PT What if Anakin never met Padmé?

Think about it, Padmé is the reason for Luke and Leia. Without Padmé, there would not be peace in the Galaxy when Anakin becomes Vader because Obi-Wan is too much of a wuss to even do something about the lightsabers and the Empire.

 

Without Padme, would Anakin even have become Vader in the first place?

 

Assuming everything else plays out, just sans Padme, Anakin would likely still become Vader. I imagine Palps would find some other way to turn him to the Dark Side.

 

"Remember what you told me about your mother, and the Sand People?"

Yep, on second thoughts, Sidious would have found another catalyst. Maybe he'd have endangered or manipulated Ahsoka in place of Padmé. Heck, he could have even done something to Obi-Wan. Anakin's core problem was attachment; there was plenty to take advantage of.

But then that'd beg the question, without Luke and Leia, would Obi-Wan and Yoda have stayed hidden? Or would they have stepped up?

 

I don't think so.

 

Suppose that the events of TPM went as they did but the only difference is that another person was queen, not Padme.
And Anakin did not crush on this person.

The events of AotC could mostly happen but with the main difference that there is no romance.

So RotS then, with no romance, would Anakin get visions of this person? Unlikely. Padme? Even more unlikely as he does not know her.
So Palpatine would not have a bait to dangle in front of Anakin and Anakin would not be obsessed with learning some "Stop-Death-Spell."

If Palpatine knows that Anakin is not interested in this, he could decide to just kill Anakin. Rid himself of an enemy.
If Anakin is dead and does not tell Mace about Palpatine, then Palpatine could just go with Order 66 right away.

If Obi-Wan and Yoda both survive and with no Vader to go after, both could go after Palpatine.
And maybe if Obi-Wan lets Yoda go first and while Yoda has Palpatine busy, Obi-Wan comes in.
That could be enough to distract Palpatine so that Yoda can end him.
Maybe.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Or Sabe goes with them in TPM, Anakin doesn't fall in love with her but is willing to Podrace on the Jedi's behalf - doesn't get attracted to "The Queen" the way he did with Padme, etc.

Then in AOTC, if Anakin got appointed bodyguard to her, he wouldn't have had 10 years of "being quietly in love" to sabotage his bodyguarding duties, and she conversely wouldn't be as willing to accompany him to Tatooine without the big love confession. Maybe no Tusken massacre happens at all and Shmi just dies alone, and Anakin doesn't have any big Guilty Secret to make him so easily manipulated later.

 

what's your point?

I mean if some things don't happen then other things don't happen.... right?

 

Anakin had attachment issues — he makes this very clear.

We see this, I believe, in the media with him and Obi-Wan, how if the man is in peril, Anakin will throw away any and all plans and risk losing victory to save him. Palpatine would’ve just orchestrated a scenario where Obi-Wan’s life hung in the balance and force Anakin to make a sadistic choice to join the Dark Side to save him.

 

Then it would’ve been a really short trilogy.

and a Disney plus what if

 

what if he never met Jar Jar Binks ... ? I mean you gotta think

 

My mind is too fragile to even try and comprehend such a heart-breaking possibility.

 

Then Anakin’s life would’ve been 1% better.

 

Kylo Ren has daddy issues.

 

Disney should’ve left the sabers how they were and fired JJ Abrams. I like the person who directed the Obi-Wan Kenobi series better

 

The sabers?

 

Basically, what you are really talking about is the "butterfly effect".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
So many "ifs" here. The simple answer to your question is, NONE of the events from the very moment in TPM where they met onward would have happened, meaning the rest of the movie, AOTC all the way through the entire OT, ST or whatever happened later. Not a chance. Even a VERY minor change in occurrences would have had a HUGE impact on what came later. The question is moot. Without Anakin having met Padmé, there simply would not be SW. It would not exist, period. Don't believe me? Read through that article carefully. Or better yet, look at real life.
Reality is way more complex than Back to the Future, entertaining but extremely unrealistic. Think about it. What if your father never met your mother? What if he met her a week later? Or a day, or a minute. I'm telling you, the outcome would be a total change. I don't think I need to go into details, you get the idea. If a couple went to bed even a few seconds later, a different sperm cell would grow. And that would NOT be you. Maybe something as minor as a distracting mosquito in the bedroom could have caused a shift in "space-time-continuum", meaning that one person would never be born. The further in time we go back the greater the changes could be. Just imagine, Hitler's parents never slept on that particular night, at that particular second. Another sperm would have replaced future Adolf - I'm saying this in a VERY simplified way - and WWII never would have happened. Without WWII, NONE of us in this forum would be here, I guarantee that.
This might be fun to speculate on, in a fictional setting. But in real life, any tiny "what if" would have DRAMATIC consequences. Ask any scientist.

 

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that events wouldn't necessarily change enormously.

Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett

“Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.”

 

Anakin would just fall in love with someone else. Maybe you? Or maybe YOU?!

 

He'd been having dreams of somebody "freeing the slaves" prior to TPM. And of being married to somebody. Given that Sabe actually does work to free slaves in the novels (with Padme's support, but Sabe's doing the legwork) maybe Anakin misread the visions and Sabe was the one he was intended to marry, by the Force that's giving him those visions?

 

How could they NOT change? There simply is no way to explain that rationally. Destiny? Fate? Some people believe in those things, sure. But I can't in any way see how that could work in real life. I could, right now, on a whim, go out my door and stab my neighbor. I would get arrested, never see my family again, not to mention cause chaos in my neighbor's family. And I can just as well choose not to. All pre-arranged, every single step I take? No way. The real world is way too random for that. Anything can happen to anyone at any given time. That's reality. Let's face it, like it or not.
Or I could consult some kind of oracle, telling me I'm destined to be the new messiah, to lead the world to true freedom. What if, upon hearing that, I simply decide to jump from my 49th storey apartment? No messiah, no freedom. My one-second decision would change all of that. There would be nothing and nobody to stop me. So much for destiny.

NO WAY it would ever work that way, ever. One dictator killed means he is out of the equation. Maybe there might be a future dictator at some point, but circumstances would be totally different. Absolutely no way for a similar outcome.
"No fate but what we make it" (Terminator 2). I tend to believe more in that concept.

 

The underlying work for the Clone Wars was already in place before Qui-Gon arrives on Tatooine. Sifo-Dyas has contacted Kamino. Dooku has already been contacted by Sidious and is being groomed as a potential apprentice. And so forth.

Padme sending Sabe out with Qui-Gon and Jar Jar, instead of going herself, doesn't necessarily affect things a lot. They could still visit Watto. Anakin could still show interest in the group. Jar Jar could still be rescued from Sebulba by Anakin. And so on. Anakin's personality is still fundamentally the same whether he meets Padme or Sabe at Watto's.

I like the Boys From Brazil take - that a lot of what made Adolf so awful was his horrible dad. So the cloners try to make sure every one of the Hitler clones is raised by an equally horrible dad - and murder every one at the point in the clone's age that's the same as Hitler's age when his own dad died.

Tropes like In Spite of A Nail, and Close Enough Timeline, may make more sense in this context than ones with enormous changes for the better, or for worse, or both.

 

Or just put the Hitler clone in a loving family's care, who would attempt to teach him compassion, harmony, and empathy.

 

The cloners want a new Hitler - and are willing to go to very extreme lengths to get what they want. The implication is that it takes both the genes and the upbringing - not just one or the other.

 

I think it all depends on what happens differently. Just not having her or another love interest doesn't necessarily completely remove Palpy's options. He still has Obi Wan, and Shmi. What if he authorized Anakin to go to rescue his mother as Chancellor, but the Jedi stop him? Or he buys her himself and then sets up a situation where she is dying and the only way to save her is through him? He would do it for his mother too, if he had had the chance. There is a chance he doesn't become Vader, but I think it is still a close call if Palpy has a good plan.