So I'm reading The Two Towers and it got me in a big LOTR mood. Now I do have a tendency to side with the bad guys in settings and LOTR is no exception, but the trope namer of Rooting for the Empire, the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, never appealed to me. They seemed not only cartoonishly evil, but incompetent. I saw nothing in them that would be alluring.

Now M Ordor isn't so bad, even if it appears worse on the surface. The movies did kinda smurf up some parts by constantly talking about the "Age of Man" coming to an end and constantly portraying every battle as monsters vs. poor humanity. Men have served Dark Lords since the beginning and they aren't doing it so orcs can have better lives.

Anyway, the question. Given only two bad choices, who would you rather side with and why? The Dark Lord Sauron or Emperor Palpatine?