10 Movie Characters Who Died Breaking Their Own Rules

2. Emperor Palpatine - Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

The Rule: The Rule of Two.

Star Wars' famous "Rule of Two" is a Sith philosophy which dictates that only two Sith Lords should exist at any one time - one master and one apprentice.

And despite how stringently Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) appears to adhere to Sith dogma throughout the Star Wars saga, he actively betrays it to his own eventual undoing.

While the exact particulars of the Rule of Two are ambiguous at best - and some fans see it more as a guideline than an out-and-out demand - the Emperor nevertheless facilitates by his own demise by so dangerously juggling Darth Vader (David Prowse) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as his potential apprentices.

After all, Vader has clear aspirations to do away with the Emperor entirely and rule the galaxy with his son Luke, and it hardly requires a mastermind-level intellect for Palpatine to deduce the possibility of Vader and Luke, whether good or evil, teaming up to kill him.

By having two duelling prospects in play at once, the Emperor sealed his own fate - being lobbed down a shaft by Vader and "killed."

His spirit was technically resurrected in The Rise of Skywalker, of course - as a shambling zombie approximation of Palpatine, really - but that's a whole other ball of headache-inducing wax.