Commander Courage,
The idea of the Emperor/Vader discussion at the end of ANH seems weird. I guess it breaks up the "Golly! We won" feeling at the end of ANH. Not to beat a dead horse here, but if you go with my idea of having the DS partially blown up in ANH, then we're already taking away some of the feel-good ending, so using the emperor in ANH might not be so bad.
BTW, I love this thread
Erik