PT Did Anakin Have Any Friends In The Jedi Order

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan were probably his own friends; Ahsoka, especially, would do absolutely anything for him.

 

Ahsoka seemed to look up to him. I've assumed it was a given that Anakin had *some* friends, it was just the Council that had a problem with him.

 

Really. Are you sure you've read "Jedi Quest" and "Last of the Jedi" series written by Jude Watson. Through these books, Anakin make friendship with 3 others padawans : Tru Veld (the would be best friend), Darra Thel-Tanis and Ferus Olin (the rival). Later, he befriended with Barriss Offee apprentice at the time of Luminara Undili on a mission to Ansion, shortly before the events of AOTC ("The Approaching Storm"). Finally, in the novel "Coruscant Nights I-IV", Jax Pavan,former padawan of Even Piell, said to have been close to Anakin during their apprenticeship in the temple. Besides his friends died in the battle of Jabbim (CW Vol.3 - Last Stand On Jabbim). In summary, Anakin had many friends who wanted only to help him. They have all opened to him, but not him towards them. He just wanted them to be there with him when he needed them, telling him what he want to hear and not criticize him at every field as Obi - wan seemed to do it (even if these criticisms were valid and were proof of love and consideration). Even Padmé, his own wife, was not spared. In the end, it is to the wrong person (Palpatine) that he decided to open himself because the latter have done everything others did not : pretend to give him too much importance, flatter him constantly, tell him what he wanted to hear and not what he needed to hear, but most importantly, accept him as he was lest he understands his mistakes and decides to improve.

 

Only nonprofit fanfic is respectable

 

Nevertheless, it does qualify as "something in the EU."

 

only obi wan really. windu didn't trust him, and he had a great influence on the other council members

 

Windu trusted him until some point during the Clone Wars. In AoTC (novel) it's him that trusts Anakin to do his job of bodyguarding Padme right - and when Obi-Wan is distrustful, Mace is the one saying "have faith that he will take the right path."

Yoda would be a better candidate - when Anakin asks him for advice, about his dreams, in the RoTS novel he"can't remember Yoda ever showing anything other than disapproval of his very existence" - still, Yoda gives advice - but not of the kind Anakin thinks will be helpful.

 

The three Padawans you name from Jedi Quest ended up a combination of dead, gone, and refusing to speak to him, so they aren't really relevant by RotS. He was friendly with Barriss, but I don't think they were particularly friends - they had never met before that book, and we don't see them interact much after it, other than in TCW (which obviously ended badly). And Jax says he was ""as close to friends as one could get with Anakin Skywalker," which...isn't exactly a glowing indicator of closeness.

So I think his friends within the Jedi Order consisted pretty much of Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. That's not necessarily anyone's fault - I don't think he tried to push people away; he always seems pretty lonely and/or desperate for attention - but I don't think he really knew how to interact with Jedi kids and vice versa. Many of them would have found his emotionalism off-putting, and they all shared a background that he just couldn't connect with.

[QUOTEWindu trusted him until some point during the Clone Wars. In AoTC (novel) it's him that trusts Anakin to do his job of bodyguarding Padme right - and when Obi-Wan is distrustful, Mace is the one saying "have faith that he will take the right path."][/QUOTE]

I agree with this. The RotS novel says that Windu opposed Yoda and was in favor of Anakin's training; he was fairly lenient towards Anakin in Rogue Planet, there's the above-mentioned scene in AotC, the bit in Shatterpoint where he decides the entirety of the Clone Wars was worth it to save Anakin's life (as the Chosen One), etc. It's really not until later in the war coming up on RotS that the serious distrust comes in.

 

It's an interesting question, and I don't think we ever get a complete picture of what things were like in Anakin's "down time." I would say for sure Anakin has a few very close friends: Obi-wan, Asoka, Rex, Jar Jar, Bail Organa and arguably even Palaptine and Tarkin.

Of course he was also friends with Padame obviously. In addition to that, Anakin has a very close friend people seem to forget...R2-D2. R2 is almost always with him from the point he becomes a padawan. R2 is even one of the only people at his wedding.

In the Clone Wars episode where R2 goes missing, Anakin is clearly upset and thinks of him as an irreplaceable individual. Anakin even orders R2 not to follow him when he is about to kill the separatist leaders, possibly because he doesn't want R2 to have to see what he has become.

I think it's also clear Anakin definitely has a lot of what I would call "work friends." He has a pretty good relationship with Yoda and a lot of the clone troopers. He was also fighting side-by-side with many soldiers and Jedi's so I would assume he had at least some casual "war buddies."

If you think about it all in total, Anakin has at least 5 fairly close friends, a wife, and at least a few acquaintances he sees on a regular basis. It seems like a reasonable amount of friends to have considering Anakin has a very specialized life style that takes up most of his time, and is also heavly involved in an ongoing war.

But, I would agree we rarely get to see him just "hanging out" with people. It's one of those things I would imagine would be hard to show with all that happens in the prequel films, although it is something that most definitely could have been expanded on during the Clone Wars series.

 

The Clone Wars comics have a scene of Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, on a beach, having gotten some leave time (maybe the war was wearing them out).

The comic book in question was Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Smuggler's Code.

 

i'm sure he must have had friends being fairly outgoing.

 

Whether they were 'true' friends or not I'm sure the Council were willing to look past some of Anakins short comings and treat him as a friend as well as a Jedi.

The Council members are smart enough to realise that if Master Yoda accepts Anakin as the Choosen One he will, at some stage, lead the Jedi Council and its better to be friends with people in high places than an enemy. Mace will never accept Anakin as a friend or equal because I feel his views on him are fueled by jealously as much as anything else.

 

Anakin's experience on Jabiim really changed him. I think that is one of the biggest losses of eliminating the original Clone Wars EU.

 

You actually bring up an interesting aspect of Anakin's life. He doesn't have many friends. In contrast to his son, Luke, who's depends on his diverse friends for help, Anakin is more of a loner and even possiblely a social outcast. When you are labeled the Chosen One and you develop the natural pride that comes from such a title, you tend to not have many friends. The Clone Wars Series at this point is still canon and so I think we can say Ahsoka Tano was friend of Anakin, even though it was a different kind of friendship because of the master and apprentice bond. In fact, it seems that Anakin only does well in mentor and protegee relationships: examples being Ahoska, where he is the master and her the apprentice, Obi-Wan, his master and his mentor Palpatine. But in the films, I would say that Anakin's friendships were narrowed down to two people: Kenobi and Palpatine. In fact, it is Annie's isolation and insular behavior that could have contributed to his fall.

Some other notable friendships are C-3P0, Artoo, and Jar Jar. But in 3PO's case, Anakin salvaged him and thus retains a savior presence to him. 3PO calls him "The Maker and Master." Artoo is friends with everyone and frankly R2D2's friends are user friendly; they need him in a jam or predicament. Besides, can droids really be considered friends? They can't even enter the Cantina at Mos Eisley. Jar Jar Binks is an inferior lifeform, so Anakin does not have to contend with an challenge of any kind in him; so again Anakin commands the authority and power in the relationship.

Padme of course does not count, because the friendship quickly progressed to romantic. Although one would not be wrong to say they were friends in The Phantom Menance and early on in Attack of the Clones.

 

He had friends on Tatooine. Kitser, and possibly that girl and the Rodian

 

Didn't look like he had too many friends when raided the Jedi Temple in ROTJ. Just sayin'.

 

R2, Obi Wan, Palpatine n Padme were his only friends in the films, so one would say Obi Wan was his friend.

 

Palpatine was Anakin's friend as well, he was the one who came and saved Anakin's life after his other friend sliced off his limbs and left him to burn on Mustafar. At the end of ROTS, Palpatine is the only friend that Anakin has left. Palpatine actually confirms this, as he refers to Vader as his friend in ROTJ.

"Your work here is finished my friend, go out to the command ship and await my orders."

 

It helps that Palpatine's the only person Anakin has left:

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 ...

 

I don't think their relationship was akin to "friend and friend" so much as "abusive father and child too scared to talk back or disagree"

 

Palpatine uses the term "friend" a lot - doesn't mean he does so honestly.

I think Discworld lampshades that people who keep calling you "friend" aren't friendly.

 

Yeah - when you have an adult "befriending" a small child with the purposeful intent of gaining their trust and grooming them to do something later in life, I don't think it ever counts as actual friendship.

 

Part of the point of the PT (the whole Saga, really) is that Anakin remained childish -- as opposed to childlike -- for far longer than he should have. And that meant he never really connected with any of the others in the principal dramatis personae as equals, which is what friendship should be. Once he leaves Tatooine, we're supposed to see, IMO, that he doesn't really have peers; only 'grown-ups' with authority over him, and to whom he never really becomes equal. Someone who is genuinely grown-up wouldn't be so insistent, as he is in AotC, that they're no longer to be looked after and talked down to. Even his manner of speech in AotC is largely still that of a child trying to sound mature. And right until the throne room in RotS, he equates maturity with power, and power with something that can be possessed.

Being in the role of the child in relation to almost every other Jedi we see (except for the kids we glimpse briefly in RotS -- who, like Luke, look to him for protection/help) means he can't genuinely be friends with them. Of course logically we know he has age-peers in the Order, but it's significant that we never see any of them in the films. The Jedi we see onscreen are either his superiors or they're children. I think there are obvious narrative inferences to be drawn from that.

In RotS, Obi-Wan tries to treat him as a friend, but crucially, Anakin doesn't truly see him as one. He still perceives Obi-Wan as a child would a parent, not as an adult would an equal. For all his chafing against Obi-Wan's parenting in AotC, deep down, parenting is what he needed, even wanted, even in RotS.

I don't think Padmé and Anakin had much in the way of friendship. There's a brief glimpse of it in the picnic scene, but other than that, he doesn't seem to see her as an equal partner who's pulling together with him in their married life. It's not that I think couples can't be friends, but Anakin didn't treat Padmé like one. He either puts her on a pedestal of near-divinity, or treats her like a (security-blanket) possession to be protected and clung to. He also has a tendency to try to ignore, or shield her from, problems which they should be facing together as a couple (the implications of her pregnancy; his nightmares). I think her sharp "How long is it going to take for us to be honest with each other?" is very telling. It suggests that this has been going on since they were married. That he's still -- and always has been -- treating her as though they're on their honeymoon (and not in the positive aspect of that) rather than as a true life-partner, a confidant with whom he trusts everything completely.

I'm not saying their relationship was unhealthy or screwed-up, any more than the average romantic relationship is. It's just that I think the point being made is that, after leaving Kitster, Seek, Wald and all, Anakin doesn't really ever relate to anyone as an equal. And that's an insuperable obstacle to genuine friendship.