Challenge!: AU where Anakin is held up by traffic in RotS and so Palpatine is killed by Mace but, somehow, things go worse.
Okay, but for some reason this makes me laugh as I’m imagining Anakin using the Star Wars equivalent of Waze and just sitting in his speeder, cursing at the incompetence of both his traffic app and whoever redesigned the Coruscant space lanes. For Force’s sake, they just expanded both ways by four lanes and there’s still traffic!
That bit of hilarity aside -
The lazy way out of this situation would be to assume that Palpatine had an auto-ignite set up for Order 66 in the event of his death, so the Jedi would have been massacred regardless, minus Yoda, Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace, and a handful of others.
But let’s make it a little more challenging - let’s assume that Order 66 doesn’t happen, as it sets up a very tricky situation for the Jedi.
As we saw in Season 7, Mace and co. were debating a direct takeover of the Senate if Palpatine didn’t step down after Obi-wan nailed Grievous.
But now with the new information that Palpatine was the Sith Lord - would the Jedi allow the Senate to hold elections as normal or would they feel the need to intervene with the politics? Which would set up some the populace and the government turning against the Jedi, as they were already primed to do so and you have to think they wouldn’t look too kindly on mystic powerful space monks assassinating the leader of the Republic and then taking control of said government.
So now you have a pissed off populace, a pissed off military (ie, people like Tarkin), a really confused set of clones, and an unstable Anakin whose wife would be very upset about the Jedi, again, assassinating the leader of the Republic and then taking control of said government.
And of course, since Palpatine had consolidated power for so many years, there’s now this vacuum and we all know how political vermin love a vacuum.
The Confederacy, meanwhile, is leaderless, with both Grievous and Dooku dead, but without Palpatine to draw them into the Empire, what do they do? Meaning the war, to some degree, continues. Or the Confederacy finally just secedes, as the Republic is having way too many internal issues to deal with keeping itself whole.
Meaning - crime, all around, is waaaaaay up.
Also meaning, the Jedi get a lot of blame.
The populace needs a scapegoat, it needs justice or else the tension is going to destroy what’s left of the Republic from the inside. Mace is an obvious choice, as he was the one to actually kill Palpatine, and knowing Mace, he would stride into the middle of the Senate, hold his head high, and deny nothing, as what he did was, in his mind, right, for the galaxy at large, right for the Jedi, and justice. He will take his penalty, knowing he acted for the Light.
Tarkin is pushing for the death penalty, of course. If he did so for a teenager on flimsy evidence, you are damn sure he’s going to gun for a Jedi Council member who subverted the rule of law.
Not to mention they were literally spying on the Chancellor before “executing” him.
While that’s going on, Anakin has no idea where to turn. He was beginning to have the inkling Palpatine wasn’t as good as he thought, but at the same time Mace killed him, in cold blood, had Anakin spy on the Chancellor and does that mean Anakin would be in trouble, as well? Which, we all know how Anakin gets when he feels he’s in trouble (ie, he denies and runs.) And in this case, the consequences might actually be as bad as imagined.
Anakin wants to leave the Order, leave Coruscant altogether, take Pamdé and their unborn child with him and just - go back to Naboo, or anywhere, really. Padmé, of course, is not going to leave her post when the Republic looks to be crumbling from the inside. This causes...problems. There’s no Sith Lord to take Anakin under their wing while he’s this unstable...
Or is there? Let us not forget at this very moment, Ahsoka is bringing Maul back to Coruscant with part of the 501st. And Rex gets the message that Mace has killed the Chancellor.
Ahsoka has no idea what to think. She didn’t trust the Council, but to think it would go this far...
Does she bring back Maul now? Can she even trust the Council to deal with Maul if they were willing to stoop to political assassination? Did Obi-wan know about this when they talked? Did Anakin?
I feel like this could be a conduit for...dark!Ahsoka. I mean, Maul is desperate for a partner and now that Ahsoka has learned about Palpatine’s death, she’s really not wanting to go back to Coruscant and is rethinking everything Maul told her.
So I guess what I’m saying is that Ahsoka frees Maul and they decide to work together for the time being, Or let me rephrase this. Maul pretends to be aghast that Palpatine is dead and doesn’t tell Ahsoka Palpatine’s true identity because if he gets Ahsoka on his side...well, he’s not going to argue with that.
This leaves Rex very, very confused but he trusts Ahsoka knows she had a bad time of it with the Jedi, and he’s willing to go along with this, for now.
Also, now that Dooku, Grievous, and Palpatine are dead - what become of the clones? And that cues a kind of existential crisis for them as the Republic is so busy trying to stabilize itself, it barely has time to deal with the war.
So the clones go a myriad of ways - some stay to fight for the Republic, some go off to life live, some join the Confederacy, some get into a life of crime - all never knowing that that chip is still inside of them. A chip the Kaminoans know about, a chip Maul has an inkling about.
Meanwhile, Obi-wan is wrapping up on Utapau when he gets a frantic message from Coruscant that the Chancellor is dead, Mace is under arrest, Anakin has disappeared, and while Ahsoka had reportedly been bringing in Maul, she’s gone AWOL.
Also, he learns from the holonet that he’s not only being subpoenaed for Mace’s case, but also possibly coming under investigation for the multitude of Republic laws he broke in a few months in regards to Mandalore and use of Republic resources and funding.
Obi-wan, unlike Mace, is not 100% sure he did the right thing, as he knows all his actions stemmed from attachment rather than justice, and is not 100% certain he is going to return to Coruscant quite yet. His own testimony, if he didn’t lie, would be damning towards Mace and besides, Mace could extricate himself, if needed. Anakin and Ahsoka, however, he worries deeply for.
Cody, being the stalwart companion he is, comes along for the ride. Someone needs to protect the General’s ass, anyway.
So what we have is a falling Ahsoka who is coming under the sway of Maul, an unbalanced Anakin who Maul would prefer to kill and get out of the way, and a very uneasy Obi-wan who is likely to, once again, go off on his own to protect the ones he loves.
Not to mention the Republic is fractured, trust in the Jedi is nonexistent, and this whole set of events also sets a schism within the Jedi themselves, which could cause a break in the Order (not necessarily Dark Siders, but ones who feel the need to branch off from the Council).
The Republic is wholly unstable, Tarkin is attempting a soft military coup, and the Confederacy is left to do what it pleases.
So I don’t know if this is worse, but it’s certainly not better. Ahsoka and Maul are likely to do some damage and a turned!Ahsoka would want some kind of revenge on the Jedi. Tarkin’s military coup succeeds and he begins to wipe out his political enemies, sending Padmé into hiding with her soon-to-born twins. That storyline could go from okay to truly tragic. Anakin is just...missing. No one knows what happened to him. The Jedi Order is falling apart from the inside. Mace is set to executed. Obi-wan is trying to pick up the pieces but he can barely get handle on one piece.
And if I really wanted to ratchet it up from there:
Consider this - the Republic is crumbling, visibly, and there is no more center of power. I have a feeling some friends (ie, not friends) in Wild Space and beyond might like to take advantage of this opportunity.
*cue a Yuuzhan Vong/Grysk invasion and it all gets shot to hell in a variety of new, awful ways*
(However, if the Yuuzhan Vong do invade, that means we get Thrawn, at least. Maybe the only upside?)
My real question is this: does Obi-wan or does Anakin join Ahsoka and Maul? And they would both have reasons to do so and to reject them. A triumvirate of Obi-wan, Ahsoka, and Maul turned would be...scary. Adding Anakin into that mix - I doubt there’s anything they couldn’t do.
