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The Dyad prophecy: Translated through history, from Bane to Sidious.




In this analysis I will attempt to convince you that Darth Bane's infamous Rule of Two was actually a mistranslation of the Dyad Prophecy. And to do that, we'll need to learn how to translate two archaic, dead, fictional languages nobody has ever seen before: Ancient Sith Runes, and Sith Eternal Text.
Okay so first we have this from the Rise of Skywalker visual dictionary.

It's a Sith Eternal incantation, carved in the Old Tongue, translated from the Sith Runes you see above it, in red, from the Rise Of Skywalker visual dictionary.
The book goes on to say that the incantation denoting the nature of the Force Dyad is nearly identical to the text describing Darth Bane's revolutionary Rule of Two. But that inflection marks and line breaks change specific meaning in certain words.
Which made me wonder if Darth Bane's inspiration for the Rule of Two originated in a mistranslation of the Dyad prophecy.
So using my limited knowledge of biblical translation and my vast knowledge of Star Wars lore I attempted to decipher this heretofore unseen language….


I took Darth Bane’s
Rule of Two from his canon wiki page, 

and all I altered was “One” is now “1st” and “the other” is now “2nd”.

As you can see, this way "YUN" consistently refers to the number 2.
 “
uWAI” is an affix that modifies the word, similar to how Ancient Hebrew functions.
MIDWANOTTOI” translates to “power”, "TOK" to “to”, etc. It's all colour-coded for your convenience, and mine.

But just translating a fictional long-dead language that's never existed until now wasn't enough for me, so I attempted to reverse engineer the original prophecy this was mistranslated from.
If you've yet to see The Rise Of Skywalker consider this your spoiler warning, as we'll be discussing the ending and referencing many a plot twist.

Okay so,
They say the mistranslation occurred from inflection changes and line breaks.
Which is weird to me, you wouldn't think the line breaks would change any meaning.
So I decided maybe it was originally carved into a giant stone wall (like the dragon shouts in Skyrim,) and it was all on one line originally.


But when they translated they had to guess where to break those lines.

The original prophecy was about the Dyad in the Force.
It talks about how there's 2 individuals with 1 presence in the Force.
So that's Box (a), that's the correct translation.
The Dyad refers to Rey and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. Two halves of a whole One, a Dyad in the Force.

They both embody power. They both descend from the most powerful bloodlines ever, they’re both stupidly powerful in the Force. Rey especially learns ridiculously fast, and lifts dozens of large stones on Crait. Kylo was born of royalty, seemed to excel in his training in the Light and the Dark, and he grows to become the new Supreme Leader.
They both crave power too though. Rey grew up in abject poverty, she knows nothing of privilege or security, she falls to the Dark Side’s temptation for power every time it’s presented to her (Once on Starkiller Base, and twice on Ach-To).
Kylo’s lust for power is evident in every single film.
(In TFA he wants to destroy the Light inside him and fully immerse himself in the Dark Side. In TLJ he wants to become Supreme Leader and kills his master Snoke to achieve just that. By the time of Rise Of Skywalker his ambition is so unbridled that he travels to Exegol with the express purpose of murdering Emperor Palpatine himself and becoming the undisputed Sith Lord in the galaxy.)
So, the prophecy is about Rey and Kylo.

Box (b) is how the Sith had read it, you can see where they went wrong with the line breaks and punctuation. This early translation is what we see in the Ancient Sith Runes, I’ve colour-coded the runes that correspond to each word.

I like this especially because “power” and “crave it” share 2 out of 3 characters, only the middle character is different. This would make sense because words to communicate the concepts of what power is, and craving power, would be among the first invented in the Sith language, given how prominent those concepts are in the Sith philosophy.

I also think that the prophecy mentions "the Power of Two" but it was mistranslated as "the Rule of Two" because rule can mean like, a king's rule over his saubjects, his reign.
Which is also referred to as being in power. Rule and Power are synonyms, which one is chosen lends different connotations to the text.
My theory is that these synonyms
My theory is that these synonyms Rule and Power were switched in translation.


 Why is this important?
 A fair question, but you see if part of the prophecy says "The Power of Two will restore the Sith's ruler" then Palpatine's line in The Rise Of Skywalker "and now, the Power of Two restores the one true Emperor!" upon learning that Rey and Ben are a Dyad, is him declaring this ancient prophecy fulfilled. He assumed that was the end, but it turns out the prophecy neglects to say what happens after said Sith ruler is restored.
                                                                                                       
But we’ll explore that soon.

 So, a few hundred years later Darth Bane comes across “The Rule of Two” and he reads it like, a Rule or a Law. Believing himself to be the Sith'ari (or Sith Chosen One), he follows what he thinks is a holy commandment: "One to embody power, the other to crave it." and institutes it as a divine decree for the entire Sith religion, believing this will restore the Sith’s return to their rightful place as conquerors of the galaxy.
This would have been a few millennia after its initial mistranslation, so Bane tries to update the language to be more modern, as seen in Box (e)
"Two Halves of a whole One" indicated that a Dyad is two individuals with 1 presence in the Force.
But Bane went "Halves of a Whole’, Okay so the two described here make up the entirety of the Sith, it has to be only these 2, it can’t be more than 2, and it can’t be less than Two. No more no less".
Bane assumes “And also,” is a quirk of using such archaic language, and opts for “The other," surmising that since the rest of the text mentions 2 individuals it only makes sense for there to be a line about each of them.

And finally, after more revision from Bane's translation, it was simplified even more, as seen in Box (f) and modernized further, well after Bane’s death.
"One" and “The other" were rephrased as "the 1st" and "the 2nd" carrying roughly the same meaning, or so it seemed.’

So, here’s the entire process at once so you can see how the alterations snowballed:




As for how I figured all this out, I just tried to find redundancies in the runes/text and matched it as best I could.
Because we know what the canon
Rule of Two says, and I guessed what the Dyad prophecy says from Palpatine's quote.

For example, "
No more, no less." doesn't really fit the original runes because there's no redundancy to indicate that "No" is being used twice, so I changed it to “halves of a whole”, which when taken with the previous line “There shall be Two.”, carries a seemingly escapable meaning of just 2 Sith being the whole Sith religion.
And a different way to convey that is “There shall be
Two. No more, no less.”

As you might be able to see, we don't find the expected redundancy for the word "
YUN" or "Two" as we did in the later translations, so we can assume that the word "Two" is not used more than once. Hence why I've rephrased it to "the other".
Similarly, there is not enough redundancy for
MIDWANOTTOI or Power, so I've rephrased that as well.
Lack of expected redundancy is also why the latest translation doesn't have the title "
Power of Two" or "Rule of Two", because that word doesn't appear twice, instead I opted for the command "There should be Two" which is how Bane's decree canonically begins.

Basically it was just a matter of thinking about how mistranslations occur in real life (I’m particularly fascinated by how much the Bible was translated through the centuries and how drastically different translations can be), and trying to place myself in the character’s shoes and guess what kind of conclusions I might leap to without having the proper context and were I somewhat blinded by my own ambition.

On the note of ambition, I should disclaim now that I am in no way saying this is the correct way to translate these things, or that it was the authorial intent, or that it's even sane.
But I hope whatever we eventually find out, that it has been just as painstakingly crafted.

 If you’re still reading this then thank you very much for your patience, here is a reward of sorts. An idea I personally found immensely satisfying and triumphant.

You see, if the Dyad prophecy actually foretells the coming of Rey and Kylo and restoration of Palpatine, and consequently this defeat and final death, then this wasn't Sith prophecy at all, but a Jedi one.
Perhaps the Qui-Gon of that age (obsessed with prophecies), or maybe even a newly-redeemed Sith, received a vision from the Force, and wrote this prophecy in Ancient Sith so that everything the Sith caused to happen, every grand plan to manipulate the galaxy to their will, would ultimately result in their own extinction.

In which case Bane's mistranslation actually did delay the Sith's extinction for like 1000 years. Perhaps that was the Dark Side's effort to sabotage the Light's scheme. But eventually the Light triumphed. Palpatine suffered his final death, and we’ve no way of knowing for sure but it seems like the Sith might be truly gone now….

I guess that’s something to ponder for the next decade or so.
Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think of all this in the comments.

May the Force be with you.

Comments

  1. Hello! Thank you for the great work! I have some points though!
    I have problem with your highlighting in "Wotok tsawakmidwanottoi, yuntok hyarutmidwanottoi"
    It appears that "tsawakmidwanottoi, hyarutmidwanottoi" are verbal phrases-sentences functioning like an adverbial clause of purpose: -ottoi is a dative noun case marker denoting indirect obj. (eng.: give it to master= sith.: give master+ottoi/him/ it); here "midwan-ottoi" would be "for/to force", but it seems that the substantive is merged together with the verb "tsawak" - "to embody", then it can be described/translated as i.e. "the first [should] embody power/the first [exists] to embody power, [his purpose is to] embody power"
    My guess is [vrb*root+subst*root+ottoi] = adverbial clause of purpose or it can be a modal marker: the first [must/shall do smth], well something in-between:) While "wotok" and "yuntok" are first and second respectively.
    And it is debatable whether it is nyashqu or nyashq, though qu-version seems more probable to me!
    Otherwise great work! Appreciate the effort!

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