Depends on the interpretation of Anakin... I'd argue that TCW Anakin did love Padme for who she was often enough and not just for the feeling he got out of the relationship. I mean, Anakin still wasn't perfect about it. Like basically all humans ever, he's occasionally selfish in TCW... but overall he did try in TCW.

So if you incorporate this then it's really just the pain Anakin felt over losing his mother that triggered Anakin's slip into an unhealthy relationship... probably triggered by him leaning towards the darkside to forcefully save Padme. Basically, when he was his normal self and not someone grasping to impose his will upon the future, they had a very healthy relationship, though in fairness it wasn't perfect (what secretive relationship could be). Often Padme repeatedly saved Anakin from darker impulses.

The real problem arised when Anakin was, shortly after his mother's death (an understandable situation) and much later in the war when Palpatine had manipulated Anakin into not trusting the Jedi Order anymore. Which got compounded by the orders strict rules that would damn him and Padme if he confessed to get help. Then got further compounded by Palpatine manipulating the Jedi by turning their backs on Ahsoka, telling him to betray Palpatine and spy on him, basically just giving him the same cookie cutter message to let go of the fear of loss when thinking he was talking about Obi-wan Kenobi's death instead, and then by indirectly denying him access to the holocron chambers by not making him a Master. Let's not even get into Mace Windu openly not trusting Anakin and saying it to his face.

Sadly Anakin got so bamboozled he didn't understand who was right anymore... and basically rebelled and did what he wanted instead. Using that want as justification for others being evil.

Padme and his love for her wasn't the true cause of Anakin's downfall, it was being ostracized by the order and separated from his loved ones of Padme, Obi-wan, and Ahsoka who he could have opened up to about his dilemma. Without those two fundamental issue compounding things, Anakin likely would have been able to more easily resist Palpatine's offer and his fear... like he did many times in AotC and TCW series. Basically, love of Padme and his unborn children might have been the final straw but it was the Jedi Order and their rules that created the fulcrum that caused Anakin leaning between light and dark in the first place.

I mean think about it, if Anakin had Qui-Gon Jinn as a Master instead of Obi-wan Kenobi, Anakin would have felt a lot more confident about going to his master who openly went against the Council often instead of Master Yoda. Qui-Gon Jinn would have done everything he could to help the Choosen One, which is what Anakin needed.

I feel people who point at attachments as the problem turn a blind eye to Palpatine's plan. Which is the greater problem overall. As no Palpatine, no Anakin falling. Attachments were just to tool Palpatine exploited, and it only worked because of the Jedi themselves.

Interesting question. I think that they’re relationship would’ve been ok if Anakin wouldn’t have been so worried/anxious about Padmé. His anxiety about her ultimately led to his downfall.

Also, I don’t think Anakin cared about himself more than Padmé because it was his love for her that brought him to the dark side. Of course, he can definitely be selfish at times, but I don’t believe he was ever trying to be selfish. In my opinion, he did everything he did for Padmé, even when it wasn’t the right thing or what was best for her.

That being said, I enjoyed reading your thoughts and I respect your opinion. I do agree with a lot of what you said, but these👆 Are just some of my thoughts.

I mean not really sure

I mean he fell in love with her at a young age which seemed really wrong

They did make a great couple

And yes love is forbidden by Jedi code

But this was one thing that lead Anakin down the path towards the Dark Side

@Swatteam123 I understand, as you could tell, it was hard for me to pick a side, and I can understand why that is difficult for you in particular. I totally agree with you on your analysis of that scene you linked; you make some really good points on it. Thanks, man!

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@LordRyus You have a very interesting point of view on Anakin’s fall. I don’t think it’s too much of an assumption to say that, from your point of view, Palpatine is responsible for what Anakin became and did more so than Anakin, himself. I wholeheartedly agree that Palpatine certainly had a great influence on Anakin, but, at the end of the day, it was Anakin killing the children and it was driven by his desire to keep Padmé alive. Sure, Palps twisted the two together to make them seem like the same thing, but, for me, that isn’t an excuse for what Anakin did.

In addition to your previous view, you also bring up a good point of Clone Wars where, I think, if you just watched it and not the other movies (and particularly RotS) then it would be much easier to say that Anakin loved Padmé with more purity, however, as I mentioned in my thoughts above, there’s the incident of Clovis. In that small arc, Anakin can’t even trust that Padmé isn’t interested in Clovis, even though she has told him repeatedly that she loves Anakin. He is so desperate to keep Padmé in his life that he beats Clovis to a pulp so that there is no chance that she ever leaves. Recently, I was reading some of Writer Buddah’s thoughts on the matter and I recall him making the point of Padmé even saying in RotS that “All I want is your love.” Yet Anakin says “But love won’t save you. Only my new powers can do that.” It seems that Anakin doesn’t care about loving her or her emotional or mental health all he cares about is her life and making sure he keeps her so she doesn’t leave him. It’s a very different way of looking at Anakin and his fall that I haven’t really taken the time to look at. It is only after reading Saga’s brilliant essay on attachment, Writer’s recent essay on the Jedi, a sermon I listened to, and real world occurrences that I have put all the pieces together for it to apply it to Anakin. Anyways, thanks for your thoughts, Ryus! A pleasure as always.

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Hey there, @Aunnesty! I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of sharing a conversation with you until now, but I have seen you around, and I am always glad to. I am getting the feeling that you think that Anakin cared for Padmé more than he should have, which I totally agree with. I just think that the reason he cared was selfish and, you consider Anakin’s motives pure. I thought similarly when I wrote my analysis on Anakin, but, as you can tell, I changed my mind for the reasons I was just talking to Ryus about above. Anyways, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!

@Infantry31st I think when debating the causes of Anakin's downfall it's important to not jump the gun and get straight into him killing Younglings after committing himself to Darth Sidious. Afterall by that point, Anakin had already fallen as he willingly swore loyalty to Sidious and the darkside. So it's moot to the discussion... we're all in agreement that it was driven from multiple reasons, including placing the life of 1 (or 3) loved ones over the rest of the galaxy after all.

No one is debating that Anakin was selfish once he fell and killed younglings who looked up to him (but accidentally reminded him of how the council mistreated him and forced him to this... from his pov). The point of contention was if Anakin was more lead astray by his nature or Palpatine's exploitation of the Jedi Order's rules and nature against Anakin, plus separating him from the few who did guide him/made him want to be better.

We also know that the Darkside is all about passions. So once Anakin fell, his passion to save Padme and his grievances against the order would easily slip onto younglings slaying. It's not like most other darksiders would have spared them either (baring apprentice hunting, to break another to their will, or need of some experiments). Anakin got lost in his passions killing Tusken children before too. So again the crux of the debate is if it's Anakin's own flaws that are solely responsible, with the rules the order placed on no attachments being 100% correct and perfectly executed; or if Palpatine's manipulations and playing Anakin off against the orders strict beliefs while simultaneously robbing him of help from the few he truly trusted and loved.

I do personally believe the Council had a point but had terribly executed their rules and Palpatine exploited this masterfully so by the time Anakin Skywalker was in the trap he honestly couldn't tell who was right... further I honestly think Anakin concluded both the order and Palpatine were evil. He was planning on destroying them both and starting over from scratch based on his conversation with Padme about his new Empire. However obviously Anakin was so turned upside by the darkside by this point it's getting offtopic.

To backtrack and to elaborate further, Palpatine realized the Jedi Orders rules were designed to work in an ideal world. To best make that ideal world a reality they had to basically separate the younglings before the imperfect world could corrupt them. The problem here isn't just introducing an older child into the mixture, it's that by definition ideal doesn't exist. Think about that, so any rules that aim for an ideal world wont by definition work with imperfect beings all the time. To compound this the Jedi themselves were so far removed from regular people that they started to think of themselves as being ideal... and people who believe they are superior never ends well, which Palpatine himself used to exploit the public's opinion against their protectors in the Jedi. The Jedi couldn't even recognize the simple struggle Anakin was facing, just juggling him as being unworthy of them for not being like them. This is why Jedi like Qui-Gon Jinn were best suited to train Anakin and probably could have stopped Palpatine's manipulations from working, as Qui-Gon recognized the orders flaws.

@Infantry31st t you raised a very important question. It’s crucial to differentiate between love (romantic, familial, friendship and so on) and attachment.

In attachment, love is to enjoy someone and the feeling that we would be unhappy without that source of satisfaction, enjoyment and pleasure. You say, so and so is very kind to me, I love that, so I love them. So and so is very funny, I love that, so I love them. So and so is beautiful, I love that, so I love them. It’s all about what pleasure and satisfaction, enjoyment you can get from that person, and its defining characteristic is the desire for something to stay with us, to not to change, to hold on, to have, the wish for impermanence, stability. It’s a kind of love, but it’s love in the sense of finding something agreeable, enjoyable, pleasurable or satisfactory.

But the thing is, there is a gap between reality and this basic human approach to it. Everything is changing, everything is transient, so you can’t hold on to anything. And this is why it's an unrealistic, unreasonable desire, as possession, grasping, grabbing, clinging, and greed: in attachment, there is an inherent want, desire that a thing or a person, who bring you satisfaction and enjoyment to be permanently available for you, to possess, own, have, whereas they are only borrowed, only passing through your life. There is a desire to halt them, to pull them back, to pin them down, to keep them for yourself. And this is the cause of suffering. You know that you want the impossible, there will be an ever-haunting fear of loss, the fear of not having. And this cycle of fear will make you unhappy, angry, hateful, bitter, especially when you lose, and you live your life in it. In other words, you will suffer. And if you end up being hooked on fear, you do anything to prevent that loss from happening, unthinkably terrible things. This is what happened with Anakin in Episode II and in Episode III.

But we must be careful not to confuse attachment to someone with enjoying someone. We all need love, warmth, affection and kindness, we’re gravitating toward people who make us feel good. This is at the core of being alive, the interdependence of everything and everyone. We also need what Western psychology calls “attachment”: discriminated and preferential intimate relationships with persons who might serve as safe base and secure heaven.

In the West, people talk about healthy attachments and holding on loosely, to talk about the necessity of having flexibility and the ability to let go of impermanent things, and they usually talk about elastic, flexible attachments to things and people. And if I have to localize the crucial difference between the Buddhist way of thinking about and using the concept of attachment, that George Lucas follows, and the Western one, is this: If you want to hold on to things and people only as long as their impermanent nature allows you to do so, then, in my dictionary, you are no longer attached to them, that’s no longer holding on to them, because it lacks the desire for their continuous presence in your life. The goal of your desire is realistic and reasonable, built on the knowledge that everything you gathered, one day must be dispersed.

I argue, genuine love, care, commitment, loyalty, affection and concern for another person’s well-being is built on compassion. By definition, compassion means to suffer with, to experience with, to feel with another person - it’s a sense of oneness, innate connectedness with other, in which all differentiation, discrimination and separation between self-interest, self-concern and the interest of and concern for the other are dissolved. When compassion is genuine, there is the highest awareness to the feelings and emotional states of the other. There is a sense of being parts of each other: just like when you hurt your finger, and you don’t think, "Oh, my poor finger is hurt, maybe I should help it", but rather, there is an instant and intuitive, natural response to it, there is no differentiation in happiness, struggle and suffering, for we partake in the happiness, struggle and the suffering of the other, for it’s our happiness, struggle and suffering. And when compassion is genuine, we cannot enjoy and flourish in our uniqueness, individuality and independence without allowing and supporting the other to enjoy and flourish in their uniqueness, individuality and independence. Thus, in compassion, self-concern and self-interest is complemented by the interest and concern of the other, the individual’s quest for happiness and to avoid suffering is completed by, and becomes indistinguishable from the happiness and the freedom from suffering of the other.

Anakin had both compassionate love for Padmé, but he also got attached to her, and that was the problem. His couldn’t cease his attachment to her, so it consumed him and his possessive love overshadowed his compassionate love.

Romantic feelings themselves, as Obi-Wan put it, are not forbidden for a Jedi, Lucas himself said, they’re not celibate, but attachment and possessive relationships are forbidden. But they don't do it anyway, for practical reasons.

Take Obi-Wan and Satine, for example. If Obi-Wan stays with Satine, he will be a lover, husband, father, protector of a family, and, perhaps as the duke-consort of Mandalore, the protector of a planet. That would be a selfless and noble life to live, full of selflessness and unconditional love. But that’s not a Jedi Knight. A Jedi dedicates their life to become the guardian of peace and justice in the entire galaxy. If we think about it, a Jedi who starts a family, must be fully available for the whole galaxy and must be fully available for their family at the same time; they must be like a parent to their apprentices and must be a parent to their children; and they must support their family, and in the same time, they must keep themselves in perfect spiritual, physical and mental condition, deepening their connection to the Force. Not to mention to preserve a healthy amount of time for themselves. The duties of a Jedi and the duties of a parent and a spouse cannot be fulfilled by one person without the expanse of another - or if you can fulfill both, it will be hardly without the expanse of yourself. I believe, there is no hierarchy at all between these roles in life, but if you commit yourself to one, you have to give up the other.

Legends did a really bad job to explain this in general, but I really love how in one novel, Luke Skywalker, when he can't let go of the deceased Mara Jade, realizes that his son is right when he asks:

“That’s what attachment is, isn’t it? It’s not loving somebody. It’s not marrying somebody. It’s not having kids. It’s being where, if something goes wrong, there’s nothing left of you. It’s where if she goes away, you start functioning like a droid with a restraining bolt installed."

@Infantry31st this is a great post. After reading the novelizations for AOTC and ROTS, I came to the conclusion that Anakin's "love" was very selfish. In some ways it's even creepy how he almost forces himself on Padme against her will in AOTC (not physically, but constantly staring at her and telling her how he feels when she is clearly uncomfortable).

And of course it's pretty hypocritical for Anakin to whine so much about how the Council doesn't trust him when he is breaking one of their key rules and lying about it. Unfortunately all of this made him more open to being manipulated by Palpatine.