Palpatine’s manipulation helped turn this Jedi to an Inquisitor

An upcoming Star Wars book will reveal the origin story of two inquisitors. The book, called Rise of the Red Blade by Delilah S. Dawson will tell the story of Iskat Akaris, who served during the Clone Wars and during the Battle of Geonosis. Not long after this battle, Palpatine began to manipulate her to join the dark side.

Palpatine was a master manipulator and his biggest target throughout the prequel era was Anakin, and he was entirely successful in turning him to the dark side. But he was too good at what he did, and way too many steps ahead of everyone to focus on just Anakin. He knew he needed more Jedi to turn, and the ones who did, became Inquisitors, including Iskat Akaris.

As usual, his methods were backhanded, and he always feigned having the best intentions at heart for whomever he was targeting. Unsurprisingly, there were several Jedi who were fed up with the Jedi Order at the time and their increasing involvement with the political situation in the galaxy. Instead of being peacemakers, the Jedi were heavily involved in the war and working as soldiers and generals for the Republic.

Iskat, the future Inquisitor from Dawson’s book, was experiencing similar feelings of dissatisfaction, and in a conversation with Chancellor Palpatine, the later did his best to listen to her, stroke her ego, show her grand visions of the future, one which he had already envisioned would be as an Inquisitor working for the Empire. Similar to his tactics with Anakin, Palpatine made sure to tell Iskat that she has a very “bright future” and that the Jedi Council is in her way.

As with Anakin, everyone else that Palpatine manipulated easily fell into his trap and began to trust him. This trust became their downfall. Later on, Iskat Akaris was assigned to train younglings at the Jedi Temple by the Council, and everyone knows the fate of those younglings, and now we know the fate of one of their teachers as well.