Made a separate post since this is a different issue.Simon_Jester wrote:I guess my thing is that I blame Anakin heavily for how things played out in Episode III. He, personally, played a critical role in stopping the Jedi from averting Palpatine's takeover of the Republic, betraying them purely on speculation that Palpatine could save his wife.Elheru Aran wrote:I think when you put it into those terms, you're missing the big picture. Yes, Anakin Skywalker and his fall, and the rise of Luke as a Jedi, were important events... on an individual scale. The scheming of the Sith Lords to bring about the downfall of the Republic and the Jedi,[snip] ROTS, if Anakin had failed to stop Dooku again on the Invisible Hand Palpatine could quite possibly have escaped anyway, and he had plans for the Jedi Purge regardless of whether he managed to turn Anakin into Vader or not.
If he'd just been loyal, or done literally anything except betray everything he'd ever stood for and cared about, events would have unfolded very differently.
Yeah, Anakin is pretty responsible for how things went in ROTS. He finds out Palpatine is Sidious, tips off Mace Windu, who goes to arrest him, then intervenes in the arrest, keeping Palpatine alive, becomes Vader, and the Jedi Purge begins immediately.
But for all that. Say Anakin had, I don't know, caught a blaster bolt during the Clone Wars. He's not there to save Palpatine on the Invisible Hand-- that was seriously somewhat of a gamble on Sidious' part, counting on being rescued by Anakin-- so maybe Palpatine is "taken hostage" by Grievous and Dooku. Following this, a Jedi rescue force is decimated in a "successful" rescue effort which kills Grievous and brings the Separatists to the point of asking for peace. Dooku then eliminates the Separatist head command, Palpatine executes Order 66, and the Sith win. Palpatine gets to stay charmingly handsome in a senior-citizen fashion.
See how that works? It's just one possibility, but the Sith were going to win, one way or another. Anakin was merely being groomed by Palpatine to succeed Dooku. If he dropped out of the picture... Palpatine shrugs, grumbles about where he's going to find someone else, and starts going through his space Rolodex.
I guess my point is that while Anakin specifically was critical to how events happened in the film, the overall course of events wasn't significantly altered by his presence, unlike when Luke blew up the Death Star or Anakin destroyed the droid control ship.