They are good and kind and so pretty they make even the most hardened space pirates cry like small children. Anakin

Through the Force, other places will you see, old friends long gone. Yoda

If we go from the supposition that Anakin was indeed conceived by the Force itself, it follows than that he would have a great responsibility indeed. Just why is the Force out of balance? It all comes down to what was happening within the Force. The Sith had lied in waiting for nearly a 1,000 years plotting to destroy the Jedi and take over the galaxy as they believed was their right. The danger herein lies with the thinking that power was their birthright. Yoda taught that the Force binds all life together and helps life to grow. Yet the Sith used that power to destroy life. Using the Force in such a manner may actually be tearing the Force itself apart.

Why then were the Jedi unable to restore the necessary balance? I believe it is because the Jedi Order had cut itself off from the galaxy at large. Starting with it's near blind obedience to the corrupt Senate, the Order was incapable of seeing what was really going on and thus began the rise of the Sith. The other problem with this was that Palpatine had become more powerful than any Jedi, even Master Yoda as we saw during their duel in Revenge of the Sith. In reading the novelization, Yoda realizes that the only way he can defeat Palpatine is to join the dark side himself. In Dark Rendevous, Dooku envisions a dark Yoda more than Palpatine. Yoda, unwilling to give in to the dark side, chooses to retreat, lick his wounds, and figure out the answer to his problem. Why weren't the Jedi able to defeat the dark side?

I think the answer lies in one of the tenets of the Jedi Code. In forbidding love, the Jedi essentially cut themselves off from what should have been the greatest source of strength in the Force. Built on a foundation of service to others, the Jedi Order had cut itself off from the galaxy because it would not allow compassion, the purest form of love, to flourish in the Order. To be fair, many Jedi had an understanding of compassion, but that understanding didn't necessarily translate to practice. As Yoda noted, many Jedi had become arrogant, even older and more experienced ones. In being allowed to love, Jedi could have learned from firsthand experience what compassion means. They could have what it truly means to give with no thought of reward. Such things could not be fully learned in a Master/Padawan relationship, but could have been fully learned in a family relationship as Jedi learned about love and sacrifice from their parents and from any siblings, regardless of Force sensitivity.

Enter Anakin Skywalker. Born outside of the Republic, the Jedi did not discover him until he was 9 years old, thus giving him time to learn how to love and what love feels like. He had also learned the how to give with no thought of reward. In other words, some of who he was had already been shaped, and the strict tenets of the code would not change him. Given Anakin's tremendous gifts however, a dangerous possibility had emerged. What if these Force gifts could be corrupted? As Anakin himself would later say, "If he could be turned he would be a powerful ally."

And so Palpatine went to work, slowly poisoning the mind of Anakin and carefully leading him down to hell. Except Palpatine had one problem. Padme. As much as Palpatine could poison Anakin's mind against the Jedi, he could not deal with what Padme brought to Anakin's life. When she came back into Anakin's life, Padme filled a void in his life that had been empty for years. It's not that the Jedi didn't love Anakin, it's that they couldn't love him like his mother did. Padme, could see the good man that he was, while also helping him to see that he needed to overcome his flaws, and that he could overcome his flaws. She gave him something that no Jedi could.

In many ways, Padme helped bring balance to Anakin. As he struggled with his own demons and burdens, she helped him to bear those. As ps77 noted so well, Padme soothed Anakin. She helped to calm his troubled soul. Obi-Wan, to his credit, understood that Padme made Anakin happy, so he looked the other way regarding Anakin's attachment. I think in many ways Padme made Anakin want to be a better man. When he was with her, he wanted to overcome the darkness that he struggled with inside. His challenges came from the conflict between his responsibility to Padme and his responsibility to the Jedi. There should have been no conflict, but the tenets of the code created one. Fearful of trusting the Jedi in a deeply personal matter of the fear of losing Padme, Anakin turned to Palpatine with disastrous results.

With a proper understanding of the nature of love and compassion as more than just attachment, the Jedi could have helped Anakin to see that Padme would always be with him, just as Yoda would later teach Luke and tried to teach Anakin. The challenge here is that Yoda did not know just what was going on in Anakin's head. If he had known just what the boy feared, he might have been better able to help Anakin deal with his fears. By denying love, the Jedi instead skewed the understanding of what it means to love. Anakin could not balance the love he felt for Padme with his responsibility to the Jedi, so he turned to a source that appeared to help him care for Padme as his duties as a husband told him he should. Yoda even acknowledges at the end of Revenge of the Sith that the stability of a family would be good for the twins. He is beginning to understand that the Order is unable to teach everything that a Jedi needs to know. Some things are best taught in a family.

With a proper understanding that love for Padme might mean having to accept a temporary separation from her, Anakin would not have turned away from Padme when she needed him most. In this, he failed to learn what love truly meant. The Jedi, with their forbidding of love and attachment, could not possibly know how to teach it to him. In turning away from the light of Padme to the darkness of Palpatine, Anakin began to change who he was and became a monster.

Yet through it all, Padme continued to love him. She didn't fall out of love with him. While she would not condone what he had done or follow down his dark path, she would continue to love. She continued to see that he could be more than he was. She saw that the monster could become a man again. Padme, with her true understand of love and compassion, still believed in mercy. Even after what he had done, Padme forgave Anakin. She would never give up hope that he could turn back to the light.

As events later conspired to bring the Skywalker family together again, Vader could not, for whatever reason, bring himself to kill Leia. In the confrontation with Luke, he did not kill his son when he had a chance. Why? Because Luke reminded him of Padme. Luke reminded him of what he once had, of who he had once been. And so the conflict was reborn. Vader began to see Padme again through the Force. While she was long gone, part of her lived on in Luke and Leia. Why was it that Vader used the Force to slow Luke's fall on Bespin? I think you can argue as anakinside1 has, that Padme was watching over her family as they came together again.

And just where did Luke get his faith against faith and hope against hope that Vader would not kill him. When Obi-Wan told him he would have to kill Vader, Luke insisted that he could not because there was still good in him. Just where did Luke get this notion from? Well, he had seen it. He was perhaps the first person to receive mercy from Darth Vader. As Luke trained to become a Jedi, he began to see what his father had gone through. He began to understand him. The final key was three simple words spoken by Leia about Padme. "Kind, but sad." Those words describe Padme beautifully. While sad because of what her husband had become, she still kept her kindness. She still loved him and she passed that love on to her son. In that moment I believe Luke learned what was necessary to defeat the Sith. He learned that ability, not from Yoda, not from Obi-Wan, not from long dead Jedi, but from his mother and the memory of his sister. He learned what he needed to learn from his family. The love and compassion learned from his family, from his aunt and uncle on Tatooine, from his sister, and even from his long gone mother, taught Luke what it would take to save his father.

I imagine that in those final moments, Vader finally understood the true nature of the Force. Through the light he could see old friends long gone. As he began to think about love and compassion, he could see Padme. Perhaps he could see her calling out to him, pleading with him to save Luke. Perhaps he saw her final moments as she lay on a bed telling Obi-Wan there was still good in him. Perhaps he saw the moment when they first met, or the moment when she reached out to comfort him in the cold of space. Once comforting him in the cold of space, her warmth now beckoned Anakin to come back to the light. Padme, as she had done before, helped him see what he could become. She made him want to be a better man, and in passing her pure love for him to their son, she became what he first thought she was. An angel.