that Palpatine wielded without continuous life support via the Ommin Harness:
That's why Palpatine wanted to transfer his essence into Rey. Her body was, essentially, a perfect vessel that was capable of housing his essence:
But when Palpatine absorbed the dyad juice from Rey and Ben, his body was rejuvenated, and subsequently transformed into a suitable vessel(which made Rey irrelevant):
That said, while pre-dyad Palpatine may have still housed the sum total of his power, I do not believe that he was capable of tapping-into/utilizing said power to its full capacity(likely because it would speed up the deterioration process), as Rey indicated that post-dyad Palpatine was even stronger than he had previously been:
So it would seem that post-dyad Palpatine > pre-dyad Palpatine for two major reasons:
a.) He could indeed tap into the full breadth of his powers without suffering any undesirable side-effects to his physical body.
b.) He was fully independent, and no longer reliant on dark side tech to survive.
__________________
"I am tired of Earth. These people.
I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
Ok makes sense. He also absorbed their power making him even stronger than before. The novel said something along the lines of “their power was now his”
The RoS novelization does imply that the dyad juice may have amped Palpatine's power to some unknown extent, but the more recent Star Wars Book states that the dyad simply "revivified" his body.
Either way, post-dyad Palpatine > pre-dyad Palpatine.
__________________
"I am tired of Earth. These people.
I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
Idk if this is canon but the galaxy of heroes description says “with his immense knowledge and mastery of the dark side, the sith eternal emperor is more formidable than ever before” (referring to pre-dyad amp Palpatine)
Last edited by xPRIMEx on Dec 23rd, 2020 at 02:53 AM
But why mention Sith Lord at all? Putting that title in does leave at least a small amount of ambiguity.
But then a lot of source book quotes do that.
Which is just another reason one off source books quotes cant define canon on their own IMO.
Having said that, now that we know Snoke was a clone of Palpatine, that may give more reason to believe he could have been his equal (to an extent). Clearly he was never his equal in the same time period though.
Last edited by Darth Thor on Dec 23rd, 2020 at 10:49 AM