One of the underlying themes throughout the prequels is betrayal and treachery. Chancellor Palpatine betrays the Naboo in TPM and then in ROTS, we see betrayal en masse. The look on Dooku's face when he realizes that he was but a pawn in Palpatine's face is sad. For a brief moment we pity him. He turned on his friends, and in the end was destroyed for it. His Master instructed his enemy to kill him. I think that Count Dooku was a mirror for Anakin. Once a Jedi with great promise, he was seduced by the power of the dark side and became but a mere pawn in Sidious' plan for galactic dominance.

Anakin's fall is even more tragic when you look at how it happened. Terrified by nightmarish visions of Padme dying in childbirth, Anakin runs into the open arms of Palpatine, who fills him full of false promises about stopping death. Tragically, Anakin never once listens to those around him. Padme tells Anakin that all she needs is his love. She loves him for who he is and isn't concerned or worried about power or even a vision of her death.

Yoda tells Anakin to train himself to let go of that which he is afraid to lose as fear of loss is a path to the dark side. And Obi-Wan warns Anakin about his "friend" Palpatine. And now we come to Palpatine, the master manipulator. First he informs Anakin that nobody wants to lose their power. Anakin fails to see that this naturally, and especially, includes the Dark Lord of the Sith.

But the real tragedy of Anakin's failure to listen comes when he becomes a Sith allegedly to learn from Palpatine how to save Padme from certain death. After joining the dark side, Palpatine informs him that together they can learn how to save Padme. This should have been a red flag to Anakin. Didn't Palpatine say earlier that he learned how to stop death from Plagueis? Yet now, he says together we can learn this power. Palpatine didn't know how to do it, but apparently Anakin wasn't listening to that part.

All this sets the stage for Anakin's final fall from grace and the Force's betrayal of Anakin. From the moment we first meet him in TPM, we learn that Anakin Skywalker may be the Chosen One, destined to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith. As the Chosen One, Anakin had incredible and unmatched Force abilities with the potential to become even stronger in the Force than Yoda. Yet at this moment, he is choosing to use those special abilities to turn his back on what he was raised to do. His mother taught him to be kind and help others. The Jedi taught him to defend those who could not defend themselves.

And now, he is leading a squadron of clones into the Jedi Temple to murder his old friends, including the younglings, who not many years prior were being carried by a mother who loved them very much. Anakin is doing all this to save his pregnant wife, who is carrying a child that could someday become one of these younglings. Does he not realize what he is doing here? He is using the Force to take life. How will that help him gain the power necessary to save life?

But Anakin's story grows even more tragic. When confronted by Padme, and offered a chance to turn away from his past, he refuses. And now, believing that she has betrayed him, Anakin tries to take his wife's life. What is going on here? He joined the dark side to save Padme from death, and is now using the Force to choke the life out of her.

I believe, with Qui-Gon, that the Force had a will. And when Anakin decided not to follow the will of the Force, a punishment was decreed. George Lucas has mentioned that Mustafar is symbolic of hell. Anakin asked the gods for a power, and when he was told no, he made a deal with the devil. Since Anakin does not want to fulfill his destiny at this moment, the Force decides to strip him of his birthright to stop him from perverting it's will any further than he already has.

As a consequence of his fateful battle with Obi-Wan, Anakin loses his remaining limbs, and much of his natural Force abilities. He can never conduct Force lightning. His speed and strength are gone, replaced by a walking iron lung that regulates every breath for the remainder of his life. The greatest pain of all though comes from within his shattered heart, for he lives with the agony of knowing that he caused his beloved wife's death. He cannot understand how she died, not realizing that she died of a broken heart, which heart was broken by him. He doesn't understand that Padme would be rightly horrified by Anakin killing anyone in cold blood, let alone younglings, not much older than his child that she carries in her womb.

And so Anakin continues to live, a twisted shell of former self, with the vigor of youth replaced by a cold machine. In turning to the dark side, he has betrayed everything and everyone he ever loved. Now, Anakin is left alone, his Force connection weakened, his friends dead or in exile. His only "friend" is Darth Sidious, who Vader has tried to kill after learning of Padme's death, but his strength is gone, never to return.