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#miss me with that 'tHe OrDeR FeLt aNaKiN wAs cOrrUpTiNg aHsOkA' bs
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//The reason I like to make these lists of related quotes from throughout Star Wars canon is because I’m constantly noticing patterns and recurring themes, and how they fall right in line with or give further context for the sequel trilogy, and can often be used to either back up ST/post-ST discussion or speculation (e.g. the reformed Jedi faith with not return to the practice of permanently separating infants and children from their families, bc canon has framed that negatively on multiple occasions), or to negate or disprove takes that have no business being part of ST discussion in the first place (e.g. exile is framed very negatively all up and through canon).
So that being said, this is another pattern/commonality I noticed: Anakin’s and Ben’s falls to darkness are tragedies not just in themselves, but also because they were or were felt to be falls—failures—on the part of every person in their lives, as well. Every person who loved and/or cared about them felt some level of direct or indirect culpability, and then they have to live with that and be haunted by or reminded of it all the time. Whether through nightmares, nagging guilt or shame, or shoulda-coulda-wouldas about how things might have gone differently.
Of course, the biggest non-Palpatine player in Anakin’s fall was Obi-Wan, but what really made this click for me was Ahsoka, and her entry in Women of the Galaxy. Referring to the “Twilight of the Apprentice” episodes of Star Wars Rebels—
“…she encounters Darth Vader, and finally learns the devastating truth about Anakin’s transformation and turn to the dark side. Ahsoka feels partly responsible for his downfall, having left years earlier, and confronts her conscience when his helmet is slashed in an epic battle, revealing Anakin’s face beneath Vader’s mask. She vows not to leave him again, but it’s too late.”
And I’m like, Damn, she wasn’t even there when everything went down, nor was she involved in anything that happened, and she still felt guilty. But of course, the sad irony is that that’s exactly why she felt guilty—because she left Anakin behind when she left the Order. Now, she had every reason and right to leave, but even then she felt bad about leaving Anakin, especially since he was the only one who believed and stood up for her when that whole bs happened. And then years later she feels terrible about it all over again, for a much worse reason. She was probably thinking along the lines of, ‘I knew Anakin was a lot like me, and he also had issues with the Order, but I left him anyway, and then this happened to him. Which is why she had that guilt-vision of Anakin saying:
“Ahsoka, why did you leave? Where were you when I needed you? …You were selfish. You abandoned me! You failed me! Do you know what I’ve become?”
So if she could feel this way, while not actually being involved in Anakin’s fall at all (aside from the Council’s treatment of her leading to her departure being another big red mark against the Order for him), then it’s no wonder everyone who was involved accepts some level of responsibility.
Even Qui-Gon—long-dead, Force ghost Qui-Gon—accepted a measure of blame. Mainly through Obi-Wan, and realizing that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make his not even knighted yet Padawan take on this kid as a death bed promise. He and Obi even had a back-and-forth about their respective culpability for “Vader” in ‘Master and Apprentice’ in FACPOV.
 QG: “‘…I’m the one who failed you.’ ‘Failed me?’ They have never spoken of this, not once in all Qui-Gon’s journeys into the mortal realm to commune with him. This is primarily because Qui-Gon thought his mistakes so wretched, so obvious, that Obi-Wan wanted to spare him any discussion of it. …‘You weren’t ready to be a Jedi Master,’ Qui-Gon admits. ‘You hadn’t even been knighted when I forced you to promise to train Anakin. Teaching a student so powerful, so old, so unused to our ways…that might’ve been beyond the reach of the greatest of us. To lay that burden at your feet when you were hardly more than a boy—' ‘Anakin became a Jedi Knight,’ Obi-Wan interjects, a thread of steel in his voice. ‘He served valiantly in the Clone Wars. His fall to darkness was more his choice than anyone else’s failure. Yes, I bear some responsibility—and perhaps you do, too—but Anakin had the training and the wisdom to choose a better path. He did not.’ All true. None of it any absolution for Qui-Gon’s own mistakes.”  
Speaking of Obi-Wan, his feelings about Anakin’s fall are pretty fascinating to follow throughout the canon, because they’re very varied, but also consistent in a way (as well as full of Obikin angst). Which makes sense, him being as deeply and emotionally connected to Anakin as he is. He goes from being angry at Anakin to shamed/haunted by his fall to missing Anakin to making himself believe that Anakin is dead and only Vader remains, and everything in between and back again.
“I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.”  –-RotS
“‘I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything. Except betray a friend. What we have done to him today… …I don’t think he will ever trust us again.’ He found his eyes turning unaccountably hot, and his vision swam with unshed tears. ‘And I’m not entirely sure he should.’”
“He had argued for Anakin, made excuses, covered for him again and again and again; all the while this attachment he denied even feeling had blinded him to the dark path his best friend walked.”
“I loved you, but I could not save you.” –-RotS novel
“He was in charge of Anakin, and it happened despite him. It’s quite a heavy weight to carry.”  –-Ewan McGregor, RotS commentary
“Images flickered across his eyes. …Anakin, burning on the volcanic slopes of Mustafar, blaming him for everything that had gone wrong. And it had all gone so wrong.”
“He’d gone to Shmi Skywalker’s grave to apologize for losing her son. …Qui-Gon had made her a promise and Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to keep it. As he stood there, looking at the stone, he felt an even deeper shame. Qui-Gon had left her there a slave, and Obi-Wan had done everything in his power to prevent Anakin’s return.”
“Something caught his attention, one of the few pieces of his old life that he’d taken with him to his desert solitude. Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. It was all that was left of the man who had been, often simultaneously, Obi-Wan’s greatest annoyance, his brother, and his best friend. If any other part of Anakin had survived, it was lost to evil and darkness. Obi-Wan couldn’t save him any more than he could save any Jedi who was still at large in the galaxy…”  ---Ahsoka novel
“Nineteen years. Nineteen years since I left him to die. Nineteen years of reliving his corruption every night in my dreams.” (frickin PTSD nightmares!)
“The voice is unrecognizable. How little of my friend is left? …No. My friend is dead, of that I am certain. The thing in front of me is not Anakin Skywalker.”
“I cannot use his real name. It would undo me, even after all this time, catching in my throat.”
“I know why I’m here, why I’m reliving this moment time and time again. This was when I failed Luke, just as I failed his father.”  ---‘Time of Death’, FACPOV
In both Revenge of the Sith and its novelization, Yoda mentions that he failed the Jedi Order. But the thing I love about his FACPOV story, ‘There Is Another’, is that he also talks specifically about Anakin. And he refers to him as Anakin, not Vader.
“…Yoda felt Obi-Wan grow suddenly stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and then move in a quick burst into the netherworld of the Force. And Yoda felt Anakin fall even more deeply into painful loneliness—a loneliness so terrible that Yoda almost felt pity for him. He almost wished he could speak to him, to tell him that he needn’t be lonely after all. There were… …If only what had happened to Anakin had not been shadowed and hidden from them all…No. That was not true. If only he had perceived the paths that Anakin was beginning to follow. It was his own failing.”
“And he had failed. He had not seen the paths the young Padawan Anakin had begun to take.”
So that about sums up, “Everyone felt shitty about Anakin’s fall and wished they’d done something to prevent it”. Now onto his grandson.
With Luke being the ST’s Obi-Wan 2.0, he’s clearly the biggest non-Snoke player in Ben’s turn. But he certainly has Obi-Wan beat by a long shot, as his failure with Ben and his part in the creation of “Kylo Ren” was direct and egregious as hell. Like, everything could’ve turned out so differently if he’d literally just not taken a weapon with him into Ben’s hut that night, I’m… Anyway, Ben’s family:
“I just never should have sent him away, that’s when I lost him.”  ---TFA
“He prayed someday his son would forgive him in turn.”  ---TFA junior novel
“I see things that are not yet to be. …worst of all, Luke, as I am now, an old man, his face creased, his eyes haunted. He’s cut off from those who love him, consumed by regret and sorrow.”  ---'Time of Death’, FACPOV
“…in my hubris, I thought I could train him… By the time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him, it was too late. …Leia blamed Snoke, but it was me. I failed.”
“And I was left with shame and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose master had failed him.”
“I failed you, Ben. I’m sorry.”  ---TLJ
“…it was I who broke that family. I failed.”
“Once, Luke had thought he would be the one who might mend what was broken in Kylo. Later, he had blamed himself for the damage.”  ---TLJ novel
[Interesting “inverse Anakin” note: All Anakin’s people were not blood relatives (only blood relative he previously had was his mom and she died; if she’d still been alive ‘Vader’ wouldn’t have happened 🙃), while all Ben’s people were his blood relatives]
The fandom and the characters themselves can debate till the cows come home about who is or isn’t responsible for what and how much when it comes to Anakin’s and Ben’s turns to the dark (Palpatine and Snoke are unequivocally the most responsible tho, just to keep it 100), but my point is that they all feel like they contributed. They all believe that, if only, they had done something differently or seen something sooner, it all could’ve been prevented. Anakin and Ben being corrupted and falling to the dark side isn’t just like, So that’s a thing that happened, oh well, and everyone skippidy-do’s along with their lives. Everyone who was close to Anakin and Ben was devastated, and it’s a major loss that they grieve, and they all feel or accept some level of fault in the whole thing, they feel that it’s partly on them. Because Anakin and Ben were so loved before everything went so wrong---and were still loved after—but everything went so wrong despite the love. That’s a big part of what makes it so sad, and what makes them tragic figures.
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