I had always wondered if Anakin’s fall should have been more ideologically driven rather than simply being born out of fear of loss. When Vader makes his offer to Luke in ESB, he says his line about how “With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.” That made me think of how Anakin, through his desire for order and control, would have been drawn to an authoritarian figure like Palpatine. Maybe you could have Anakin feel like he and his mother were deserted by the Republic and its unwillingness to assert greater authority over the outlying systems. The galaxy is a wild place with many lawless corners. You could have Anakin becoming frustrated with the Jedi and their more passive approach to galactic affairs. Maybe he wants them to exert control, to save the people of the galaxy from themselves and end the chaos around them. Which would be why he’d turn towards Palpatine as a mentor figure and political ally. He grows to see the Republic as a failing system that ought to be replaced with something that can better control its people for their own wellbeing.

This is something that’s sort of implied in certain scenes in AotC and RotS (i.e. “I don’t think the system works.”), but not nearly enough, in my opinion. I thought there was a lot of potential in that.