Hello everyone!

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in my room at 1 in the morning, reading Michael Reeve's Death Star. I was at a part involving Darth Vader having a quick memory of Padmé, before forcing himself to suppress it. It was at that moment when I looked up from the book, and out of the corner of my eye saw the poster on my wall.

It's a holographic poster I bought at Celebration III, of Anakin or Vader, depending on your position. From where I was sitting, however, the left half was Anakin, and the right half was Vader. What's more, his lightsaber was blue near the hilt and red at the end of the shaft.

A strange realization kind of settled upon me, one that until then I had thought I understood. I had always known, intellectually, that Anakin and Vader were the same being, but I think I had always separated them while watching or reading - Anakin was Anakin and Vader was Vader. Reading that section though, and taking a change glance at a poster really got me thinking. Anakin was inside that suit his entire life post-Mustafar. We know that. But once that mask went on, I stopped thinking of him as the young boy just trying to love and do good for his wife. He really struggled with Padmé's absence, trying to will away his thoughts of her for years and years.

This may not seem like all that big of a realization - I admit, it felt... bigger... than it reads - but I know that I'm going to view Vader a schmideon differently. Especially when reading books during the Dark Times, I'm going to try to see Vader as just Vader, but as the person who was once Anakin. I think it might shed some (minimal) amount of light on his motives and actions.

That being said, I really liked how Michael Reaves portrayed Vader, by incorporating some elements of the person he used to be.

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"...her mind was strong. Stronger than that of any woman he'd encountered in a long time; ever since... Vader quashed the memory that threatened to rise. He did not allow such thoughts any longer."
- Star Wars: Death Star (pg 118)