Of course Palpatine knew that. Love is both a gateway and obstacle to the darkside. It's a gateway because it's a passionate emotion, people do extreme things for love. However, it can also redeem people, love can bring hope and compassion, to truly embrace the darkside one most be devoid of positivity, love is the most positive emotion, destroying it opens one's heart up to true darkness.
I agree when you say that Anakin had a calm that Ben doesn't. Anakin had a way with the Dark Side because he could control his emotions with the force (for the most part), and Ben is not as experienced. He has the force, but cannot control what he feels or how he utilizes it. Which, obviously, makes Anakin/Vader a more worthy candidate for Ben vs Anakin. Ben can't control his power mainly because of Rey since he believes that the force is with her more than it is with him.
Anakin was just kind of verbally whiny, but he rarely lashed out in a truly psychotic way. Ben is the exact opposite. He rarely whines, but he is psychotically unstable and temperamental and will lash out at the drop of a hat. One of my big problems with TPM Anakin is that, while I don't doubt that they intended for him to have had a hard life, they didn't do a particularly good job of showing it to us.
Happiest slave ever. The dude even basically got to be in a robotics club.. .not to mention he basically got to tinker with the world's most awesome go kart
He was a slave that had valuable skills so he was put above normal slaves, he was still slave. He just had more freedom because his skills made his owner alot of money in podracing and him fixing robotics.
Show don't tell. I don't need them to pull a 12 Years a Slave here, but something. That's something that TFA did right actually, with Rey.
Obviously I'm being somewhat hyperbolic....but come on, he and his mother had a pretty damn nice house/apartment for being slaves
And he's the most happy go lucky child slave that I've ever seen. It's jarring when you get to AOTC honestly, because we get no hint of that darkness when he's younger.
Which of course leads us to the biggest problem with the PT... starting Anakin off as a child is still what I consider the biggest mistake But that is a topic for another thread