Fear is the path

"Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Yoda
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Before Attack of The Clones came out, I knew that Anakin's turn to the Dark Side would obviously be wrapped up in his relationship with Padme, but I didn't see what form it would take. I had this idea that there might be some riff on the whole Camelot thing, either with both Anakin and Obi-Wan vying for Padme, or Anakin misinterpreting a friendship between Obi-Wan and Padme with tragic results.

Instead, Anakin's conversion to the Dark Side hinges on fear, which, in retrospect, should have been obvious. After all, Yoda warns us about the final destination of those on the path of fear in all five movies in which he appears.

Anakin's overriding fear is that of losing a loved one. In Episode I he loses Qui-Gon, a surrogate father. In Episode II he loses his mother, Shmi, but saves Obi-Wan, another father-figure, from dying at the hands of Count Dooku.

In Episode III Anakin has a vision that Padme will die in childbirth and it is this that drives him to make a deal with the devil Darth Sidious. But why does he think her death is a done deal without magical intervention? If Anakin had been consistently depicted as a luddite that shuns the advancements of the galaxy around him, that would be one thing, but he's the ultimate technophile. He lives in a time and place where droids have human emotions, severed limbs can be replaced with fully functional (arguably superior) prosthetics and human clones are being bred by the millions without the benefit of any woman's womb.

Why would he feel that a doctor couldn't save Padme if there was something truly wrong with her? Why wasn't consulting a doctor or a medical droid an option?

This brings up another oddity -- Padme, previously depicted as an intelligent, proactive, strong young woman -- clearly had absolutely no prenatal care during her pregnancy. If she had, her response to Anakin's, "You're gonna die" would be "But the doctor says I'm fine! The pregnancy is going well! Oh my God, let's get a second opinion!"

Another clue that she never saw a doctor is that she keeps saying "baby" instead of "babies" throughout the movie. She wasn't hiding the fact that she was having twins -- she didn't know! Even with our level of technology, which is arguably thousands of years behind theirs, an ultrasound at seven weeks can detect twins. And Padme was at least seven months pregnant at the time of her death.

Was she unable to find a single trustworthy OB on all of Coruscant? Not even on Naboo, where she is loved and respected? What about Alderaan? What's up with this? Didn't this deserve one line of dialogue to explain why she's sought no medical advice for a first pregnancy? Is it against her religion? Perhaps the audiobook will shed some light.

But I digress.

If it's not something in Padme's background that makes death in childbirth plausible (i.e., if she previously told him her mom almost died having her, or her sister's pregnancies were both life-threatening, or Padme suffered a pelvic injury when she fell out of that troop transport on Geonosis, etc.) I have to assume this fear of Anakin's about women dying in childbirth goes back to something in his childhood. Maybe he's never been to a doctor, so seeing one with Padme to ease his fears would never cross his mind. Maybe doctors on Tatooine in general are hacks, or the ones who plied their trade in Mos Espa's slave quarters are. Maybe his mom's best friend died in childbirth.

Something.

Anything.

Again, one line of dialogue would have cleared this up.

Clearly, it doesn't matter if a Jedi's fear is rational or not -- it's his response to fear that determines if he goes dark. Still, I find Anakin's fear of Padme dying in childbirth a bit surprising.

More observations to come.