132

At the very end of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Mace Windu and Yoda had this conversation:

Mace Windu: There is no doubt. The mysterious warrior was a Sith.

Yoda: Always two there are....no more...no less. A master and an apprentice.

When did he learn about the secret Rule of Two? And, how?

Any evidence from Legends?

3
  • 33
    Everything, Yoda knows, does he not.
    – cjm
    Mar 27, 2012 at 15:40
  • 72
    He put one and one together obviously...
    – NominSim
    Sep 28, 2012 at 16:08
  • 3
    While Darth Bane's creation of the Rule of Two was a mere hundred-ish years before Yoda's birth, Darth Bane & Darth Zannah faked the death of the last of the Sith when Zannah drove her cousin mad, gave him the lightsabers of the Jedi they had just killed, and let the Jedi find him and assume he was Sith. Bane's intention was for the Sith to not be known until it was time to step forth and take the galaxy. Nov 16, 2015 at 19:42

5 Answers 5

55
+150

In the book Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force (pages 134-135), the story of Almas and a Jedi named Kibh Jeen is told. Jeen and his master had gone to the planet Almas in the Cularian system to investigate a "powerful infection of dark side surround the fortress on Almas."

The fortress was known to be "an ancient Sith Fortress" but "the Jedi and the Republic forgot about the Cularin system" until an explorer rediscovered it.

While there, Kibh Jeen killed his master and succumbed to the dark side. He later dominated the minds of some pirates and "unleashed his forces" on the third planet of the Cularin system. This was referred to as the "Dark Jedi Conflict."

After seven years a Jedi Knight and her Padwan organized the Cularin system into an armada and lured the pirates into a trap. Kibh Jean did not escape and

Before he died, he was heard spouting gibberish about there always being no more or less than two Sith.

The entry by Jedi Master Lanius Qel-Bertuk (who was headmaster of the Almas Jedi Academy later asked,

Were Kibh Jeen's dying words about the Sith a threat or a warning?

Also, he stated that

Although the answers may be found within that fortress, these are not answers we should pursue without extreme caution.

The Academy at Almas was destroyed during the Jedi Purge, so the confirmation of Jeen's statement about the Rule of Two may have been researched and confirmed. The entry by Master Qel-Bertuk was made in 53 B.B.Y. which would allow for enough time for the question to be answered.

5
  • 5
    @SachinShekhar: part of the Jedi Council, with access to all the records of this, which naturally would have been studied when a new Sith lord came to light?
    – Jeff
    Apr 14, 2013 at 13:59
  • 1
    Since Yoda is the oldest Jedi and the Grand Master, it can probably be assumed he knows plenty of history.
    – Treborcram
    Apr 15, 2013 at 0:59
  • 2
    "Were Kibh Jeen's dying words about the Sith a treat or a warning?" Trick or treat?! Sep 26, 2013 at 9:57
  • a book which was (allegedly) released in 2007, 8 years after Menace
    – n611x007
    May 19, 2017 at 4:49
  • @n611x007 So what? Things can be explained long after the fact. It just means the answer was ‘we don’t know’ in between. Feb 26, 2022 at 2:56
60

This is an educated guess and I don't have solid backing for it, but Yoda at the time of The Phantom Menace was almost 900 years old. That would put his birth and adolescence just a hundred or so years after Darth Bane "reorganized" the Sith Order, and he would have been at the height of his adventuring career during the time of some extremely powerful Sith, such as Vectivus, Gravid and Tenebrous. So, if any Jedi knows of the Rule of Two, it would be Yoda.

Ki-Adi-Mundi's statement in TPM that "the Sith have been extinct for a millennia" probably referred to the Order as it existed before Bane, a near-mirror of the Jedi Order with several masters and hundreds of practitioners; in short, a serious threat (as had been proven by several wars in ancient times). After the Rule of Two was put in place, the Sith masked their presence in the Force and went into physical hiding as well, so the Jedi, for a time, thought the Sith completely wiped out. However, Darth Tenebrous's master's opening of a "hole" in the Force, around 200BBY, allowed the Jedi to sense the continued Dark Side presence. After that time, until the Clone Wars, the Sith re-hid themselves, but the Jedi from that time knew that Sith still existed, regardless of the threat the Jedi may have considered them to be.

So, the Jedi Masters knew that the Sith weren't completely gone for the entire millennia after Bane, despite Ki-Adi-Mundi's statement in TPM, and Yoda (who would have been a powerful "mystic" by 200BBY) would have been able to divine at least some of their ways.

20

There is no canon answer I'm aware of. The closest thing to "official" answer is a snippet from the now-defunct starwars.com page "Architect of the Sith" (July 21, 2000).

Although encounters with Jedi were rare, the Jedi did eventually learn of this new Sith structure, and thought themselves rid of this menace.

1

This was addressed in the short story Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasty (2006) by Abel G. Peña.

A former Jedi named Kibh Jeen was seduced by the dark side of the Force and was ultimately confronted and killed by several Jedi who reported his dying words to the Jedi Council. Yoda is old enough to recall these words directly, even if he didn't think them especially relevant at the time.

The Jedi heard next to nothing of the Sith after the Battle of Rusaan. There were the vague threats by dark sider Kibh Jeen at his moment of desperation during the Dark Jedi Conflict (circa 150 years before the Battle of Naboo), who spouted seeming gibberish about there always being no more or less than two Sith, but few Jedi gave his mad utterances any credence.

Read Online - Star Wars - Evil Never Dies

0
-4

Yoda learned the Rule of Two directly from the ghost of Darth Bane, as seen in this YouTube clip of Yoda visiting Darth Bane's tomb:

The clip is from Star Wars: The Clone Wars The Lost Missions Season 6 Episode 13 - Sacrifice.

1
  • 8
    This doesn't explain how he knew about it at the time of The Phantom Menace Dec 2, 2016 at 19:34

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.