PT is it the jedi council fault anakin turned to the dark side?

No. However, their outdated code was a major factor. Anakin and Anakin alone was responsible. That said, they DID trust him in ROTS. For crying out loud, they gave him the mission to spy on the Chancellor. This was KEY in their eyes, when it came to ending the war. Their hesitation was to have Anakin in such proximity to Palpatine. They knew about the friendship and they thought it could get in the way.

 

Right afterward, Mace says to Obi-Wan "I don't trust him" and Obi-Wan replies "With respect, is he not the Chosen One, who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force?"

So, they can be giving him a key mission while still (in at least some cases) being distrustful.

 

If Anakin had gotten Psychological help he may never have turned, he was very damaged and Psychological may have helped him tremendously.

 

No offense Iron_lord, but if they were so distrustful of Anakin, why did they give him a job as crucially important as spying on Palpatine? If they feared Anakin's friendship with Palpatine would step over his loyalty to the Jedi, then making him spy on Palpatine should be the last thing on their minds.

 

This could be thought of as be Mace being the Only Sensible Guy on the Jedi Council.

In the novelization - while Obi-Wan trusts Anakin to do the job - he also thinks it's a huge mistake to ask him, because it will wreck the friendship between him and Palpatine, break Anakin's heart, and set him up as distrustful of the Jedi Council from then on. And he says as much.

Mace says that they want to shatter the friendship between Anakin and Palpatine - divided loyalties are a bad thing for Jedi.

 

For me, yes. Palpatine used them and they fell for it hook, line and sinker. The biggest mistake they made was not trusting Anakin. For example, when he informs the order that Grevious has been found and that Palpatine has put forward his name to go on the mission, the council instantly get all defensive and basically tell him that Palpatine doesn't govern the Jedi. Blinded by their own power they were. If they had agreed to let him go, the master plan is called off, Anakin feels valued that the order task him with ending the war, Palpatine is removed from power and all is well. Of course, Palpatine had realised what the order had become and he knew what the council would decide.

 

In the TCW novel, in chapter headings, we see Dooku and Sidious commenting on the Jedi's mistakes - one comment is how the Jedi are in the process of alienating Anakin.

 

I think this would be more likely: they agree to let Anakin go, Anakin kills Grievous. He still has all of his emotional issues, and he feels that it was Palpatine's trust in him in ordering the Council to send him that led to his victory; he assumes that without Palpatine's intervention he wouldn't have been the Council's first choice. He returns from Utapau triumphant and Palpatine manages to convince him to turn to the dark side anyways.

In the immediate moment, Anakin is the one responsible for Anakin's fall. He made the choice.

Palpatine is also responsible - he'd been basically child grooming and emotionally manipulating Anakin into the position since he was literally nine years old. Without his influence, Anakin might have continued to do seriously problematic things like massacring the Tuskens, but I don't think he would have fallen in the way that he did.

I don't think the Council is responsible for Anakin's turn. They absolutely could have--and should have--offered him more emotional support and help as a young ex-slave child who had been ripped away from his mother, but they didn't control his actions as an adult. I don't think they actually distrusted him/treated him as badly as some people are suggesting - they treated him perhaps without consideration to his circumstances and emotional situation, but not unfairly. Prior to RotS and some of the later Clone Wars, Mace Windu was actually pretty supportive of Anakin--remember that bit in AotC where Obi-Wan's like "I don't think my Padawan is ready for this assignment" and Windu's like "Isn't he the Chosen One?" And then there's the bit in Shatterpoint where he decides Anakin's life is worth everyone who's died in the war, etc. I don't think the distrust really came about until close to RotS, when Anakin began drifting away from the Council towards Padme and Palpatine.

 

I think the Council had a part in it, yes but it's not about appeasing Anakin's ego. It's about Jedi rigidity and lack of compassion and wisdom in their handling of him.

 

I don't think it was "lack of compassion" as much as "total ignorance of what he was going through." Like, they just had no idea how to handle a kid who hadn't grown up with the Jedi. And then as he got older, Anakin was more and more able to fake it and hide his emotions - they knew he was emotional and easily attached, sure, but they had no idea of the degree, or the effect that forcing himself to at least act like he was living by the Code had on him. And then there are things like the Deception arc in TCW, and Ahsoka's expulsion, both of which alienated Anakin either though neither was immediately rooted in the Council distrusting him.

And while I think they could definitely have tried to be more understanding of his situation when he first came to the Order, I also think that Palpatine would have just used a different approach if the Council wasn't alienating Anakin enough to give him leverage from that direction.

 

To each their own, AFS.

 

For the last time!

It's all Obi-Wan's fault!

He didn't use force speed when he was supposed to and Anakin got trained by someone too tolerant of his bratty behavior.

 

Well yeah. They knew he was likely the chosen one and they certainly knew he had a load of power. So the smart thing to do would be to show him trust and trust him, but also to take the additional time needed to make him feel very connected to the Jedi. They were standoffish, withheld a lot of stuff, cold and withdrawn at times, didn't give him answers, left him out and didn't give a good explanation (for him) for a lack of promotion, stuck him with a young Jedi for training and on and on.

He was precious cargo and they treated him like everyone else. So their fault 70%. Anakin's fault 1% and Sidious' fault 29%.

 

A good starting point would have been to get info from those who have dealt with "recently freed slaves".

Given that the nine-year-old Anakin was full of "fear and anger" - much more so than any of their normal candidates - professional counselling could have helped him deal with it.

A case could be made that they put far too much trust in him at times - sending him to be Padme's bodyguard, alone. Making him "their spy in Palpatine's inner circle" and so on.

 

You'd think the concept would have come up in the Archives.

 

There were mistakes made on the council's part but in the end the fault is Anakin's alone. He's the one that chose to chop Mace's hand off and bend his knee to Darth Sidious. No one forced him to do that.

 

That said, it's not as though the Council - well, Qui-Gon, actually - didn't have some role in Anakin's perception of his own "special" role to begin with. I'm not sure why anyone would think it was a good idea to tell a nine-year-old child that he's a prophecied chosen one, destined to save the galaxy, and that his power and potential for special abilities are why he's being considered for their Order instead of being left to rot in slavery and poverty. Like, was there really no way to predict that that was going to leave him with some hang-ups about becoming (and proving himself to be) special and powerful?

As for the explanations, I would add that the explanations that would have made him happy would be the ones that matched with what Palpatine told him he should be hearing. I don't think the Council should have needed to explain why they weren't giving Anakin promotion when he was a good five years younger than anyone who'd previously been given the rank, but I don't think Anakin would have been as upset as he was if Palpatine hadn't been constantly whispering in his ear about how much he deserved and how the real reason he wasn't being promoted was the Council's fear of him.

I also think it's worth mentioning that there's a difference between "having the power to have created a different outcome" and "being responsible/at fault for that outcome." Maybe the Council could have treated Anakin differently and Palpatine would have had a more difficult time convincing him to turn (personally I think Padme's life would still have outweighed any other considerations), but that doesn't mean it was their fault Anakin made the choice he did. Not to mention that from their point of view, and in their experience, they were helping him get over his issues as a child. After all, the "conceal, don't feel, let it go" method of handling emotions had worked quite well for them for centuries in terms of preventing Jedi from falling to the dark side! In hindsight, of course, that wasn't at all what Anakin needed, but they weren't intentionally ignoring his needs.

 

I don't blame the Council as a whole, but I do blame Obi-Wan; he deliberately ignored and covered up some questionable aspects of Anakin's behaviour and actions.

 

See!
I knew it!
It's all Obi-Wan's fault!

Not to mention he left Anakin alive so he could purge more jedi.

 

Because Anakin was the only Jedi that Palpatine seemed to trust and thus if he was doing anything that was suspect, it would happen in front of Anakin as opposed to Obi-wan or Agen Kolar.