If you're throwing out ESB and RotJ, that means you can also throw out the name Anakin and the lava fight. You can call the elder Skywalker John and say he's in a mechanical suit because of a helicopter accident. You can also go back to the original characterization of Palpatine as kind of an idiot who lets other people control him. You can use the Star Wars novelization's characterization of Vader as the sole Dark Side Force-user around, one of many Sith lords but the last of the Jedi religion, with no peers. It would be neat to see the Sith lords as a kind of peerage or fraternity separate from the Dark Side cult of the EU or the evil universal tyrants of latter-day Lucas. The young Jedi Darth Vader might join them not to gain magical wife-resurrecting powers, but rather for more mundane ideological or pragmatic reasons -- then he would rise to the top and turn against the established order, using the Sith as his weapon. Kind of like Hitler taking over the NSDAP, only for all of Vader's prodding, he only succeeds in Jedi genocide and reorganizing the Republic into an Empire; he never becomes the fuhrer. But he is patient, and he has plans ....