Emperor Palpatine

The greatest trick the Sith ever played was patience. A mild senator from Naboo spent decades being underestimated in plain sight, manufacturing a blockade here, a war there, always the reasonable man reluctantly accepting emergency powers he had written himself. By the time the Jedi realized the Sith Lord they hunted was chairing their briefings, he had an army with a kill order stitched into its bones. Order 66 ended a thousand generations of Jedi in an afternoon, and the Republic voted itself into an Empire to thunderous applause. As Emperor he ruled through fear and lightning, grinding apprentices into weapons and discarding them, until the weapon he trusted most threw him down a reactor shaft to save a son. Even that was not the end; death itself proved negotiable for a man who studied it that long. The galaxy's wars all trace to one appetite, patient as a spider: unlimited power, sincerely meant.