A what-if has been making the rounds on Twitter of late, specifically the idea, presented by those with some suspiciously Nietzschean-fascist vibes, that in “Star Wars”, the right, natural, and good outcome would have been Anakin Skywalker overthrowing Palpatine, becoming Emperor, ruling together with his wife Padmé Amidala, and raising the two children (Luke and Leia) at the head of the Galactic Empire. Uh…as a fan, I have to throw up my hand and say “not so fast”.
In the first place, the fatal objection to this whole idea is that Padmé was committed to liberal democracy; she would never have contemplated being the consort of some kind of Sith Emperor who would browbeat the entire galaxy into submission. When Anakin evinces political ambition to her on Mustafar (“together you and I could rule the galaxy, make things the way we want them to be!”) she tears up in heartbreak. No, Empress Padmé is not happening.
Even Emperor Vader is a dubious proposition. Palpatine ruled the Galactic Empire through military might, but notice even with unchallenged command of the military, he did not dare abolish the Senate until two decades into his rule, when the Death Star was ready to replace rule by consensus (albeit in severely attenuated form) with rule by fear. As soon as the Senate was abolished, the Death Star destroyed Alderaan, and then the Rebels destroyed the Death Star, the Empire had to rule through pure naval might, and as we see over the course of the original trilogy, that is a struggle the Empire was doomed to lose. “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”, indeed…
Vader could command no loyalty whatsoever from the Senate, which already dooms his Empire, and on top of that it’s questionable if the military — beyond the 501st Legion of clone troopers under his personal command — would even obey him should he overthrow Palpatine and declare himself the new Galactic Emperor.
The very logic of Order 66, the clones being programmed to be totally obedient to the Chancellor of the Republic (i.e. Darth Sidious), suggests that the answer to the question of “will the Republic/Imperial military obey ‘Emperor Vader'” is “no”. Consider also that while this was not a thing in Legends, in the Canon continuity Palpatine has the “Contingency”, the so-called “Operation Cinder”, designed to lay waste to his Empire in the event of his demise, so if he couldn’t have it, nobody would. His Empire was designed and destined to live or die with him. It’s a logical assumption that a similar contingency was programmed into the Clone Army as early as Sidious’s time as chancellor, in which case the clones may be programmed to lay waste to the Republic, the Senate, the Jedi, all of it. Vader himself may well be targeted.
Not that Vader would be impotent. On the contrary, his raw Force potential is explicitly stated by George Lucas to be double that of Palpatine’s. In “Revenge of the Sith” Sidious boasts to Yoda that “Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us!”. Were it not for his injuries he suffered on Mustafar at the hands of Obi-Wan, Anakin may well have been powerful enough to have defeated Palpatine in a direct confrontation.
Imagine, if you will, that right after the Separatist Council is massacred, Anakin does not stay on Mustafar waiting for further orders from his new master, but rather spirits himself away to Coruscant, to defeat the Sith Lord behind everything, including the war, and who lied him into betraying the Jedi Order and even his own ideals, all on the false premise that Darth Plageius taught Sidious his secrets (recall, as early as the scene where Vader is christened in the office, Sidious admits to him that “to cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together I know we can discover the secret”; Anakin knows he’s been had, he’s just waiting for the right moment to take his revenge…in the actual timeline we see in the movies he waits too late and is crippled on Mustafar, but what if he made a different choice…).
Darth Sidious is a formidable opponent, but not an invincible one. As a lightsaber duelist he ranks in the top tier, but notice that against Windu he merely holds his own in lightsaber combat, rather only really taking the advantage when he resorts to his Force powers, in this instance his signature Sith Lightning. It’s been speculated that Palpatine threw the contest with Windu on purpose to deceive Anakin. Fine. Let’s look at how he fared against Yoda, then. Against Yoda, too, we see the same pattern: in lightsaber dueling with Yoda, if anything Sidious seems to be at a disadvantage, once again only truly gaining the upper hand against Yoda when he uses his Force powers, in this instance first with telekinetically flinging the Senate pods at the Jedi grandmaster, and later, once again, resorting to his signature power of Sith Lightning.
And for what it’s worth, against Maul and Savage in “The Clone Wars”, Sidious easily defeats Savage, but Maul actually puts up a real challenge, with his former apprentice actually seizing the initiative in one moment, but followed almost immediately by Sidious — once again — putting away his lightsaber and resorting to his Force abilities (telekinesis in this particular contest). Sidious is good, he’s a top-tier duelist, but he’s only above the likes of Windu and Yoda due to his exceptional Force-wielding abilities.
Now, pit him against Anakin, who in “Revenge of the Sith” we see defeat Dooku without even much trouble — Dooku is skilled enough with a lightsaber to have held his own against Yoda and to have decisively dispatched Obi-Wan twice. His level as a duelist is comparable to Sidious, for sure. Anakin also almost overpowered Obi-Wan within seconds of their duel beginning on Mustafar; Obi-Wan only prolonged the duel as long as he did due to his intimate knowledge of Anakin’s combat technique as well as his mastery of Form III “Soresu”, which emphasizes playing defense. Even then, Anakin may well have defeated Obi-Wan in the end were it not for his fatal mistake by the lava river.
Clearly, Anakin is in the top tier with a lightsaber, and in his incarnation as the uninjured Darth Vader, he would easily be Sidious’s equal in the application of raw Force power. None of Palpatine’s usual advantages would be effective against Anakin. He would give Anakin a real fight, there’s no question about that, but it’s very plausible that a newly-minted Vader who surprised Sidious on Coruscant after he “took care” of the Separatists would win. For what it’s worth, the dark-side ending of the “Revenge of the Sith” video game depicts exactly that: Vader, uninjured, confronts and eliminates Sidious.
If we accept the “Legends” continuity’s interpretation, this itself would fulfill the prophecy of the Chosen One, since the imbalance in the Force he was created to redress was a direct result of Plageuis’s and Sidious’s Sith ritual, which tipped the balance of the Force itself toward the dark side (which, by the way, is a power that we never see exhibited even by the most scarily powerful of the Old Republic’s Sith Lords…).
Anakin could defeat Palpatine, and with none of the Sith knowledge passed down, the Sith Order has effectively gone extinct. The Jedi Order has fallen as well, with the clones having laid waste to the Jedi Temple and massacred all its inhabitants.
Anakin never had any interest in politics, so at this point, after the Separatists have been eliminated, the Jedi have been eliminated, and the Sith have been eliminated, Padmé confronts her husband, just as she did on Mustafar in the actual movie, only here it’s a fait accompli: he has done terrible things, yes, but if she suggests, as she does in the actual movie, that he come away with her to help her raise their children…he just might say “yes”. What if he does?
Presumably Naboo is the place Anakin and Padmé would retire to, perhaps even in the Lake Country, where their romance first kindled in “Attack of the Clones”. Anakin would have free run of the Jedi Temple — after all, at this point, with his personal clone legion in control of the site, who’s going to stop him? — and no doubt all the Jedi’s sacred holocrons, archives, and text would be taken under his personal protection, all the better to have full access to the Order’s secrets. Recall, he believed there were things about the Force the Council were hiding from him, in order to limit his power and stifle his potential. Absolutely he would take the Jedi archives away with him to Naboo…which would be a very interesting issue, since there were survivors of Order 66 still at large.
It’s often said there were 10,000 or so Jedi Knights as of the Clone Wars. Even if Order 66 and the associated initial operations eliminated 99% of them, that still leaves 100 or so survivors scattered around the galaxy. As Palpatine himself mused, “the Jedi are relentless; if they are not all destroyed, it will be civil war without end.” With the clone legions laying waste to the remnants of the Republic, the military would act autonomously, descending into warlordism just as their Imperial counterparts did decades later in the “real” timeline. The Senate still sits on Coruscant, but it’s a safe bet that they would be cowed into submission to the military powers-that-be as surely as the Showa-era Japanese parliament was. Moffs had already been appointed before Palpatine’s demise in this timeline; Senatorial resistance would be futile.
Clone legions would still be hunting Jedi, perhaps even with the full backing of the Senate, such as it is, after the Jedi’s “coup d’état” — bear in mind the Senate and military are still not aware that Palpatine was a Sith Lord and behind the entire war, having puppeteered both sides from the start. But they might not have much of a chance to execute a Jedi purge.
The Separatists have lost their founder and chief of state Count Dooku, their commander-in-chief General Grievous, and the board of allied corporate executives known as the Separatist Council, with the killing blow having come at the hands of the shutdown order issued to the Droid Army from the Council’s headquarters on Mustafar. The kill switch has been thrown, and the droids sit deactivated on the battlefield…however, the Republic-cum-Empire has fallen into disarray, lost its commend structure, and is rapidly descending into civil war. The enemies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems have lost their momentum; that window of opportunity might just give the CIS enough time to reverse the shutdown order, and reactivate the Droid Army.
Keep in mind, in the Canon continuity, this is a possibility: as it was, General Kalani, a super tactical droid, outright refused the shutdown order. The Separatist command structure has been decapitated, but units like Kalani’s are still operational (in the canonical timeline the new Empire had to go to some trouble to decisively defeat the Separatist remnants, in the “Reconquest of the Rim”), and the Separatist Senate is still in session. The Empire losing the initiative gives the CIS enough time to re-emerge, and, with the reactivated Droid Armies, go on the offensive, this time no doubt decisively, as the Republic, now Empire, crumbles from within, as the ascendant CIS picks off imperial warlords in the Core one by one, just as surely as the Rebel Alliance would do decades later in the canonical timeline. A galaxy dominated by the Confederacy appears likely.
The remaining Jedi may well retreat into monastic isolation at a new temple, perhaps, if we’re drawing from Legends, the old stronghold of Tython, or take control of systems and sectors as Jedi Lords as in the Draggulch Period, protecting them from the perceived threat of the evil Separatists even as the Empire has risen and turned against them. Planetary defense forces may well expel the Empire, and keep the newly ascendant CIS away, leading to a more fragmented galaxy than before.
Eventually the CIS may well offer the Jedi a role as the keepers of peace and justice in the new order; bear in mind that despite their villainy, the Separatists, from the perspective of your average CIS Senator, was not averse to the Jedi: their own founder was a former Jedi Master, for god’s sake! But would the surviving Jedi of Order 66 accept a role as peacekeepers for the galactic government, having been betrayed unto decimation just a short time before, especially for the selfsame government they had been devoted to fighting during the Clone Wars? It seems unlikely.
Realistically, of course, the Jedi will split: some will join the Separatists, others retreat into seclusion, and yet others will assume political power over their own slices of the galactic pie.
And then we have the enigmatic figure of Anakin Skywalker, who has disappeared from the galactic stage on Naboo. He might be a wanted man, but again, who exactly is going to capture him? His wife Padmé Amidala, is extremely influential on Naboo, so likely Naboo assumes independence from the newly-minted Empire and has no interest in joining the Confederacy. Naboo would never extradite Anakin as long as Padmé was protecting him, and if any Confederate or Imperial or Jedi invasion fleet says otherwise, then frankly as Anakin studies the Jedi and perhaps even Sith ways, it’s entirely plausible that he could use the Force to pull every ship down from the sky, or — and this was a signature power even before he turned to the dark side — simply Force-choke every officer on every ship until they get the message (or die protesting).
Indeed, the Skywalker family’s role as Naboo’s protectors in this instance would, in time, grant them formidable influence over the system. Luke, as we know from his basic personality traits, is the calm contemplative type who would be content studying the more esoteric arts of the Force with his father, but Leia is aggressive and intensely political…and lo and behold if Naboo doesn’t have a political culture where girls from around the ages of 12 to 16 are favored to be elected the head of state (taking the title of “queen”). By the time the CIS can consolidate control over the galaxy or the Jedi rebuild, and the Skywalker problem on Naboo starts to get renewed attention, Leia may well already be Queen of Naboo and formidable in the Force.
Any fleet issuing an ultimatum would be met by a transmission from young Queen Leia, where if the visitors prove intransigent she’d raise up her hand and all of a sudden they’d all start gasping for air on board their ships. Naboo would become impregnable…and perhaps this would inspire a suspension of term limits for Queen Leia’s service, even as Anakin, as the Chosen One, grows in Force power together with his family, exerting enough influence for the very planet itself to start becoming a Force nexus.
The weather is nice, the days are brighter, the animals docile, the fields bloom, the people healthier, happier, and more beautiful…but all is increasingly dependent on the very moods of the royal family, the Skywalkers. Interestingly, this would almost be the exact inverse to what Palpatine did to the planet Byss in the “Legends” continuity; if Sidious could do it, then an Anakin who was still in balance likely could do just as well, but with the characteristic “good side” effects, rather than the fruits of the “dark side”.
Eventually you do get a royal dynasty of “superior” Force users, but one of Naboo, not the Galactic Empire (which was always much more military dictatorship than monarchy anyway). The desire and necessity to prevent interference from the outside might even inspire Naboo to become increasingly isolationist against a potentially hostile galaxy, with hyperspace routes mined and patrolled. The wildest possibility of all would be the Skywalker family using the Force to twist and turn the hyperspace lanes themselves, making it so that only a Force-sensitive navigator can even reach Naboo in the first place…and perhaps imposing a policy that strictly regulates visitors, unto starships that are allowed to enter having to have a Force-sensitive navigator on board, with the royal family themselves guiding the starship in with use of the Force, engines off. A kind of space-operatic sakoku.
And there would be a royal family beyond just Luke and Leia. Consider that if the planet’s security depends on extraordinary Force powers, and if the Skywalker bloodline is seen as increasingly sacred, would the family and the planet really balk at a royal marriage between the sacred siblings, Luke and Leia? It’s disturbing to us, but such couplings were common in the Bronze Age in real life, a later remnant of which was the brother-sister marriage practiced by the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt (which produced Cleopatra; so much for inbreeding depression…). The grandchildren may well be numerous, and perhaps exceptionally powerful, cementing Naboo as a Force-driven hermit kingdom.
Anakin himself at the end of his life may well become a Force ghost…but Padmé is only mortal, and very much not Force-sensitive. Anakin would no doubt be a very happy father and husband, but as the kids leave the nest, age sets in, and mortality becomes a very real specter, I could see him once again becoming obsessed with immortality, so that he may have his beloved wife with him forever. Some dark twisted experiments designed to make Padmé Force-sensitive so she may be an immortal spirit manifesting as well would definitely be on the table.
Perhaps he kills her then, perhaps the experiments are simply unsuccessful, maybe they are successful and she grows strong in the Force like him and the children, or perhaps she lives forever but as a twisted specter of her former glory, which is precisely what happened to Abeloth in the “Legends” continuity: the mortal bride of immortal Force wielders, who would not let her go to her fate in the netherworld of the Force, and in all their attempts created not an enduringly beautiful bride, but rather a monster…
A very twisted, winding tale indeed, and one that departs massively from the Star Wars universe we know and love from the original trilogy, but from the perspective of the worldbuilding and the story we get in the prequel trilogy? It’s a coherent, even compelling, “what if”. Makes even me feel compelled to take up the pen and make some honest-to-goodness fan fiction, but for the moment, I leave you with this…