#were not monsters and did not deserve to die

LIVE

Anakin is Shaped by Trauma:

Anakin was born into slavery and lived with the constant threat of death from the moment he was old enough to comprehend it. At the age of ten he left behind everyone he knew and loved, knowing that they were still enslaved and in constant danger, and that they could die at the whim of their owners.

He then was raised within a deeply-foreign-to-him culture which did not have context for his pre-existing trauma and as result, entirely without malicious intent, retraumatized him.

The Jedi order knew how to teach initiates raised in the safety and security of their creche. They didn’t know how to teach a child who had never known either.

They couldn’t predict the consequences of expecting a former slave to adhere to the jedi ideal of emotional control without addressing the trauma of slavery. How ‘There is no emotion, there is peace’ would strike differently for someone whose survival had depended on presenting what their owner wanted them to feel, and not what they truly felt. They didn’t know how to teach the difference between repression and control, or didn’t realize Anakin needed to be taught it.

And all this was ongoing while he was being subtly sabotaged and undermined by an adult he thought he could trust.

Anakin is not inherently an unhinged lunatic. Getting to that point took years of trauma and sith manipulation. Anakin’s character as an adult is almost entirely driven by his unaddressed trauma.

Changingany of the above aspects would radically alter Anakin’s coping mechanisms, relationship dynamics, and ability to self-regulate.

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