When Anakin joined the Jedi Order, his morality was actually pretty normal, better than the Jedi Order’s even. It was brave, compassionate, open-minded, and selfless. He wanted to help free the slaves of his community. He risked his life to save anyone who needed help, including people he’d just met. In the TPM novelization he even helped out a Tusken Raider who he saw had his leg caught under a boulder on his way home to his mother, freed him from under the boulder, made a splint for his leg, and bravely stayed with this Raider for a few hours over night to make sure he was okay, even though they were thought of as savages by everyone else because he really was just that kindhearted. He stuck up to his slave master Watto when he caught him trying to beat another slave in his community, even though he knew it could have gotten him hurt in the process.
Then, Obi Wan, Yoda, and the Jedi Council kept telling him how “wrong” he was over the next 14 years, so eventually, he regressed to a slave mindset by the time he got to his teens, and too often kept publicly deferring his moral compass to try to fit in with them, or please people he loved, or protect the people he cared about, particularly if they had social or political power over him, rather than sticking up for himself, because he had nothing outside of them to protect himself or the people he loved, nothing better to safely escape to, and his options for healthy support, mental health treatment, and escape from such abusive, ableist, manipulative, toxic, and unsupportive authority/parental figures and environments were very limited to nonexistent.
Is it an excuse for his crimes? Not entirely. He knew what he was doing felt wrong, and after awhile he did stop trying to fight the darkness. He was selfish in his desperation to avoid abandonment. However, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it would be to not lose your shit, then eventually just give in and become a monster in such consistently awful environments with such consistently awful authority figures from two cults brainwashing and gaslighting you to be their version of a “good” tool or weapon for their own ends when healthy, effective, and safe escape routes, support, and treatment options are very limited to nonexistent and shitty in his position in the GFFA if you came from nothing and had no one of privilege outside of the broken Jedi, Sith, Republic, and Empire.
It’s why I definitely think if this were real life, while not entirely innocent, Anakin/Vader could probably be a viable candidate for the diminished actuality/diminished capacity criminal defense in court.
Reblogging for this commentary on Anakin. Absolutely 1000% yes. He was truly good and morally sound before the Jedi got ahold of him. By the time he becomes Vader, he’s been gaslit for so long that he’s basically doing it to himself now. I definitely think it’s safe to say that Anakin’s agency was severely compromised throughout his entire life, and I don’t think it’s fair to hold him entirely accountable for his crimes, considering this.
He was an enslaved child, indoctrinated into the Jedi cult, constantly gaslit by them and Palpatine, not given any support for his trauma or mental illness, and repeatedly told that he has “seeds of darkness” inside of him... ... Like what did they expect to happen?
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