Darth Vader

Darth Vader

Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, began life as Anakin Skywalker, a slave on the planet of Tatooine. It is possible that his birth occured due to the “Will of the Force” as his mother claimed there was no possibility of there being a father to the boy.Mechanically gifted, Anakin worked in a tinker’s shop on Tatooine before being spotted by the Jedi. The Jedi were unable (or unwilling) to free his mother in the process, however.Anakin grew into a Jedi of extraordinary ability, however, he was unable to forget his mother.

The Jedi did not permit him to go retrieve her from slavery, nor did they even offer to “keep an eye” on her: rather they demanded obedience to their order before all other considerations.nEventually he did return to Tatooine to discover his mother had been kidnapped by Tusken Raiders; he found her moments before her death. Anakin destroyed the Tusken Raider encampment in retaliation, killing everyone who lived in it.The Jedi order’s demands also meant that in addition to not having the chance to save his mother, Anakin was forced to keep his marriage to Padme Amidala a secret, as such relationships were forbidden.The constraints of the order grew to be too much and the tension between Anakin’s all-too-human needs and the Jedi’s rules too irreconcilable.

Eventually this tension forced him to convert to the Dark Side of the Force, and he thus became Darth Vader under Palpatine’s tutelage.The Jedi had long harboured the opinion that Anakin would be the one to bring “balance to the Force”. What they failed to realise is that balance, in this case, meant the Sith levelling the score with the Jedi. Thus Vader assisted Palpatine in their elimination. It was a process that did not go entirely smoothly: injuries sustained in fighting Obi Wan Kenobi forced Vader to wear an extensive life support system, including artificial lungs.Vader was Palpatine’s most loyal and dependable lieutenant, and served the Emperor well in many campaigns, particularly those waged against the Rebel Alliance.However the emergence of Vader’s son, Luke Skywalker, affected him. He attempted to convert Luke to the Dark Side and the cause of Empire: this failed. During the Battle of Endor, father and son fought on the Death Star and Vader was severely injured. The Emperor attempted to finish off Skywalker, but this was apparently too much for Vader in his weakened state and he killed the Emperor by throwing him into the reactor core of the Death Star, the Emperor hitting him with Force lightning in the process. He died from his wounds shortly afterwards.