Who Did It Best?: Ranking Fictional Dictators (Part 1)
the best and the worst to ever do it
After a couple of introspective and bleak pieces, why not have a spot of fun? Here’s my definitive ranking of the best of the best of the fictional dictators.
Obvious spoiler alert, if you are a nerd/dweeb who cares about that stuff.
S TIER
Palpatine (Star Wars Franchise)
No depiction in modern fiction, particularly in modern cinema, better encapsulates the ideal dictator than Darth Sidious. People often evaluate dictators based on superficial metrics such as whether 'the trains ran on time' or the number of years they ruled (a technical 23 for Palpatine). That type of evaluation misses the mark of the most important question when it comes to evaluating power: why do people bother struggling with the grind to get power? As good as power feels, you need a driving force, one often beyond mere desires for domination. From that, we can answer the next most pertinent question for evaluating a tier list: considering their starting point, how much of their goal did they achieve? Armed with that, we can then rank them.
Thus, we need to define Palpatine’s true aims. No, it wasn’t galactic control, it wasn’t to make the maglev trains run on time or any nonsense like that. His goal was simpler: to commit mass murder on a galaxy-wide scale to achieve immortality. He would do so by building planet-killing weapons, and then deploying them en masse across the entire galaxy, which he could then use as part of a Dark Side ritual to attain at last, unlimited power. He’s not said so in canon, at least, not yet, of course, but this is the Sith ethos. When you boil the Sith down to their roots, this is what they ultimately all aspire to: to in essence usurp the Force and its balance and pervert it entirely to their own selves.
While it is Legends, it is exactly what the Emperor wanted in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s impossible to imagine what other goal he could have. And yes, the stated reason for why the Death Star was built after all was for ‘control’. But that’s the reason people not named Palpatine said, all his Moffs and chief backers. Recall Tarkin: “Fear would keep the local system in line, fear of this battlestation.”
It’s important to remember that Palpatine was a liar. He lied to the Senate, he lied to his friends, his apprentices (from Maul to Dooku to Vader to Kylo Ren), to the entire galaxy, and many more in between. Therefore, it’s not crazy to assume that he also lied to his military in convincing them to build the Death Star. After all, very few people will willingly sign up for a suicidal and omnicidal campaign across an entire galaxy when it benefits only him.
Palpatine did not become Emperor because he wanted or liked power, he needed to become Emperor so he could control the entire galactic economy and hyperfocus it on churning out endless planet-killers. A super-laser for every system and then—universal activation by a remote switch (much like the one he used in killing most of the Jedi via Order 66).
Of course, becoming Emperor wasn’t easy. It took him decades, starting off with basically nothing save Sith contacts (don’t overlook them; they’re also a numerous cult that lived beyond the edge of mapped space). He became a Senator, and rose quietly through the ranks. Over the course of decades, he built contacts, waged countless shadow wars, and maneuvered himself successfully into the position of Supreme Chancellor. Through guile, he built a Clone Army for the Galactic Republic, and with similar guile, he used the same to near-wipe out the Sith’s sworn eternal foe, the Jedi, fomenting a galaxy-wide civil war in the process.
But even then, as Emperor, he was not all powerful. He did not and would not posses the power to command the building of endless superlasers until later. He after all, still had to deal with constituents: the Army chief of them, but also the Senate, the Hutts, the regional lords, the megacorporations, and basically anyone with enough credits in the economy. He ruled only so far as all those other players consented to his overlordship. They surely would not assent to their own mass execution. So, he gave them reason to.
With thugs like Vader and Tarkin at his beck and call, he used them to stir the pots of a rebellion. This succeeded, as seen most recently on the Andor show. The Galactic Republic after all was extremely stable in its 1000 year reign, as shown by the fact that the only time the Republic had a civil war was when Palpatine himself had helped orchestrate it with the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Again: Palpatine, if all he cared about was power, would’ve kept things mostly the same. Only he didn’t.
There were constant genocides, constant reprisals, constant massacres. Taxes rose, people got conscripted, and for the average Galactic citizen bar a small gentry, life got worse. And with that came resistance, and that resistance birthed the funding need for the first Death Star. Just as a super aircraft carrier doesn’t get build in our world absent a military need, the same holds true for the Death Star in Star Wars.
But for Palpatine’s purpose, the Death Star was far too cumbersome, too unwieldly, too expensive as a tool of mass murder. He needed it smaller and far more mobile, but he still needed to lie, to all those aforementioned players. For as a defense project of the Galaxy’s military industrial complex, Palpatine needed to grease a lot of hands, a moonbase-sized number of hands.
Thankfully and thanks to his supreme maneuvering, the Rebellion destroyed the Death Star. Yes: I am arguing that it was all an inside job, from Andor to Galen Erso to Mon Mothma and even Tarkin’s death. Remember: the goal wasn’t to have moonbases, it was to have superlasers. Just see how the Galaxy reacted to witnessing hundreds of trillions of credits evaporate into superheated gas, with millions dead.
They gave him everything. More than everything. Palpatine at last had total, unbridled political control over the entire economy in the wake of the tragedy over Yavin. Palpatine was finally able to convince all those elite backers and supporters that the Death Star was uneconomical, save for one final half-built decoy Death Star he could use against the growing Rebel fleet. This then allowed Palpatine to finally build what he always wanted: fleets upon fleets ships with superlasers attached to them.
At Exegol, Palpatine had everything he needed—this is where all the Imperial superprofits were funneled into. With his Sith cult providing all the men he needed to man and build the ships, he abused his position as Galactic Emperor to tear through the Galaxy’s material resources and economy to build a massive fleet of superlaser-equipped star destroyers.
All he needed to do was beat the Rebels at Endor and—and ahh, what’s that? Palpatine failed to wipe out all the Jedi? And now the Last Jedi (not really, as it would turn out) has convinced Vader to kill Palpatine? Well, really: it should be Vader’s fault for doing that and failing to kill all the Jedi (that was his First Order to Vader; rewatch Episode III!) but the buck has to stop somewhere, no? And on Palpatine it should stop: it’s his own fault Luke Skywalker ended up killing him.
But of course Palpatine planned for his death, though. What good dictator wouldn’t? He even had a ready-set-go plan to conduct a scorched earth campaign on the entire galaxy via Operation Cinder to buy himself enough time on Exegol to finish building his fleet. Alas though, he failed to fully resurrect and thus hovered between half-life and death. No matter: he bought even more time, dispatching the First Order to keep the Galaxy forever scorched, forever weak.
Still, he couldn’t be a half-corpse and conduct his ritual. He needed life, actual real life. Despite having his fleet ready, he could not deploy it until he actually came back to life—otherwise, he would have done so! So he waited. Decades passed. And then, salvation!
A young girl, a child from one of his failed clone experiments (technically his granddaughter, though he’d never call her that) was found, and he contrived to bring her to him. In so doing, he nearly convinced her to let him take over her body in a soul transference ritual. She resisted only at the last moment. No matter, he was still rolling natural 20s, for it then turned out that Vader’s brat nephew had formed a rare natural Force dyad with this girl, and that alone could give Palpatine all the life he ever needed.
But Vader’s son was not the Last Jedi, as Fate would have it. Indeed, there was no Last Jedi, for the Order had been reborn in Rey later-named Skywalker. And the Force once and for all rejected Palpatine and his annihilistic plans for the galaxy, restoring balance once and for all in a flash of brilliant power.
People often rank Palpatine on how well he ran the economy, or how much order Palpatine brought, or even the appearance of power he maintained. Nonsense and none of that: he subjugated an entire Galaxy under his personal control, control which he then used to extract resources and build planet-killing machines. And he succeeded in doing all that! He would’ve gotten away with it if there hadn’t been Jedi.
Honestly, if there wasn’t a universal Force demanding balance, he’d have won. And also consider: that the death of the Galaxy would mean the meta-death of the Franchise. What is Star Wars without Tatooine, without any of the characters or planets or ideas? It doesn’t exist, it would be a different IPO. And so, Palpatine had to fail, had to die. For that alone, I give him top-billing, for I think we can also all agree Endor (and later Exegol) was rigged. The good guys had to win, even if the bad guys had the best team, the best kit, the best tools, the best plan, the best leader, the best everything.
Sauron (The Lord of the Rings Franchise)
In slight contrast to the first entry, Sauron wasn’t limited by mere decades of rule and power, but rather millennia. That alone builds a fearsome and long reputation, which is worth repeating here. After Morgoth (more on him later) fell, Sauron rallied Morgoth’s forces and (fast forward a few thousand years) built a Ring of Power which he used to subjugate a kingdom forever more advanced than any other nation, the Númenóreans. He then deceived them to their Doom and once that was done, he nearly conquered the whole of the Middle-Earth. If not for a Last Alliance of Men and Elves, he would’ve succeeded.
Even after losing his realm and his precious Ring, Sauron lingered and reformed, and he nearly (though, thanks to a Hobbit, not quite) achieved final victory. And we are still not done with him: he shall return at Morgoth’s side at Dagor Dagorath, the end battle of all battles.
In terms of mere staying power and ability to almost achieve total victory time and time again, I have to rank him in S tier. As for other factors, in terms of being an economic, military, and political leader: I also grant him high marks in each. Sauron’s economy was forever potent, capable of arming endless hordes of Orcs and other Evil creatures no matter the Age; his ability to plan grand strategic campaigns and then leave those campaigns under the nearly-always successful command of capable subordinates (such as the Witch-King) shows military aptitude; and politically? Other than very few occasions, he achieved total dominance over his peoples and creatures.
A TIER
Big Boss / Venom Snake (Metal Gear Franchise)
If you want to achieve true political and financial independence in the post-Atomic world, you need nuclear warheads. Not just that, you need a weapons platform that is mobile and capable of delivering said warheads on a global scale, hence: METAL GEAR. This is the logical premise of the entire franchise and it is the metric through which BIG BOSS can be understood.
In both the real and Metal Gear worlds, building a nuclear warhead, plus a weapons platform capable of delivering said warhead to a target, is near bloody-impossible. You need at least billions of dollars and thousands of men; it’s why only states in our real world possess nukes. Of course, the world of Metal Gear is fiction, and far different from our own, with regional hyper-fragmentation leading to the creation of micro-states run by warlords.
It is from one of these micro-states that Big Boss runs the show, unifying a cadre of loyal, hard-working ex-soldiers and scientists to resist other warlords and entire nations, such as the United States. While he does lose his little statelet time and time again (from MOTHER BASE to OUTER HEAVEN and others in between) he almost always picks himself back up again for another round. And he does succeed multiple times, if only for a moment, in building a nuclear-armed and capable Metal Gear.
That all would be impressive if the odds weren’t mounted even higher against him. He didn’t just fight rival warlords and other countries, he also had to contend with a far more-intelligent, far more superior AI in the form of the PATRIOTS. They even succeeded in killing him, twice over. All the while, he had to battle his own demons: his misbegotten clones, each trained to be as hyper-lethal as him, and each a weapon honed in on one goal: to kill Big Boss.
I would be lying if I said Big Boss wasn’t an inspiration to me and countless others. I’ll let him (or Kojima, to be more accurate) speak for himself:
Now do you remember? Who you are? What you were meant to do? I cheated death, thanks to you. And thanks to you I've left my mark. You have too. You've written your own history. You're your own man. I'm Big Boss, and you are too... No... He's the two of us. Together. Where we are today? We built it. This story - this "legend" - it's ours. We can change the world - and with it, the future. I am you, and you are me. Carry that with you, wherever you go. Thank you... my friend. From here on out, you're Big Boss.
I am, after all, Girl Boss. And you are too.
So, why not S rank? Outer Heaven, his independent warlord state in whatever form you want to call it, has only ever existed as a flash in the pan. It would need to exist more than that for me to rank him. And who knows if it ever will, with Kojima now forever-divorced from the Metal Gear franchise? I would’ve liked to see his OUTER HEAVEN dream become reality in the Metal Gear world, as a real staying force. But I don’t think we will ever see that happen, at least, not in the fictional world.
B TIER
Morgoth (The Lord of the Rings Franchise)
Many people would rank Morgoth higher than Sauron, but I think that’s a total misread of his character. While he does amass an entire armada of evil creatures, demons, and, of course, Orcs, and while he is able to lead his state to nearly conquer the entire Earth, that was not his aim. It’s important to remember Morgoth’s roots. Unlike Sauron, who was as scheming and guileful as the rest of them, building a new regime from relative scratch, Morgoth instead represents unbridled, childish rage.
After all, it was he who spoiled Eru Ilúvatar’s universe-creating song, because as an arrogant spoiled brat, he could not abide not being the center of attention. It was he that descended to the earth and filled it with malice and evil: whatever good the other Valar of Eru made, Morgoth tainted, because he could not abide, could not be made to suffer, anything else other than himself.
His goal, from creation to death, remained the same: to steal the secret fire Eru used to make life and use it himself to make new life. But the secret fire was never his to steal; the secret fire is in Eru and Eru is the secret fire. It exists beyond the temporal bounds of the universe, beyond the grasp of Morgoth’s power even at its highest highs. The best he could ever do is corrupt already existing life, which he did, eagerly, spreading his taint across every being, every rock, every tree. Thus from the outset, we have an impossible goal, and a stubborn god-child who struggles for it nonetheless.
It is the fact that he was able to corrupt enough beings to create an army, a large state, and an even better successor in Sauron that earns B tier billing, otherwise, he’d far lower in my list. When Dagor Dagorath comes, let’s all roll our eyes and deeply sigh at this petulant little whiny baby, for that’s the type of scorn this would-be godling deserves.