Darth Vader: Path to Power
The historical records concerning the rise of the late emperor Palpatine and his apprentices Darth Maul and Darth Vader are filled with inconsistencies which render the entire narrative incoherent. The reason for these inconsistencies lies with the Skywalker propaganda which was propagated after the assassination of Palpatine by his apprentice Vader and the subsequent destruction of the Death Star. We only have one source for the events which transpired on that doomed battle station, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. What we do know is that while attempting to lure Luke Skywalker to the dark side, something snapped in the mind of Darth Vader and for at least a moment, there was a glimmer of his former self which broke the bond between Sith Master and Lord, resulting in the killing of the emperor, Master of the Dark Side, and of Vader himself. What was it about this encounter which broke the immortal bonds between master and slave? Many have argued that Anakin, witnessing Palpatine’s brutality against his only son, was resurrected by love. Others say that it was Vader’s destiny to destroy his master because he was ‘chosen’. Was this destined to occur as later propaganda would expound?
Based upon my research into archives once thought lost to the decades of conflict between the First Clone War and Galactic Civil War, and my interviews with those who knew the Skywalker and Organa families personally, the image that emerges of the family dynamics becomes much more muddled that the myth to which we now all subscribe. The controversy of Amidala’s untimely death becomes much more difficult when seen in the light of new testimony. New evidence also seems to indicate that Yoda and Obi-Wan knowingly sent Luke to die at the hands of Vader and the emperor believing that they were fulfilling ancient Jedi prophecy. Due to the current political status of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo in the New Republic, these documents and testimonies were difficult to obtain to say the least. Many people whom I asked for an interview locked their doors or hung up, thinking that I was a member of the political police. In fact, one member of the Organa Royal Court, now a planet-less refugee, I tracked to a desolate asteroid in wild space in order to be reached for an interview, only to find them camped out in a space cruiser with the engine constantly running, still fearful of imperial power. But based upon these interviews I deduced one major conclusion: The mythology of Darth Vader is propaganda by the Skywalker family, disseminated after the fall of the empire in order to secure their place in the hierarchy of the New Order and restore the image of their father as a victim of destiny and not of his own passions.
Anakin Skywalker was not ‘chosen’ - the origins of that tale began after his death. Accounts from his childhood labeled Anakin a potentially dangerous person from a very young age, possessing strange gifts which his family tried to suppress. Many of his peers found him instantly likeable but unstable, possessing a deep seated thirst for power which drove him to terrible actions. All accounts highlight his loner tendencies, choosing always to withdraw rather than seek help. In fact, it appears that his only friends were those within the Jedi Order whom he ultimately turned against.
The role of Yoda and Kenobi in the final days of the Jedi Temple is equally tragic now that the madness of Mace Windu has been fully exposed. His assassination attempt on Palpatine was never officially sanctioned by the Order and in fact, Yoda and Kenobi had distanced themselves much earlier from the order because of the dangerous leadership which began under Jorus C’Boath. The details of the Jedi Purge are worse than we ever thought, especially Vader’s obsessive role in the affair after his falling out with Kenobi, and the holocaust which resulted will hopefully stand as a testament to us all of the dangers of human high culture. Finally, the details around the death of Amida will certainly shock and appall the readers of this testimony, most importantly, concerning Vader’s role.
In effect, the stories concerning the childhood of Anakin Skywalker, his years in the Jedi Order, his fall to the dark side, and role in the Jedi purge are almost entirely fabricated by the Skywalker family in order to retain his good name and that of his family. The true image which I hope to carefully and methodically uncover, is one of a truly talented but tortured soul, whose inexhaustible ambition and unquenchable thirst for power drove him to madness. His obsession with destroying first the Sith, and then in a complete roll reversal, the Jedi, show not one “who will bring balance to the force” but instead a madman who was a pawn of both sides and ultimately brought about the worst loss of life which the galaxy has seen in its history.
The role of Palpatine in this epic is not to be underestimated. His evil and cunning knew no bounds and his hands are dirtier than perhaps any other player during this time period. Now that new information is surfacing on his role in the ancient religious order known as the Sith, his secretive past can finally be unraveled. What emerges is a portrait of a terrible man, willing to remove anyone who stood in his way, and endlessly beguiling – in effect, a true psychopath. His path to power in the Senate is both shocking and fascinating, a true demonstration of the power of the force when used for self gain against the weak minded. The rise and fall of various factions during the anarchy of the Clone Wars is exceedingly complicated but Palpatine’s ability to manipulate them and ultimately rally the military behind his ever expanding alliance provides the context necessary to explain his ability to consolidate power in such a relatively short period of time after the Clone Wars.
Most new scholarship in the area of Palpatine examines his early writings in Human High Culture, the foundational documents to his New Order which characterized the early empire. The brutality of the New Order Purges can never be overstated, but with the acquisition of Vader as his apprentice, the purges escalated to a hitherto unthinkable scale. Indeed, in Anakin, Palpatine saw a young confused boy, equally as talented as himself, and he began to turn the boy into the monster known as Vader. Did Palpatine know that Anakin would eventually become his greatest apprentice? Probably not. Did Palpatine anticipate that Anakin could be a very powerful ally, one that the Jedi Order was too blind to see falling to the dark side? Absolutely. Palpatine conducted the corruption of Anakin’s mind like a veteran maestro, dropping ever so subtle hints and tidbits of dark lore to entice any young Jedi’s mind before they are equipped to handle such heresies. Indeed, Anakin’s fall to the dark side was never inevitable, but neither was his ascension to Jedi Knighthood. The mere fact that he attained both simultaneously is astonishing and part of what makes the tale of Vader such a fascinating and enduring mythos.
The full account of Palpatine’s rise to power and all the factions involved in the Clone Wars are beyond the scope of this study and many authors are currently filling volumes of information about both subjects. But the myth of the chosen one misconstrues Palpatine’s role in Anakin’s downfall, offering him the power to save his Amidala’s life. This story is entirely a fabrication and does not fit in with what we know from exhaustive accounts of the Galactic Civil War. This account argues that Palpatine merely gave Anakin a nudge in the right direction at crucial times in his development. While Palpatine is crucial to this story he is in not central to it, and I will give him as much space as is needed. My goal instead, is to unravel the myth of Anakin Skywalker and separate fact from propaganda. A sketch of his biography begins as many of these stories do, from very humble beginnings.
A fatherless child in the slums of Coruscant, Anakin enlisted in the imperial fleet as soon as he was able to fight in the Clone Wars. I will try to reconstruct his rocky family life and falling out with his brother Owen as evidence of a very private personality which he would be known for as Vader. His tenure in the imperial fleet was distinguished by medals for bravery and punishment for maverick behavior. His prodigious flying abilities soon attracted the attention of General Obi-Wan Kenobi during an outer-rim siege where his fortunes changed forever. I will argue that this turning point represented the beginning of his downfall and that Kenobi was unprepared for a padawan of Anakin’s caliber. The two would bicker constantly throughout his training but they did manage to forge a friendship by fire during the Clone Wars.
His life’s second pivotal turning point occurred when he met fellow padawan Padme Amidala and a secret romance blossomed between the two. In their taboo relationship, a historian can begin to see a web of lies and deceit within which lie the seeds for a descent to the dark side, and paradoxically an undying love characterized by possessiveness. It was in the enforcement of the strict codes of the Jedi Order, the magnitude and roots of which cannot be comprehended by adolescent love, that the first true schisms began to show between Anakin and the Order. How were these two to understand that Jedi could not marry for fear of the power resulting from such a union? How could they comprehend the overwhelming fear of a Jedi dynasty among the non-force users of the galaxy, many of whom knew nothing about the Order but superstitious tales and the ancient agreements which led to the foundation of the Order? Most importantly, how could they understand the Jedi’s true role as protectors of a republic which no longer wanted their protection? These questions lay heavy on Kenobi’s already troubled mind, but did not seem to appear in Anakin’s.
Instead Anakin channeled his frustration into an obsessive crusade against the secret order known as the Sith. His discovery of the ancient cult fascinated his undisciplined mind and he became enamored with the possibility of using the force as an offensive weapon, and not simply for knowledge and defense as Yoda’s school taught. Anakin found a likely mentor is Master Mace Windu, a fellow crusader, who encouraged the young man’s ambitions to take an active role eradicating evil, which they saw embodied in the Sith Order. It was at this point that Kenobi realized that Anakin was playing a very dangerous game, but the politics and rigid hierarchy of the Jedi Temple forbade him from taking any action or delivering lessons to the contrary. Tragically, perhaps a more experienced Jedi would have responded more appropriately, but Kenobi simply fought with Anakin, thus serving to drive him farther away. In fact, Windu’s activist tendencies caused many Masters to leave the Temple in disgust, led by Master Yoda, resulting in a dangerously fractured order at the climax of the Clone Wars.
It was in this context that Anakin accomplished the unthinkable: after a year-long crusade, Anakin confronted and defeated the Sith Lord, Darth Maul. At least, that’s how the popular story goes. What really transpired on the graveyard planet of Korriban is far more complex and unlikely than an undisciplined padawan defeating a Sith Lord in hand to hand lightsaber combat. What I will argue for in this book is that Anakin’s crusade actually became a dangerous obsession as he fell further and further to the dark side and he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thanks to the eyewitness testimony of ex-troopers who served alongside him during those days (and are currently awaiting sentencing in the New Republic for war crimes), we can reconstruct the unstable mind of a brilliant military commander and a Jedi desperately trying to prove himself as worthy of knighthood. How he came to destroy Darth Maul, secret leader of the clone hordes bearing down upon the capital world at the time of his death, was shrouded in mystery until recently. Only with the discovery of the personal correspondences of Chancellor Palpatine in a lost archive on Byss have I been able to construct the exceedingly complex power struggle between two Sith Lords who brought the galaxy to the verge of utter destruction for personal gain. The showdown between the two rivals on Korriban was stumbled upon by the most unlikely person, Anakin Skywalker. But to Palpatine, who had led the padawan straight there, everything was falling into place according to his grand plan. One apprentice had turned on him and had outlived his usefulness. When apprentices outlive their usefulness they must be replaced. The true story of that encounter will be filled out further later on in the book including dialogues between Palpatine and Anakin and the strained relationship and eventual betrayal of a Sith Lord and his “Apprentice”.
After ‘single-handedly’ bringing Maul to justice, the unlikely hero from Coruscant became a hero around the Core Worlds, the savior of the Republic. Anakin was knighted by the Reformed Jedi Order under Master Windu for his outstanding achievement and became personal assistant to Chancellor Palpatine. But beneath the surface, Anakin had already fallen to the Dark Side and those closest to him noted his erratic behavior. He had emerged from the outer rim a changed man, no longer as full of energy and youth, more prone to anger than before. Amidala’s personal diaries record her concerns about his erratic behavior and the inner turmoil resulting from her discovery that she was pregnant with twins which she chose not to disclose to Anakin. It was at this time that her relationship with Kenobi became very close.
Most consider the end of the Clone Wars as the lifting of the siege of Corsuscant and the dispersal of Darth Maul’s clones who were no longer driven by his dark will after his defeat. However, I believe based upon the minutes of a secret meeting held by Palpatine and his closest advisors that the passage of the New Order Act truly marked the end of the conflict and the reconsolidation of the Republic. In the meeting, they discussed the difficult job of reconstruction which lay ahead for the galaxy and a map was drawn partitioning the galaxy among regional governors (many of whom were present at the meeting) who answered to an Imperial Senate. Unknown to most at this time, Palpatine had been working tirelessly to ensure political alliances and control the flow of money to reconstruction projects around the galaxy. His web of spies and information networks stretched across the galaxy and there was nothing of importance that escaped his detection. Except for the eventual birth of the Skywalker twins…
The Republic was ready to fall, and in the wreckage following the Clone Wars many planets went into open rebellion. The failed secession attempts which initiated the Clone Wars were a mere prelude to the administrative disintegration of the post clone wars era. When Palpatine ascended to emperor, all the pieces were in place, and he began to institute his New Order to bring “peace and justice to the galaxy”. His years of tireless political wrangling behind the scenes paid off and the regional governors immediately latched on to the leader who emerged as the victor of the Clone Wars. The Tarkin family of Eriadu was among his earliest and most ardent supporters and set the example for life in the New Order. If you submitted to the bureaucracy, then you were rewarded. If you dissented, then you were harshly punished. Entire systems were eradicated at this time period and it was within this context which Anakin cemented his place at the emperor’s side.
Anakin was a devout believer in the emperor and recognized the true power of the dark side after the encounter with Maul on Korriban. He took his vows as the apprentice to Palpatine as he was knighted into the Jedi Order. Acting as a double agent, Anakin knew everything before it actually happened and fed information to both Windu and Palpatine. It has been difficult to reconstruct when Master Windu finally realized that Palpatine was in fact the true enemy, the embodiment of the Dark Side in the reborn Sith Order, but based upon his personal writings at the time, he acted very quickly once he attained this information. He called an emergency council meeting to announce, not discuss, that he was going to remove Palpatine from power. Most of the masters who had disagreed with him in the past had already left the order to pursue their own endeavors outside its hallowed walls, so Windu received unanimous consensus to carry out the assassination himself. He chose Anakin to go along with him, as he had garnered much favor with Master Windu due to the success of his crusade. Anakin was appalled that Master Windu had decided upon such a treacherous course and had strong-armed the remaining Jedi Masters to support the assassination. Tragically, it was Anakin who tipped off Palpatine to the assassination attempt and Windu walked right into his trap. Palpatine ensured that the assassination attempt would take place in public but fail so as to discredit the final thorn in his side: the Jedi Order. His plan worked brilliantly, playing to Windu’s hubris, and the Jedi Master, in the name of the Order, failed to kill Palpatine on the steps of the Imperial Senate in the center of Coruscant for all to see. The propaganda machine went into high gear after that and the Jedi were declared outlaws and traitors of the empire. Anyone caught harboring Jedi would be harshly punished. Family members of Jedi were not safe either. Anakin’s brother, in fact, was forcibly relocated to Tatooine, a death sentence, as part of the empire’s relocation initiative. The idea was to populate the outer rim in order to counteract Hutt intrusion into the region. No one knows how many helpless citizens were forcibly relocated on the grounds that they had tenuous ties to the Jedi or another outlawed group, but the severe population disruptions enforced by regional governors helped to prevent an organized armed resistance from forming until much later.
Now that the Jedi were declared traitors to the Empire, Anakin declared his allegiance to the Emperor and renounced the Jedi Order and all its teachings while Kenobi went into hiding. Accounts from the Jedi diaspora portray a very paranoid time for the remaining knights. Many jumped from system to system trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities, while others chose to stay and fight. Many were turned in by their neighbors who had been convinced that they no longer needed the Jedi. Indeed, Palpatine’s military reforms during the Clone Wars had empowered common humans from around the galaxy as never before. More than ever, the common man truly believed that the Jedi had been conspiring to enslave non force-users and rule the galaxy for themselves for centuries and had almost succeeded under the rule of Jedi Master Jorus C’Boath. Sadly, this is not an entirely false portrayal but we do know that this opinion was held by the minority within the Jedi Order. Many felt as Yoda did and believed that the Jedi Order was doomed, choosing instead to live in exile and wait for the day when the force would reveal its master plan to them all. Kenobi’s personal accounts from this time reveal an utterly defeated Jedi Knight in the throes of depression who would have killed himself were it not for the intervention of his old mentor and friend, Yoda. The two formulated a plan to attempt to bring Anakin back from the dark side and use his insider knowledge of Palpatine to destroy the emperor. They both agreed that it was Kenobi’s task alone and he could not receive assistance.
It was difficult but Kenobi finally tracked Anakin to Sullust where it appears that he took his old padawan by complete surprise. Accounts from Anakin’s personal guards in the 501st legion provide excellent eyewitnesses to the confrontation between the two Jedi. As the story goes, Obi-Wan tried to bring Anakin back to the light but he refused, and our accounts largely support this. The duel between the two recognized all the ancient rules of combat and honor but something very peculiar happened when Kenobi had disarmed Anakin. As tradtion goes, once a Jedi knight has been disarmed, he must accept his defeat at the hands of his superior, attempting to fight a losing battle was not only dishonorable but heretical, going against the will of the force. However, rather than deliver the killing blow to his own Padawan who held on by a finger to a precipice over the lava pit, Kenobi turned his back on him, and walked away devastated; Kenobi could not bring himself to deliver justice to his old padawan. Utterly exhausted, Anakin’s strength failed and he fell into the molten lava below.
His own soldiers were terrified as they watched the duel from afar, unable to assist for fear of violating his command. When he fell and Kenobi fled, they scrambled to help him but they feared him dead. Indeed, the charred husk which they pulled from the pit in no way resembled the powerful commander whom that they feared and respected. They placed him in an imperial field hospital and everyone feared the worst. After three days the emperor arrived and entered his room alone. What transpired in that room no one may ever know, but through archaeological finds on Korriban, we may speculate that an ancient Sith ritual took place. Experts in the field of Sith studies speak of a ritual whereby the master enslaves the apprentice to his dark will. History provides many examples of the apprentice eventually overcoming this bond, as was the case with Darth maul, but in Anakin’s case, the Emperor saw an truly unique opportunity. Palpatine could have disposed of Anakin at that time and begun training a new apprentice, but perhaps the ability to enslave his apprentice both in body and spirit was an opportunity too great to ignore. Finally, Palpatine would be able to avoid the inevitable struggle between Sith Master and Lord through which he himself had attained mastery of the Dark Powers decades earlier. Anakin may have died, but his body was resurrected as Darth Vader, sworn ally and servant of the Emperor. If ever the thought occurred to take power for himself, Vader would lose his life in the process as Palpatine’s life was now bound with Vader’s. Palpatine had the perfect apprentice, basically a dog on a leash who would do as commanded without question.
After the duel, Kenobi, thinking Anakin dead, now returned to Alderaan to decide what to do with Anakin’s offspring. After the purge began in earnest, Kenobi knew that Amidala and her newborn children would not be safe. With their father dead, Kenobi knew that the emperor would stop at nothing to corrupt Anakin’s children if he ever learned of their existence. The story as we know it today is that he forced Amidala to choose which child to keep and which one to send with Kenobi to live with Anakin’s estranged brother. It is said that the heartache of this decision led her to an early grave. This is purely fictional and the true account involves the intrigues of Alderaanian court life.
Servants of the Organa family have finally lifted their silence as to the death of Padme Amidala and provided exlusive interviews. New details are emerging of a complicated plot to steal the children which apparently went awry. During the failed attempt, Amidala was killed, leaving the children orphaned. The twins were separated and a droid was left with the Bail which could contact Kenobi if their need ever became dire. What still remains puzzling is why Kenobi chose Owen Lars to raise the child instead of raising Luke himself and training him in the ways of the force. Some postulate that Kenobi and Yoda’s devotion to the will of the force caused them to interpret strange prophecies, one of which included the necessity of Luke to live among non-force users and know nothing of the force until he was ready. This is purely conjecture and we may perhaps never know why Kenobi chose such a potentially dangerous and convoluted path as he did to leave Luke with his only remaining relative Owen (who had changed his last name to Lars), who begrudgingly accepted the guardianship of his estranged brother’s child and only at the behest of his new wife Beru. More confusing still is the decision to leave the boy in the dark about his lineage. Many speculate that he would have found out eventually had he actually been allowed to enroll in the Imperial Academy, but there is another group of scholars which argue Kenobi would have never allowed that to happen.
Perhaps the true tragedy of the whole saga is that the fateful decision to split the twins left Leia surrounded by the splendor of elite society in the core worlds, groomed for greatness from a young age, while Luke toiled away in the deserts of Tatooine, living a refugee’s life on a planet considered a death sentence by the empire. While in hindsight we can say that these formative years provided Luke with the skills he would need to reject the dark side, it would have been impossible to know that events would unfold as they did to all but the most far seeing of force practitioners.
During this chaotic and desperate time, the nucleus of the Rebellion began to take shape under a few dissenting senators: Bail Organa from Alderaan, Mon Mothma of Chandrilla, and Garm-Bel Iblis of Corellia. All three risked their lives to oppose the meteoric rise of the Emperor and his New Order and Iblis lost his entire family to agents of the empire. He narrowly escaped arrest and began acquiring a force to conduct hit and run attacks on the empire. His treatise on guerilla tactics is still used today as the manual for nonconventional warfare. The forging of the Corellia Treaty proved to the final straw for dissent within the Senate and shortly after the declaration was signed, the Emperor targeted the individuals involved in the rebel movement, resulting in Organa’s resignation from his post as Senator and the equally surprising appointment of his daughter, barely 17 at the time, the youngest Senator in the history of the ancient forum, representing billions of Alderanians. The election of Leia Organa was a clear signal that the Alderaanians supported the rebellion and actions needed to be taken to quell the resistance.
Vader, who spent nearly two decades hunting the last remaining Jedi, driven by a hatred for the order forged by his defeat at the hands of his old master Kenobi, was given a new task by the emperor. He was to command a special task force which was to use similar tactics to the Jedi Purge to root out rebel traitors and spies. At the top of his list was the Organa family of Alderaan. The reason Palpatine needed Vader on this task was that the Death Star was near completion and rebel activity indicated that they intended to sabotage the project. Palpatine would take no risks in the protection of his most prized Imperial project and intended to use the super weapon to suppress all further resistance to his rule.
A final point to add is that Leia’s mission was not to steal the Death Star plans but instead to recruit a mysterious old veteran of the Clone Wars to the rebel cause, General Obi-Wan Kenobi, living on some backwater in Hutt Space in the Outer rim. Bail Organa had sent R2-D2 along with his daughter on the consular ship to signal to his old friend that times were indeed dire and they once again needed the help of the Jedi. The fact that the death star plans were transmitted to the Tantive IV above Toprawa appear by all accounts to be a historical coincidence and the capture of the ship by Darth Vader set in motion a series of events which do not need to be recounted here.
We all know the story of the galactic rebellion but hopefully, after reading my book about the Clone Wars, the two stories will seem less disjointed than before and many of the mysteries surrounding the Skywalker family will finally be dispelled.
