The Eldar empire vs humans was never explained properly. Fans can theorise that the Eldar were too busy with blood orgies to care, and the humans knew better than to disrupt that LGBT nest. They also dominated the galaxy for like sixty million years. I'm surprised there is no lore on the Orks stirring up trouble.
Which again, goes to show us that the Black Library writers never truly cared. No wonder GW never made their books canon. At least with Star Wars, the Republic grew in power AFTER the Rakatans fell. Having the humans be at the height of their technological power around the same time the Eldar dominated the galaxy makes no fucking sense. That's like saying the Republic during the time of Yoda and Obi-Wan existed around the same time the Rakatan Empire dominated the galaxy.
It should've been more like this:
Eldar Empire->Birth of Slaanesh/Fall of the Aeldari->Rise of Humanity/Dark Age of Technology->Age of Strife->Great Crusade/Horus Heresy->Modern 40K
Sure, maybe some officials like Screed, who was later an Imperial high command person, knew. That's all good and fine.
Screed only became Imperial High Command way later on. During the time of the Republic, he was just a judicial, which means that he was just some random military police dude for the Republic-which at the time, was demilitarized, so the judicial force was basically their equivalent of the Japanese SDF instead of being a proper military. If a bum like him knew who the Sith were, chances are, more educated commoners knew. At least the historians knew.
But random guys from that Disney show knowing enough that the Sith were fallen Jedi just... rubs me wrong. I recall the pre-Empire Republic and Jedi treating the Sith as a dirty secret, a shame that they wouldn't advertise enough for it to be common knowledge.
Not really. Like the above article showed, military police officers knew who the Sith were. It's just that the idea of them surviving the last war that took place 1000 years ago was a dirty little secret. As far as everyone was concerned, they died out 1000 years before the Clone Wars.
Palpatine pulled off his new look because nobody realised that's what a Sith looked like, which means that the common knowledge about the Sith must have been low, or people would have figured out his strangely glowing eyes and black robes.
On the contrary, Palpatine during the Empire era was openly a Sith, and he surrounded himself with Sith minions. Especially since by that time, hatred of the Jedi was at an all-time high for them trying to kill a popular elected politician, so hating on the Jedi and being friends with their enemies was A-OK.
Also, before the Empire, Palpatine looked just like any other senatorial aristocrat. His wardrobe in TPM and AOTC was no more flashier than what the local senatorial elite were wearing, and his crimson robe in ROTS, while definitely of Sith origin, was something he started wearing only when he was secure in his power after the Senate granted him power over the Jedi Council and the authority to appoint regional governors. At that point in time, he was already the Emperor in everything but name.
Or Cathars (Not the furries, the catholic spin offs). Who knows of the Cathars today, and how their death spawned the meme of "Kill them all, God will know his own!" . If it was a wealthy businessman collecting artifacts, or a historian researching them, I would be totally fine.
More than a few people do. I sure did when I did my research on the Inquisition. Also, that meme was apocryphal; no legitimate historical source has that quote. Especially when the Inquisition's job was to sift between who was a heretic and who was not, because local governments were just executing heretics due to the grave political danger they posed, using the Bible as an excuse to not swear loyalty to any government. The Cathars and other heretical groups were enough of a threat that even kings who had beef with the Pope still executed them on the spot.
