Darth Bane/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: While Bane believes the Brotherhood of Darkness has weakened the Sith with its togetherness and loyalty, it's actually said that a large part of that is Kaan's using the Force power Battle Meditation at times to alter the Brotherhood's opinions; ironically, something that Bane would respect. Kaan even tries it on Bane. Needless to say, it doesn't work.
• Complete Monster: Amusingly, both Bane and Zannah are this as compared to the other Sith. Yet we're supposed to root for them.
  • Don't forget Darth Cognus. It seems to be a job requirement for the Sith.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Bane practically lives with these. His first Crowning Moment of Awesome is undoubtedly when he totally destroys Sirak, an Academy student who had up until that point been believed to be invincible and who had trashed Bane before. Later, Bane defeats Kas'im, his old lightsaber master and the greatest lightsaber duelist in the galaxy, by dropping a building on him; not to mention his manipulating the Brotherhood of Darkness into destroying itself. Zannah has a particularly Squick version of this when she throws the Jedi off their trail by driving her cousin insane and sending him out to be slaughtered. And Caleb gets one for standing his ground against Darth Bane by sheer force of will (not the literal Force). This one doesn't last, however.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Despite attempts to avoid it in the novels, some readers only come away with the belief that Bane is awesome. Zannah gets some of this treatment as well.
• Epileptic Trees: There's really no way to word this in a non-spoilery way. At the very end of Dynasty of Evil, the all-but defeated Bane attempts to use the Ritual of Essence Transfer as a last-ditch effort to win the fight between him and Zannah. Zannah defeats Bane and casts his soul / spirit / mind / whatever out, but enough of Bane sort of "stayed behind" to cause her to unconciously flex her left hand repeatedly - something Bane had done throughout the book to calm a tremor. This led to a great deal of confusion among a great deal of fans until author Drew Karpyshyn posted a public apology(for the unintentional ambiguity of the scene) and clarification on his website.(Zannah won, Bane is gone).
  • The most insidious version of this theory was that not only did Bane possess Zannah, but that he body-jumped from Sith Lord to Sith Lord for the next millennium, up to and including Palpatine, effectively retconning quite a bit of the movies. Karpyshyn was specifically shooting down this tree.
  • Also, Set, who had obtained Darth Andeddu's holocron by the end of DOE is believed to become Palpatine.
    • Other RPG materials have long since jossed that theory.
      • Not to mention that the guy clearly thought the Rule Of Two was idiocy, unlike Palpatine.
• Evil Is Cool: About only half the reason this series works.
• God Mode Stu: Bane is such a Villain Sue it overlaps with this.
• Idiot Plot: The second book requires the entire Jedi Order to be idiots in order to work. And considering the portrayal of Jedi in pretty much every other work in the series...
  • Considering how they are portrayed in the KOTOR games, it is entirely believable they would be that arrogant. And if you're comparing them to the Jedi in the prequel movies, lets just say you're opening the floodgates.
    • There are over ten knights when Darovit is killed. Not a single Jedi ponders "Hey, this guy would've been ten at Ruusan!" Not a single Jedi elects to search the premises thoroughly. Not a single Jedi thinks 'apprentice!' not a single kriffing Jedi thinks he killed some of our greatest warriors and put up no fight at all, isn't that weird?
• Moral Event Horizon: Oddly, Bane crosses this for most when he murders a couple of children to survive, yet readers still like him. So its more a Kick the Dog or I Did What I Had to Do moment. Zannah also has such a moment after torturing her cousin to madness and using him to deflect attention from the Sith, though for some other readers it's when she destroys another womans mind with her sorcery just because the woman was a romantic rival.
• Stupid Evil: While Kaan was not exactly a mastermind, Bane is in error when he believes that his way is much smarter and better for the Sith. When creating the Rule Of Two, it simply never occurred to him that he might not be able to find a suitable apprentice to carry on the Sith Order. And it also never occurred to him that he might end up dying or weakening with age before the apprentice challenged him. And it also never occurred to him that even if everything worked out just peachy for him and Zannah, eventually the future Sith might be eliminated (or at least weakened) when one of those two possibilities came to pass. Revan and Malak at least had a buttload of Dark Jedi working for them, any of whom could have taken up the mantle of Sith Lord if both of them died unexpectedly. Kaan's Brotherhood could have also survived the sudden death of any one or two Sith. By comparison, the Rule Of Two assumes that absolutely nothing will go wrong and that the cycle of "apprentice kills and replaces master in a fair fight" will continue uninterrupted for as long as it takes to bring down the Jedi and the Republic. And as we know, things didn't work out that way, and the Sith were finally wiped out. (Bane likely would have thought that Mara Jade, Vergere, and Lumiya didn't count. And when Darth Krayt activates Bane's holocron, the holocron tells him that he doesn't count.) When you think about it, the Sith might very well have survived a lot longer if not for Bane's stupidity.
• Villain Sue: Bane to absurd degrees. Completes training to become the greatest Sith alive in a fraction of the time it'd take others, defeats all the greatest fighters ever...really, every fight he's in is just to showcase how awesome he's become and let Karpyshyn show off his badass Stu.
  • Cognus might qualify
  • Githany also qualifies, given how often she is given credit for being beautiful and manipulative.
• Wangst: The first book positively drowns in it
  • Well, it does until the third act where Bane finally stops trying to grasp for the Brotherhood's approval, after learning how much they've ruined the Sith. After that, he's less wangst and more badass.