If you watch the prequels exclusively for paying attention to the rise of Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine, they are great. He manitulates everyone constantly for his own benefit, without ever appearing to want power for himself. He starts a trade war in the first film in order to get himself elected Chancellor. The minute he becomes a Chancellor he contracts out for an army and waits ten years for it to get built, then causes another war, and shazam, he has an army to come to the rescue. Then he finally executes the old guard Jedi, puts his new army in place, and he's in like Flynn as the Emperor.
"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design" - Emperor Palpatine