Before I watched EpIII, I always tended to blame Obi Wan and Padmé for losing Anakin to the Dark Side. I just thought that, being as they were the closest people to Anakin, they could have done a great deal more to prevent his downfall.

After watching EpIII (twice), I have a totally different view of the whole thing. Whereas I am not disregarding Anakin's poorly made choices (actually, saying that 'he took a couple of wrong turns' is the understatement of the century...), I do think now that, someone else was the main responsible for Anakin's conversion to the Dark Side.

The thing is, after losing his mum, what Anakin had sought more than anything was a new person to love and to love him. He found that person in Padmé and, to a certain extend, in Obi-Wan. However, I wouldn't call what Anakin felt 'love' in neither case. Let me explain.

With Padmé, Anakin felt a rather obsessive emotion that led him to be possessive and jealous. I've always believed that jealousy, specially if driven to an extreme, does not equal love. A person who is really in love, will respect the other person and will trust him/her intrinsically, to the point that the faith in him/her will be so great that no jealousy nor possession will be needed. I know that this kind of feeling is rare, but it's my interpretation of love. Don't get me wrong though, I do realise that Anakin did love Padmé to a certain extend, but, his love was far too dominated by fear and angst for it to be the kind of serene love that lasts forever.

This angst and the fear to lose her to either death or someone else (for instance, Obi-Wan) drove Anakin to a desperate situation where he would have done literally anything to suppress his own suffering, even going to the Dark Side.

The love he felt for Obi-Wan was one grown from respect and admiration but, again, Anakin's over competitive nature led him to ignore Obi-Wan's warnings. Anakin was too blinded by the jealousy he felt seeing that Obi-Wan was a highly appreciated member within the Jedi community to realise that all Obi-Wan was working for was for Anakin to, eventually, occupy his rightful place within the Jedi Order. Anakin's lack of patience and distrust caused him to disregard anything Obi-Wan said, specially towards the end when he thought that Obi-Wan didn't trust him either.

This brings me to the heart of the situation. The fact that Anakin had so little trust in the Jedi Council made him look someplace else for the reassurance he needed. The next most influential person after Obi-Wan and Padmé was Chancellor Palpatine.

The Chancellor, not only had been like some sort of father figure but did what a person like Anakin liked most: said exactly what Anakin wanted to hear. This made him a very appealing person to Anakin in a time when everyone kept showing him that he couldn't be trusted and telling him that his behaviour was so un-Jedi like.

This lack of trust was mainly concentrated around one person in the Council. Mace Windu. The Jedi Master clearly had never approved Anakin's training and had approved even less Anakin's becoming a member of the Council. His attitude towards Anakin had always been extremely negative and this could only lead to a dangerous friction between both Jedi.

This was brought to the breaking point when Anakin witnessed the supposedly highly respectable Jedi Master doing something as un-Jedi like as the behaviour Master Windu had accused Anakin so many times of having.

If Windu had decided to arrest the Chancellor instead of wanting to kill him, the Chancellor would have probably killed Windu and that would have shown Anakin the evil nature of the Sith Lord. Windu's decision to kill the Chancellor made Anakin made his mind up and decide that the Chancellor had been right all along.

This incident was, in my opinion, the trigger that caused Anakin to complete his trip to the Dark Side. Up to this point, he could have been 'saved', after that, it would have taken a miracle for Anakin to be brought back to the Light Side.

Sadly, this miracle would have been possible only at two points after that: before Anakin left for Mustafar, when Padmé could have put much more pressure on Anakin to just leave with her and when Anakin saw Obi-Wan at the top of Padmé's ship's ramp, where Obi-Wan could have told Anakin he had snuck in the ship ensuring Anakin that Padmé had not betrayed him.

In both situations, both Padmé and Obi-Wan were probably too distraught by the events to think clearly enough to see the obvious solution to the problem.

In any case, I agree that Anakin's dug up his own grave but, he was fighting against an enemy that not even the powers of the Dark Side could overcome: an overwhelming sense of inferiority caused by the distrust of the people who were supposed to be his mentors and guides.

That was what triggered the whole situation, not Palpatine, the Chancellor only needed to push Anakin towards the Dark Side's path, Anakin's desperation was such that Palpatine didn't need to push too hard...

In my opinion, more than anything else, Anakin Skywalker was just a casualty in the power struggle between the Jedi Council and the Sith Lord.

This, is what has changed forever the way I, and probably many other people, see Darth Vader.