arkham618 said:
I'd like to take a crack at this by way of my first post:
Setting: I will be focusing on the Clone Wars, which I envision as a series of counterinsurgency operations by the Republic against the restive Outer Rim Territories. The (mostly non-human) inhabitants of the Outer Rim have been ruthlessly exploited for centuries by megacorporations based in the affluent Core systems, and are finally provoked to violence by Sith agents, who supply the insurgents with surplus Republic arms and munitions and train them in guerrilla warfare. The Sith, who have been in decline for centuries, have discovered a way to quickly replenish their numbers -- i.e., by exhuming the mummified corpses of ancient Dark Side practitioners, cloning their remains, and binding their restless spirits to the resulting bodies using an artifact known as the Kyber Crystal. (Clone bodies being otherwise mindless lumps of flesh.) They proceed to detach thousands of systems from the fringes of the Republic and launch terror attacks against the heavily-populated central planets. This instigates a military reorganization within the Republic, as the militias of the various constituent systems are federalized and attached to the small standing Army and Navy. It also leads to general paranoia, anti-alien bigotry, and an intensification of police powers -- i.e., the foundations of Imperial rule. Bail Organa and other scions of the old aristocracy oppose these measures on principal, which leads to their gradual marginalization as Palpatine and his corporate allies stir the populace with jingoistic propaganda.
Continuity: The prequels begin 24 years BBY. Anakin is 18, as is Lady Breha, the woman who will eventually bear his children. Breha is a member of the prominent Antilles family of Corellia, which seeks a political alliance with House Organa of Alderaan. To that end, Breha is betrothed to Prince-Regent Bail Organa, and although she falls in love with Anakin during the course of Episode 1, she marries Bail as her duty dictates. This serves both to establish romantic tension between the characters -- since they cannot openly express their feelings for one another and can only consummate their love by cuckolding the heir to an influential noble family -- and to leave the paternity of Breha's offspring uncertain until the last possible moment. Anakin's fall to the Dark Side comes about due to the pernicious influence of his father, Kane, who is a low-level crime boss and a complete douche bag. Kane murdered Anakin's mother (one of the many women he impregnated during his long career as a spice smuggler -- Owen Lars is a bastard by a different mother, and thus Anakin's half-brother) during a drunken rage when Anakin was a toddler. Anakin has suppressed the memory, but has recurring nightmares of the incident, which the principle villain -- Lord Malus -- exploits to provoke Anakin to murder Kane. Malus then blackmails Anakin into furthering the Sith's agenda, threatening to reveal Skywalker's secret to the Jedi if the young Knight does not submit to his will. Unexpectedly, Malus orders Anakin to kill him in the presence of Chancellor Palpatine, whom Malus' spirit then possesses with the aid of a surviving Kyber shard. (The focus of Episode 2 is the uncovering and destruction of the Kyber.) The Sith Lord thus gains control of the supreme executive office in the Republic and Anakin, under the moniker Darth Vader, becomes a lauded galactic hero, as the man who finally brought Malus to justice and ended the Clone Wars! The possession of Palpatine is, per Malus's plan, witnessed by several Jedi, who attempt to kill the Chancellor once they realize what has happened. This leads, of course, to the Great Purge, which Anakin (as Vader) carries out during Episode 3 in order to preserve his newly won status and fame (which he feels will finally convince Breha to abandon Bail and become his wife) and bury the last shred of guilt he feels for murdering his father. When Anakin goes to claim Breha, however, she presents him with an infant daughter: Leia. Anakin, whom Malus/Palpatine prophesied would have a son (who would be a danger to his father if not raised in the Sith ways), refuses to believe the child is his, instead attributing her parentage to Bail. Enraged, Anakin disowns Breha and nearly kills her, but is stopped by an old Jedi friend (not Obi-Wan, who has absconded with Luke to Dagobah to seek counsel with Yoda), whom he kills instead. Mortified, Anakin withdraws to Sullust, where Obi-Wan finds him after depositing Luke with the Lars family on Tatooine. The much anticipated final duel takes place there among the planet's lava fields, Anakin (who has already accumulated various cybernetic prostheses during the Purge) sustains the devastating injuries that confine him permanently to his mechanical suit, and Obi-Wan returns to Tatooine to watch over Luke.
This is really good, I don't know how I missed it before. Your ideas for the backdrop of war greatly coincide with mine. The only thing I would have reservations about is that Star Wars, I believe, still needs to be somewhat of a family-friendly film. I don't know if having Anakin's father spreading his seed and murdering women falls in line with that. I like the Kyber Crystal idea, I also had similar ideas in using it with cloning. Where I got hung up was that if you allow cloning of Dark Jedi, you have to ask the question, why didn't the Sith just make millions and easily take over the galaxy? I think how you may have addressed it here is that only one soul or mind can transfer, which seems like a good idea to me. My only real complaint is that I prefer that all of the later suprises, like the identity of Vader, Luke, Leia and Yoda should remain a secret to preserve some of the best scenes in Star Wars and one of the best scenes in cinematic history - "No, I am your father." (IMO, LOL)