Anakin, The Man In The Mask

[Metahive]

This has come to me recently as an idea for an alternative character theme for Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin Skywalker wishes to be the perfect person to whoever he is interacting with. To the Jedi he is the stoic and equanimous defender of peace. To Padme a loving and caring husband, to the public a dashing war hero. He wears a metaphorical mask or so he thinks because he knows of the dangerous desires that lurk beneath the surface of his personality, like a desire to visit cruelties upon those who committed evil, striving for quick and easy solutions when the problem calls for more long-term investments and a desire for orderliness even at the expense of freedom and tries to suppress them. So in a way he's wearing metaphorical masks because he's secretly ashamed of his darker side and thinks he can only pretend to be a good person. In comes Palpatine. Subtly Anakin's egged on to let go of the "pretense", to "be himself" and that the darkness within can be put to good use to bring order and peace to the Galaxy in radical way by establishing and serving the Empire. He soon is forced to put on an actual mask but now drops the imaginary ones he was wearing before and indulges in his dark desires. While he relishes in the newfound freedom for a while, it soon turns to disgust and even bigger self-loathing as he finds that not only he's now cursed with a mutilated and misshaped body, he's also loathed by the majority of the galaxy. His redemption comes in the form of convincing him that when he was either Anakin or Vader, he was really only pretending to be someone he wasn't, that he had neither been the flawless hero nor the metallic monster but always been a good-natured if flawed man. Accepting this is what finally gives Anakin the peace of his mind and allows him to go into the Force.

What do you think about this?

[Borgholio]

Well it would have been interesting in a way to have Anakin / Vader be the secret identity instead of Sideous / Palpatine.

[Metahive]

I'm not so much talking about secret identities as supressed personality traits. Anakin's main flaw in this version, unacknowledged by himself, would be excessive perfectionism. He can't be "a" Jedi he must be "the" Jedi, he can't be "a" war hero but must be "the" war here and so on and so forth and that's why he regards every flaw he find in himself as a shameful blemish. You can even work in that prophecy which would act as an additional burden on Anakin and which he's only able to fulfill once he's found balance in himself.

[Borgholio]

Well even in real life, excessive arrogance can lead to bad things, so that could have played out well in SW as well. Anakin keeps having these victories under his belt, people start to see him as a sports star or celebrity and he begins to revel in the attention, and eventually his ego is so pumped up enough that he feels he can never be wrong. So when the other Jedi try to take him down a few pegs and reign him in, he is horribly insulted and begins to see them as trying to stand in his way. Palpatine just eggs him on a bit more and boom...instant Darth Vader in a can.

[Havok]

So instead of wanting the power to save everyone and end death especially for his wife, you think that a better motivation is to be a perfectionist?

Dude, you go from probably the most noble pursuit to being the ultimate narcissist and expect that to cast Anakin in a better light or be a better version?

Geezuz, plus in your scenario, Palpatine isn't going to approach Anakin as a Master to an Apprentice, but as an adversary because Anakin is already digging deep into the dark side and is going to become something different than a Sith Lord, but not something that Palpatine is going to be able to control and certainly not someone he is going to want around... "a desire to visit cruelties upon those who committed evil", yeah that means Palpatine with no head once Anakin finds out who he is.