Originally posted by Intrepid37
This is exactly why I hate Mace-topics.Palpatine's fear led to a shatterpoint, allowing Mace to win. But it wasn't Palpatine's real fear (Mace thought so), it was Anakin's fear. Palpatine misdirected the fear so it seemed like his own and Mace realizes this at the end of the fight. Palpatine wanted to lose.
You're just speculating that's how it happened, there's no proof that Sidious was holding back and wanted to lose.
Personally I don't see how Palpatine/Anakins fear played into Windu beating him. The novel makes it clear that it was actually by tricking Palpatine into diverting some of his speed into a grip on the slippery ledge that enabled Mace to win.
Plus its non-canon since once again, Anakin isn't there in the movie, thus Windu couldn't be feeling their fear.
Alright. Mace feels Anakin in the Force:
Feeling for its shatterpoint.
He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back to the here and the now... And it led him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead.
The chosen one was here.
Mace feels the shadow's (Palpatine's) shatterpoint and acts on it:
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.
Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop.
Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.
Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.
Mace says that Palpatine was defeated by his own fear:
Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.
"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."
"Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frightened old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?"
"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear."
Palpatine says it wasn't his own fear:
"Fool," he said.
He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.
"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"
Mace feels that it wasn't Palpatine's fear at all, but Anakin's:
He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind-And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all.
That should be sufficient.
That doesn't prove he was holding back while fighting, it only proves Mace thought it was Palpatine's fear, not Anakin and that Palpatine wasn't scared. The fact that he wasn't scared doesn't mean he was holding back, mainly because he was overconfident, as all Sith Lords are.
Actually, it only strengthens Mace's case further. He thought he took full advantage of Palpatine's fear, while in fact he wasn't scared and still defeated him.
You're saying that the redirected fear led to Mace discovering Palpatine's shatterpoint.
So you're saying Palpatine knew that when Mace discovered his shatterpoint, he would lose.
I'm saying you can't know that, especially because Palpatine was so overcondifent it's highly likely that he didn't think he'd lose even if Mace discovered his shatterpoint.
It's not about Palpatine's overconfidence. He literally set the whole thing up, from implanting fear into Anakin's mind to setting up a record-device before the fight so it seemed like he'd been getting assassinated to musing in Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader how everything had gone perfectly after plan.