I think the thing that really annoys me the most about people who claim "Anakin was the real victim in the prequels" in order to justify his actions is that it literally mirrors the real life ways in which the actions of men (specifically, white men) are consistently justified and blame is always shifted to the victims.
Fandom loves to blame Mace Windu (a Black man) more than all the other Jedi for Anakin's problems because Mace "didn't trust him" (which is also complete bullshit up until Revenge of the Sith). Mace actually got along with and trusted Anakin (Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars showed us proof of this), but he didn't coddle Anakin. And it turns out he was right not to trust Anakin during Revenge of the Sith because Anakin ended up betraying him. That is not Mace's fault. Anakin failed to regulate his emotions and the entire galaxy paid the price.
Like yeah, Anakin had a shitty start in life. As a young child, he and his mother were slaves and that definitely had an impact on him psychologically. There is no fucking denying that.
But I continue seeing people act like Anakin slaughtering children during Order 66 was an understandable reaction to his fear of losing Padme after losing his mother (someone actually tried to argue this with me). Padme herself was horrified by what he had done, especially knowing he "did it for her".
Anakin's rampage during Order 66 was not a valid crash out. It was not. It was evil. It was monstrous. It was inexcusable. The Jedi did nothing at all to deserve what happened to them. Nothing at all. Nothing. There is no argument that can be made that will ever justify what Anakin did to the Jedi Order.
There's nothing wrong with having empathy for Anakin, but empathy doesn't erase accountability. It's not the fault of the Jedi that Anakin chose not to regulate his emotions. The Jedi couldn't control Anakin's actions, and that's the whole point. Palpatine couldn't control Anakin's actions either. Every horrible thing Anakin did as Darth Vader was Anakin's choice.
It's just exhausting watching Anakin constantly get infantilized to the point that his choices are always blamed on the people he hurt the most. The Jedi. Padme. Obi-Wan. Ahsoka.
What happened to Anakin as a child does not exempt him from accountability for his actions as an adult, nor does it make Anakin's choices anyone else's fault. The Jedi trained him the best they could, but Palpatine's dark side influence was stronger (the war really helped too). He knew what he was doing was wrong when he was doing it. He knew he was wrong for what he did to the Tusken Raiders in Attack of the Clones (like why do you think he didn't tell Obi-Wan???). He cried before slaughtering the younglings hiding in the Jedi Council chamber. He cried after slaughtering the Separatist leaders on Mustafar.
Neither Padme nor Obi-Wan are to blame for Anakin's choice to Force choke Padme. Anakin made the choice to do that. He was very angry and instead of behaving in a rational and civilized manner, he physically harmed the woman he sacrificed the entire Jedi Order for because she was going to leave him.
Understanding someone's suffering does not justify the harm they cause. Anakin continued to do really horrible things even though he knew it was wrong. Acting like someone else is to blame for Anakin's choices removes his agency and misses the entire point of what makes Anakin Skywalker such a tragic character in the first place.
Could the Jedi have handled Anakin's issues better? Perhaps(????), but let's not forget that Anakin spent three years deceiving the Jedi Order so they had no idea what he was doing behind their backs, they didn't know about the vision of Padme dying or that Palpatine was grooming him, and they were operating under wartime pressure and a lot of political manipulation. The Jedi were not omniscient.
Just because the Jedi failed to save Anakin does not mean they caused his actions. His pain does not justify his actions. He chose to lead the 501st into the Jedi Temple and made the very active choice to kill innocent children who were not even remotely involved with the war at all. They were at school and a man they all looked up to chose not to control his emotions, came in and murdered almost all of them. We literally watch the news in this ridiculous country always try to find ways to justify the actions of white men who chose not to control their emotions and who chose to walk into schools and slaughter innocent children and their teachers. We watch people on Fox "News" try to justify the actions of those men and place blame on everyone else, and it's usually some form of "maybe if people had been nicer to him he wouldn't have done it" in order to reframe the perpetrator as the victim. I see so many "the Jedi weren't nice enough to Anakin" (which isn't even true) or "if they had made Anakin a Jedi Master he wouldn't have slaughtered them" type of statements in this fandom and honestly it just blows my mind.
I never see anyone applying those justifications to female characters, that's for damn sure. Reva was treated with hostility despite the fact she was basically doing the same thing as Anakin (taking out her pain on others), except she was one of those children who survived Anakin's rampage on the Jedi Temple. She was literally one of his victims and fandom tears her apart. What Anakin did to her was deeply traumatizing and she had no one to guide her, no one to help her cope with what happened to her. She was thrust into a dangerous situation with a target painted on her back and did what she thought she had to. There is so much context for her actions but she doesn't get nearly the level of empathy from fandom that Anakin does despite being one of his personal victims. I'm not justifying Reva's actions either, but it's wild how the double standards are so obvious. (Reva slander is not welcome here at all.)
And portions of the fandom will continue to blame everyone else except for Anakin for the choices that Anakin made of his own free will.
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