This seems to be the blogging trend now, so i decided i might as well jump on the bandwagon. star cruiser. whatever.
Also happens to be a favorite topic of mine, so those of you unwilling to read an entry roughly as long as the United States tax code might as well exit now.
Okay--those of you who decided to go ahead and read anyway, here's my first what-if. What if Obi-Wan had been killed in TPM and not Qui-Gon? What would have happened to Anakin? Would Qui-Gon still have taken him on as an apprentice? Would the Council have approved of it? Might Qui-Gon have actually left the Order over the matter and taken on Anakin's training by himself? That seems a very Qui-Gon response to the situation. Further, if Obi-Wan had died early on and Anakin had still gone to the dark side, what would have happened to Luke? Qui-Gon would probably be dead by that time, so who would have seen to his immediate training? Who would have protected him?
Okay, okay--that was a none too original what-if. Let's try another. I bet you've never seen this one blogged, but given the recent trend i've been noticing in my physics homework i'm likely wrong. What if Anakin had only pretended to go over to the dark side? What if he had realized that the jedi would never defeat palpatine from without and "turned" because he believed it was the only hope he would ever have of destroying the sith? Hmm. Painfully wishful thinking, i know--you don't have to tell me so in your comments. i know it's stupid. But if you look at his confrontation with padme and obi-wan on Mustafar, it sort of sets it in an interesting light from anakin's point of view. Here he's thrown away everything--the jedi, his reputation, his friendship with obi-wan, maybe even his love for padme--in hope of eventually saving everybody, and everybody is turning their collective back on him.
I repeat, a tremendously unlikely what-if...but it does have some interesting connotations, if you choose to indulge me for a few minutes.
To continue: what-if number three. Say Padme didn't decide to leave Anakin after everything he did. Say she stuck by him, kept him from attacking Obi-Wan and burning himself to a charcoal stub, had the babies. What would have happened between the Skywalkers and Palpatine? Would it have been civil war? Or would they have worked together in a sort of shaky tandem? What about Luke and Leia? Would they have grown up dark side users or not? I mean, padme can be sithin' stubborn when she wants to be. How would the Rebellion have turned out? Would the twins have defected from the Empire or something like that?
What-if number four (my favorite): suppose Luke was really, really persuasive at the end of ROTJ and not only redeemed his father, but Palpatine too--sort of a Jedi tent revival act, you get the picture. How would things have turned out? What would Palpy have done?
Blast me away.