Books STAR WARS: LORDS OF THE SITH by Paul S. Kemp

Although you have to admit that Anskin did care for and love his mother.

 

Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas, sometimes.

 

There's a huge slavery/possession thing going on. I posted an earlier version of this in a TCW thread, but I think its relevant here.

Anakin, the slave, the property of someone else since birth, keeps losing things he has grabbed onto as his, and the Jedi are often right to blame in his perspective.


He lost his mother - the Jedi never allowed him to 'follow his heart' to free the slaves - his purpose in leaving in the first place - , and they were seen as holding back his power.


He lost Ahsoka (who was given to test his ability to let go, as per Yoda) - the Jedi Council drove her away.


He was NOT going to let anything, the Jedi, Death, whatever, take his last possession (yes, that's how I think he viewed Padme) away from him. Sidious promised him he could make Anakin's dream come true, as long as he was strictly obedient to his commands. Possessions were, for Anakin, the 'ring of power'. His Precious. He values them as if they were essential to his own life. His possessions were his life. He viewed himself as a sum of himself and his possessions. He could not be complete without them. (Calling back, and taking to a fundamentalist extreme Kenobi's teaching, 'Remember, Anakin. This [your lightsaber] is your life.")


Anakin makes a symbolic transfer of this to Padme in TCW, telling her, "This is my life."


The loss - the forceful taking - of Anakin's lightsaber (following his choking of Padme) can be seen as a highly symbolic act of the taking of his life. Anakin's last unique possession.


Anakin came into the Jedi Order never truly converted to their philosophy. The power was regularly unhinged without the checks-and-balances of the ingrained Jedi philosophy. It was easy for Anakin to fly free with the rules, because he never had a conviction for the core philosophy.

So when Sidious says, you can have more power and more power over your possessions - it wasn't a huge ideological leap. Power was always to be used to keep the things he held dear. The constraints of Jedi dogma didn't work. Now a new philosophy brought his self, and his possessions, to the center. He acted on it.

Of course, he was broken, deceived, and used - he became a Slave to Sidious. He was dead in many ways after that - he had no further possessions he held dear, the way he defined his life. Vader from ROTS until discovering he has a son is truly Dead Anakin. A shell with no moral compass apart from self-preservation for the sake of self-preservation.

The OT is Vader's story of regaining his freedom and identity and humanity. It is sparked by the appearance of Luke - the bearer of Anakin's Lightsaber.



Taken in this light - think of the additional meaning we might see of Vader severing it from Luke.

And then Luke forges his own unique identity, and what he does with that. (He voluntarily tosses it aside! He shows his willingness to give up his own life to save another. "I am a Jedi. Like my Father before me.")


It is then when Anakin sees in Luke who he wants to be. And then he, like he just saw his son voluntarily do, gives away his own... life.

 

That is a very nice bit of work Taalcon.

It also got me thinking: DE took the idea literally, that the dark side does possess those who tap its power. It was attempting to give meaning to Vader's ROTJ statement that he must obey his master.

But, it may also been onto something else - that looking at everything in a purely possessive sense is a form of moral blindness.

 

Excellent post, Taalcon, but I would say that Vader is more of a slave to his own obsessions than to Palpatine. In the early years, Palpatine is like a father figure for him and he puts him on a high pedestal, as we can even see in the beginning of Lords of the Sith. It is not at all that different from the admiration a Jedi apprentice might feel for master Yoda. In the Vader comic, Vader seems to feel angry and betrayed after Palpatine has demoted him. It is not slavery, if you serve someone willingly in exchange for power and money, it is more like having a job.

 

In the ROTS novel, there's a strong "Palpatine is all Vader has left" theme:

You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself ...
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-
Because now your self is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power that you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all that you have left.
Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-
And in your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever ...​

 

John Jackson Miller's short story in Star Wars Insider #157 ties into events from Lords of the Sith.

Spoiler

Rae Sloane from A New Dawn shows up with a speaking role, art, and everything! This is the first time I have really experienced something like this in my foray into the expanded universe and I like it a lot.

 

Which, IMO, is exactly why Vader doubles down on the denial and rejects his true self and the name that goes with it.

 

Awesome!

Spoiler

At least we get to see her again. Now all we need is to see her post AND.

 

I agree. I was glad to see the same author using his characters across multiple stories and I would love to see different writers do something similar,

Spoiler

like have Chuck Wendig use Rae Sloane for example.

 

Does this character survive the story?

 

Spoiler

This story is three years before A New Dawn, so yes.

 

Sorry, forgot about the timeline.

 

So does the story take place before, after, or during Lords of the Sith?

 

It takes place as Vader and the Emperor are in route to Ryloth from Coruscant.

 

It's going to be very hard to read this and not visualize the Palps & Vader scenes in Robot Chicken animation...

 

Classic.

 

I just read the new star wars insider magazine, and I found something curios at the end, of the interview. Is this book going to be the first one to have a gay character in it? I'm at a lost here and if their is who is it.

 

Oh no.

 

Lol

 

[c3po]Here we go again.[/c3po]

The Moff of Ryloth, Delian Mors, is a lesbian.

 

Meh. I read some of the preview on Amazon. Granted, it's only a preview but it does not have me very excited. It's the same old Palpatine and Vader runaround.

Palpatine does his I'm cleverer than everyone else routine while Vader broods. Palpatine makes sure Vader learns the lesson of being a massive ...erm...Richard. Vader indicates and probably later shows that he can be just as massive a Richard as Palpatine all while doing his fuming style of brood. We will then be treated to a 200+ page exposition on Sith interpretation of natural selection. Oh and Vader has issues about his past.

Meanwhile on Ryloth, we learn that other people also think the Emperor is a Richard and take their chance to overthrow him.

Ho Hum. When I read the previews and reviews of Tarkin it interested me. I wanted to see more of the Imperial court and of Imperial politics other than the same tired old love hate relationship between the Imperial couple. Tarkin wasn't stellar but it had more subtle relationships in it than what I saw in the preview. I especially was pleased by the appearance of rebel types you couldn't exactly cheer for because they were chaotic evil as opposed to the Empire's slightly more predictable evil. That was something new compared to the standard rebels we usually see.

I dunno. The book has one last chance. I'll give it a final skim in the bookstore before I decide whether or not to buy it. So far, it does not look good. Stories about the dysfunctional daddy/son issues between Vader and Palpatine are so last decade. The comics are doing better stuff with those two by showing a more active Vader than the usual whiny/broody/fuming Vader. Actually, come to think of it, a Vader who confronts Palpatine is about the only thing Star Wood did right.

This would have been a neat chance to actually hear Vader's thoughts on what the Empire would be without Palpatine around and how he would rule differently. Who knows, maybe I will see that in this book.

 

The blurb on the book tells us about differences that Vader and Palpatine have to overcome. So I doubt it will be all roses and sunshine between those two, like it is in the opening. But then they aren't on a hostile planet and in mortal danger.

I'm not sure why you thought Vader was whiny or fuming in the opening, meditating is more like it. Vader's reflections reminded me a bit of the Tenebrous way, in that he gives us insight into his plans and philosophy. It's basically set-up so that we understand what is going on in his head before all the action starts. He's the protagonist after all, it's important that the audience knows who this guy is at this point in time.