Hi! I don’t think this sounded like you were picking a fight, believe me, it’s a lot more obvious when someone’s trying to pick a fight, don’t worry about it. 😂 I’ve thought about this, too, and imo I think the answer would be: Do what you’re going to do, but be honest about it, your level of investment in it, your willingness to keep working on your path, and accept the consequences.
That’s basically what Obi-Wan did with Satine when she personally asked for him on Mandalore in TCW, but the Jedi were like, “The Senate is never going to let us legally go there to help, because she chose to keep Mandalore neutral.” and I think Yoda absolutely kind of knew Obi-Wan was going to go anyway. Yet we see no terrible punishment from the Jedi to Obi-Wan about his decision.
I think the difference is that Obi-Wan seems willing to accept whatever the consequences of his choices will be, that he understands he cannot hold prioritizing Satine in his heart on the same level as his commitment to the Jedi Order, and that he has genuinely made his choice between the two. He doesn’t break Jedi ideals in his reactions to what happens on Mandalore, he doesn’t murder a bunch of people after his loss, and I would assume he’s willing to sit down with Yoda and honestly discuss where his priorities are.
With Anakin, I don’t think the problem is precisely that he went to help his mother, in the way he did, because he found a way to not shirk his duty to protect the senator from Naboo. That would have been the problem with going after her instead of helping Obi-Wan fight Dooku, that he would have been endangering people’s lives beyond himself, that willingness to throw away a duty that you are needed for, right that very moment, to go after someone because you were afraid to live without them, was the problem.
Because that’s a lot of what Obi-Wan is getting after him for in all of AOTC and it’s a recurring theme with Anakin here–that he’s willing to overstep his mandate, throw his mandate away, to not even honestly speak about his feelings without changing the subject the second he hears something he doesn’t like when Obi-Wan asks him about his dreams. He’s willing to mouth off to his Master because he wants to impress Padme, not because he has a clear-headed eye on the situation. He’s ready to rip Zam Wessel apart because she’s a threat to Padme, not because he believes that that level of force is the only way to stop her. He’s willing to ditch Padme on Naboo because he fears his mother is in danger. He’s willing to let Obi-Wan face Dooku alone, something that would probably get Obi-Wan killed, because Padme fell out of the ship. These things do not exist independently of each other, they’re part of the bigger arc of Anakin’s unwillingness to be committed to his desire to be a Jedi.
Yet, in contrast, I don’t think we see Anakin getting any real punishment for going to Tatooine from the Jedi? They don’t know about the Tusken slaughter, of course, but they know he went there while he was meant to be protecting Padme (to be fair, Padme’s own willingness to go, “Well, I’m going, so I guess you’ll just have to follow me.” does make things more complicated), yet it’s not like they kick him out or refuse to let him become a Knight or anything.
Which says to me that I think, had Anakin not slaughtered the Tuskens in his grief, the Jedi would have been like, well, okay, you need to sit down with Yoda and really assess yourself and what you want and are you willing to accept that you might get Library Duty for this for awhile or be taken off some important missions while you Have An Important Think About It, but that they would have accepted that.
I think a lot about that Mace Windu comic, where Prosset Dibs falls to the dark side, tries to murder Mace, and actively taunts the Jedi Council into trying to kill him, and their reaction is: We need to help him, because he’s going down a bad path, it’s our duty to help bring him back to the light.
When they can and when they think there’s a chance to genuinely help and they’re not risking other people’s lives, the Jedi want to give out second chances and work with people. If Anakin had been willing to work with them, be honest about his attachments (the desire to hold onto someone because you were afraid to live without them, the willingness to sacrifice a thousand to save the one that you wanted to keep, for your own reasons), I think everything he did (aside from the Tusken murders) would have been acceptable. Especially if he genuinely believed that he was following the will of the Force and not using that as an excuse to just do what he wants (which I think there’s a fair amount of truth that he genuinely believed that even before he got to Tatooine and his visions were correct).
That he genuinely thought about his visions and didn’t immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion, but he made an honest effort to sort out his own anxieties versus what the Force was telling him–like, for example, in The Clone Wars, when Ahsoka is on the run, they initially don’t want Anakin to go after her, because he’s potentially emotionally compromised. But he shows that he’s willing to call the guards on her, so they understand that, yes, he’s thought about his own investment here and is willing to work to be objective, so they accept him being the one to go find her. He thought about his own feelings versus what the situation really was and worked to be clear-headed. Or the way Ahsoka has visions about Aurra Sing and works to separate her own feelings from what the Force is telling her, she talks to Yoda about it and works to be clear-headed about it, so she’s given more room for it.
Ultimately, I don’t think there are specific Jedi Ideals Written In Stone about these things, I think they have a general code of conduct and a set of laws that they are subject to like anyone else in the galaxy living under the Senate’s jurisdiction, and so it comes down to a case by case basis and what the person is willing to do to be as clear-headed as they can be about it. If you can be honest and you genuinely think this is the right thing to do as a Jedi, if you’re doing it for selfless reasons rather than because you’re acting out of fear, if you’re willing to accept whatever consequences might happen because of it, I think you’ll be fine.
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