Complete Monster: Wilhuff Tarkin, after being promoted to Moff following Palpatine's conversion of the Republic to The Empire, would craft the Tarkin Doctrine, which laid out the new Empire's principles. He would then repeatedly demonstrate his cruelties as a high-ranking officer: boiling Q'anah and her crew of Space Pirates to death from the heat of a star and ordering the destruction of any ships that tried to rescue them; punishing the populace of Antar-4 with no regard to which members of the populace had been loyal to the Republic, causing many innocent deaths; and, upon his promotion to Grand Moff, taxing the subjects of the Outer Rim to starvation and engineering the torture of Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus, even though Kanan may not know anything.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The fact that Anakin treated Tarkin coldly due to his abuse of Ahsoka Tano with the bullshit trial implies that even after he fell to the dark side he still cared for her.
He's Just Hiding: The last scenes have Tarkin muse about how Anora and the other captured members of her cell were all executed. However, the Dropped a Bridge on Him way this is mentioned, the Empire’s habit of sometimes keeping important prisoners alive, and the fact that their group is a big part of the book’s popularity all have some fans hoping that some or all of them were kept alive and Palpatine lied to Tarkin about killing them.
Memetic Mutation: Palpatine's first name being Sheev really took off with how odd it is and further adds to his status as a Fountain of Memes.
Narm: Palpatine is a little harder to take seriously when you know his first name is "Sheev".
Somewhat about Tarkin: he wasn't born evil, but his family and training shaped him as a villain.
The Antar Atrocity, too. How many people were actually innocent and didn't support Separatists? And even they did support, they don't deserve torture and death by Tarkin.
