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star wars - Would Vader Know He's Becoming Redundant?


In Revenge of the Sith:




Anakin and Obi-Wan make it to the command deck of Dooku's ship and Palpatine urges Anakin to kill Dooku. Anakin has every chance to see the look of surprise and betrayal on Dooku's face before Anakin kills him.

Along the way, over the next 20 years, if Anakin didn't know it, he'd have more than enough of a chance to learn that Dooku was Sidious' protege and is well aware of the Rule of Two and of how eager and willing Sidious was to dispose of apprentice when needed to create an even stronger apprentice.



And in The Empire Strikes Back:



Vader suggests to Sidious/Emperor Palpatine that "Young Skywalker" would be a powerful ally if he could be turned to the Dark Side.



But this would create problems with the Rule of Two, since that would result in three powerful Sith.


And later, in The Return of the Jedi:



Emperor Palpatine says that Luke will come to Vader and once Luke is on the new Deathstar, the Emperor/Sidious begins to use the same techniques on Luke that he used on Anakin. Even though it's been 20 years, Vader is no dummy, he knows what's going on.

It would seem that Vader's only chance is to influence Luke as soon as he is turned to the dark side and get him to turn against Sidious immediately, but the Emperor's plan is clearly to make Luke so angry he gives into the Dark Side and, in a flurry of passion, attacks Palpatine, then gets into a duel with Vader. (And perhaps if Vader had NOT parried Luke's blow, Luke might have killed Palpatine right then, which would benefit Vader.) This is not a time where Vader could reasonably expect to influence Luke to think enough to redirect his anger toward Palpatine and away from himself (Vader).




I suspect that when Lucas was working on the original trilogy, he hadn't yet come up with the Rule of Two and had not planned for that in his writing, then later, when writing the prequels, had decided it would work for them, but, of course, I don't know this.


Is there any in-universe explanation for why Vader would willingly participate in this plan, knowing that his chance of surviving it is so slim and that he's essentially being used as a tool to create his own replacement?



Answer



As a Sith apprentice, Vader would not only know this, but he would expect it. The role of every Sith apprentice is to eventually die in service to his master, or at the hands of his Sith master. The only way to escape this eventuality would be to kill his master, at which point he'd no longer be an apprentice.


So Vader wouldn't have been too bothered with the implications of Luke being courted to potentially become a Sith apprentice. After having been the Emperor's apprentice for so long, he surely would have known the Emperor's cruelty and that it's the way of the Sith to plot and manipulate and use others, including their own apprentice, as pawns.


Most-likely, as Vader was already an old man by then(Edit: as Tango notes below, he's actually only middle aged), and this was his son we're talking about, it wouldn't have bothered him too much. There'd also be no reason for him to feel like Luke was a rival waiting to take his place. It would take a while for Luke to be as powerful as him in using the darkside of the Force, and in his mind, he probably saw himself killing Sidious in the future and taking Luke as his own apprentice.


Besides, the Emperor had taken on more than one pupil in the past. This has usually been argued as the Sith master hedging his bets, keeping a pupil in the wings in case his formal apprentice dies (which probably happens frequently in Sith apprenticeships since they don't coddle their apprentices like the Jedi do).


Also, though the Rule of Two is mainly designed to strengthen the Sith (as wraith808 explains), it also gives some protection to the master, as two weaker apprentices could potentially kill a master stronger than either of them on their own. So letting the Emperor break the rule of two and bring Luke to the darkside would have weakened the Emperor's position as much as it threatened Vader.


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