Darth Malgus was born Veradun in Imperial space in 3700 BBY and raised by an adoptive father who told him, approvingly, that he would be a tremendous asset to the Empire. He killed a Twi'lek servant on the family estate as a child, was sent to the Sith Academy on Dromund Kaas, and became one of the most effective military commanders the resurgent Sith Empire produced.
A villain introduced by a trailer
He is an unusual case: Malgus first appeared as an unnamed Sith in the "Deceived" cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, released in 2009 and voiced by Jamie Glover, and was only identified afterwards through the game's Holonet databank. For a couple of years he existed almost entirely as three minutes of pre-rendered animation that a great many people had watched.
The Sacking of Coruscant
What that trailer shows is the operation he is remembered for. While the Republic negotiates in good faith on Alderaan, Malgus leads a strike on Coruscant, destroys the Jedi Temple, and hands the Empire a treaty on its own terms. It is one of the very few times Star Wars has shown a peace conference used as a weapon, and Paul S. Kemp's novel Deceived (Del Rey, 2011) is built around it.
Eleena Daru
The relationship at the centre of the character is with Eleena Daru, a Twi'lek he took on Geonosis and who is, technically, his slave. Kemp's novel takes it seriously enough to be uncomfortable: Malgus loves her, the Sith code holds that attachment is weakness, and what he eventually does about that contradiction is the most revealing thing in his file.
Breaking the chains
His later arc is a rebellion against his own side. Malgus concludes that the Empire's aristocracy, its Dark Council and its politics are a cage, declares a New Empire, and is put down for it. The line he uses about it — that he has broken his chains and will never again have a master — is the neatest statement of what the Sith are supposed to want and why an actual Sith Empire cannot permit it.
The written Malgus
He also narrates a stretch of Book of Sith, in journal form, which gives him something most game villains never get: a prose voice. It is vain, articulate and unmistakably the voice of a man who thinks rage is a discipline.
Why he works
Because he is a Sith Lord whose ambition is coherent. Malgus is not chasing immortality or a superweapon; he wants a Sith Order that means what it says, and the Empire he serves is the main obstacle to it.
