Anakin Skywalker - To Be Crowned a Master

Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith.

A focal point to this storyline was Anakin's pursuit of the rank of Jedi Master.

As we know, he had a lot of issues he needed to work through. He was put on the council at the behest of Chancellor Palpatine, but they would not grant him the rank of master.

Granted he was crowned the rank of Jedi Knight during the Clone Wars, and it does seem to be too soon to grant the rank of Master, but I think he could have gotten that rank by the end of the movie had he not fell.

I say this because if he had sided with Windu instead of Palpatine, I believe everything about him would have been revealed. And I believe it would be acknowledged that Anakin resisted the temptation of the Dark Side. Added to that he defeated Sith Lord Count Dooku as well as helped Windu with the defeat of Palpatine.

Despite my personal feelings on Anakin's attitude, I believe that barring him from being a Jedi Master would be wrong if he chose correctly.

What do you say?

 

Agreed, Anakin lacked the emotional maturity to be elevated to the rank of master. However...

The irony of the whole affair is that it's plausible that the Jedi would have made an exception to the no-marriage clause for Anakin; they had already bent the age rule to admit him into the order, and there's multiple cases of ordinary Jedi being allowed to marry for various reasons (ex. Ki-Adi-Mundi). Assuming Anakin aided Windu in arresting the Chancellor, kicking him out afterwards for marrying Padme would have further damaged the Order's credibility- after all, like anakinfansince1983 stated, to the eyes of the public the Jedi would have just executed a coup. Anakin was a war hero, and party to the "coup"; kicking him out would A) utterly alienate Anakin, who could easily stir public anger against the Jedi, and/or B) look like the Jedi were scapegoating Anakin, which would make the Jedi look rather guilty, and their coup illegitimate, in the eyes of the general public; or C) push Anakin over the brink to the dark side. Furthermore, by aiding the Jedi in taking out Palpatine, his oldest friend, Anakin would have proved to the Jedi Order that he had to emotional maturity to not let his emotional attachments get in the way of his duties as a Jedi; his marriage to Padme would then be viewed in a different light by the Council.

As an aside, the title of this thread sounds like the title of an episode of Pokemon.

 

Where was the evidence that Anakin would have ever been kicked out because of a marriage? They didn't kick out Rannik Solusar.

 

Exactly. Like I said, they made plenty of exceptions to the no-marriage rule, and there's no reason to assume that the Jedi wouldn't make an exception for Anakin of all people.

 

C'baoth was never actually promoted to Master, it was a self-promotion. One day he just said, "I'M A JEDI MASTER" and although many eyebrows were raised no one bothered to dispute it.

I actually really enjoyed C'baoth because he was just so over the top. He took arrogance to new levels. At first I was like "damn" and was kinda hating him, but by the end it was just too amusing. What a jagov, but he really saved Outbound Flight for me.

As for Anakin, if he stayed in the Council chambers while Mace killed Palpatine, or aided Mace in killing Palpatine, I would reluctantly allow him to be promoted to rank of Master in the wake of everything that happened. I think he had a long way to go, but it would have been a good stepping stone on his path.

 

Truly the correct solution would have been to promote him to Jedi Master in order to get on his good side. Once Palpatine was good and dead, Anakin should have been killed as well. To tie up loose ends. He's too much of a loose cannon anyway.

 

Your expectations of Jedi seem rather.... skewed.

 

"You will be expelled from the Jedi Order!" "I can't leave her!"


What's that got to do with marriage? Anakin was abandoning his mission for personal reasons. That's what Kenobi was referring to.

 

I'm often convinced it was pretty much an open secret among the Council, anyway. Which makes Anakin look all the more foolish.

Urg. The whole plot line is just silly. His need to save Padme was a good enough reason to turn without all the added baggage of no-one in the Order knowing about the relationship. Hell, open disapproval of it could have made Anakin's betrayal more convincing.

That said, considering the number of exceptions that QuentinGeorge rightly mentioned, I can only think that maybe there's a Ruusan reformation rule against Jedi marrying senators. That'd explain why Anakin and Padme are so sure an exception won't be made for them in the RotS novel.

If it's not only against Jedi doctrine but Republic law... well.

 

The AOTC novel makes it pretty clear that the restriction isn't about Padme being a Senator; Padme's sister in particular says so. The film does sort of imply this, though-"You're a Jedi, I'm a Senator" or whatever Padme's line is.

In any case-There's plenty of married Jedi for pretty iffy reasons (Ki-Adi being married is not going to help the Cerean birthrate significantly, for example) and lots of Masters/Knights that really don't follow this particular rule (T'raa Saa, Tholme, Quinlan, Rannik, Windu with his Republic-crush, Halcyon, Qui-Gon, heck, even Obi-Wan with his constant drinking and womanizing ); I'd say Anakin's total conviction that he'd be booted has more to do with his basic distrust of the Council than any actual fact.

 

Yeah, I'm not suggesting it wouldn't be a retcon.

 

Lol, you from da burgh too, CT?

 

Well it seems everyone is in agreement that had he had the emotional stability not to give into Palpatine during that final confrontation that he would/should have been crowned a Jedi Master upon the end of the Clone Wars.

The only pending thing seems to be what the Council would do regarding his marriage to the Padme. Technically though, he did that before he even became a Jedi Knight. I'd see it akin to a child doing something wrong and not going to prison but to juvenile hall. So I'd say maybe a brief lecture and a 'Don't do it again' would be in order.

With Padme safe, Palpatine's influence over him gone, recognition as a Jedi Master, a council member, AND access to the forbidden archives, I really do think that would satiate his need for more power.

 

I don't think so, because Anakin doesn't know what he wants. I think he's not used to choices because he's so conditioned to be told what to do.

 

The rank of Master & how to attain is seems to be a fluid thing. Rules of the Jedi order are mostly guidelines and open to philosophical debate as to their merit. Order 66 and Luke's NJO were the 1st chance for someone to hit the reset switch and re-think how it should be done again.

Old Republic Jedi were usually only granted the rank of Master after having trained a Padawan to the rank of Jedi Knight. This was a process that would take anywhere between 5 and 15 years to complete and was as much a learning experience for the senior Jedi as the younger.

The Jedi also needed the respect of their peers and the willingness to accept a group decision, even when their own opinion differs. e.g. Qui-Gon, "Don't defy the council Master, not again... If you would just follow the code you'd be on the council by now." Qui-Gon didn't see the need to obtain the rank of Master, he was just interested in following through with his ideas of what was the right thing to do. Obi-Wan later adopted his former Master's ethos when deciding to take on Anakin as his apprentice "without the council's approval if necessary". He carried this right on through to encouraging Yoda to train Luke.
Y: "He is reckless."
OW: "Was I any different when you trained me?" (yes I know this has some retcon issues)

Don't confuse the Jedi rank system with a military rank system. The Jedi order is a philosophy and training school, it gives people a perspective but every individual puts their own spin and emphasis on it. The rank system is more indicative of how you are viewed by the council rather than a direct representation of ability.

 

I wish this was the case...can somebody tell this to our current authors? Every new book that comes out, either Corran is crying like a little girl, Kenth is trying to kill another Master, or Luke is killing somebody out of revenge. Based on that, I'm not sure we currently have any standards whatsoever for what Jedi Masters are supposed to be like.

I would take an emotional Anakin Skywalker as a Master over most of the current NJO Masters.

 

I think a big problem with his marraige is that he was keeping it a secret from the Jedi

Had he not gone back to save Palpatine, and ended up being exposed, it would have been more that he was lying to everyone, more than him being married. Had he been open about it the whole time, perhaps it wouldnt have been a big deal, as has been said, since there were other Jedi who were married.

I wonder though, were these other Jedi married before or after they became Masters?

I could see the Jedi having some reservations about it since Anakin was barely a Knight at the time. The strongest committment is needed to become a Jedi (or however Yoda put it), and having split duties might not be the best during training.


I always thought that was unnecessary and kind of dumb to throw into AotC, especially when he allowed other Jedi to be married.

 

The sad thing is that all Anakin had to do was be honest. Tell them about his vision his pregnant GF, and not all the details and that even though the timing sucked, he needed two weeks off.

 

I thought a Knight only became a Master when their padawan was granted the rank of Knight? Obviously, Ashoka (I think I know why she hasn?t been mentioned in this thread yet ) dies before she gets a chance to become a Knight. Thus, Anakin is still a Knight. Plus, as others have said, the council obviously didn't feel that he was mature enough to be deemed a Jedi Master.

 

I think it was mentioned in Stover's ROTS novelization that Obiwan was thinking about what being a Master means. To paraphrase, you can't become a Jedi Master until you learn to master yourself. Anakin, sadly, never mastered himself. All his other heroic feats didn't matter if he couldn't master himself.