My idea for Anakin is that he simply pushed himself too hard. He’s the kind of person that constantly wants to be better. He always feels like he could have brought down just a couple more bad guys, saved just a few more people, pushed his own boundaries just a little farther. No accomplishment feels good enough for him, because he knows deep down he can be better. Of course this is excusable at first and can early on be seen as a positive trait, but as time goes on, his pushing himself slowly becomes a lust for power. It becomes an unhealthy obsession with wanting to be better. It leads him to foresake his friends, his wife, and his own morality in his search for more power, wanting to find what he’s capable of. He feels there is only so far the Jedi teachings can take him, so he seeks out other darker ways of the force.

I think it’s important that maybe Palpatine opens the door for him to turn, but that HE is the one to walk through it. Maybe all Palpatine really has to do is plant the idea in Anakin’s head that perhaps experimenting with the dark side, which the Jedi won’t teach him, can lead him to unlock the potential he is looking for, then Anakin himself makes a conscious decision on his own to seek out a Sith Holocron or something like that. The manipulation of Palpatine should be subtle and as simple as flicking the switch on a bomb that has been ready to blow for some time. It is his own ambition that is his undoing. Rather than being a “tragic” story of somebody doing something bad for a seemingly good reason (“love won’t save you Padme.” Yawn), it is a story of how good intentions can turn into bad intentions. A LOTR style story about how power can corrupt even the most good-hearted people.