An excerpt from Anakin Skywalker: The Story of Darth Vader
Anakin Skywalker was many things in his tormented and antithetical life: hero and tyrant, father and murderer. Like a near-mythic figure out of an ancient Jedi Holocron, Anakin lived on an epic scale few beings can fully comprehend. His actions had more influence, for both good and ill, than just about any other individual in galactic history. Under the name of Darth Vader, he was responsible for some of the most brutal atrocities in the annals of the galaxy, yet it was his final act of heroism that cut the malignant heart out of the amoral Empire. Though many survivors of Vader's cruelty are reluctant to forgive him his crimes, the legendary Jedi appears to have found peace beyond death in the radiant energy of the Force.
Historians are just beginning to uncover details of Anakin's early life, since numerous archives were destroyed during the Galactic Civil War. Furthermore, when Anakin assumed the mantle of Darth Vader he attempted to stamp out all vestiges of his former existence.
One fact not in dispute is that young Anakin Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin, tempted by the dark side of the Force, coldly turned his back on those he loved. A chastened Kenobi desperately tried to bring his pupil back from the self-destructive course he had chosen but Anakin would not be swayed. They had a confrontation that was both awe-inspiring and terrifying and from which Anakin emerged a broken man.
Horribly disfigured on the outside, Anakin's internal injures were so severe that he was no longer able to survive without extensive bio-machinery to keep his damaged heart pumping and his ruined lungs inflated. He was forced to encase himself in a full-body armor suit, a walking coffin of blinking pulmonary regulators and hissing oxygen intakes. Never again would Anakin be able to live life as normal men did; he was now a nightmare in black, glaring out at the world through the dark lenses of his grotesque demonic countenance. From that moment, Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader in appearance as well as in spirit. The latest Dark Lord of the Sith built a lightsaber with a blood-red blade to replace his former blue sword and all but hid the weapon's shining silver handle beneath a suffocating sheath of black grips. Consumed with anger and hatred, Vader went on to a new life in the corrupt service of Palpatine.
Twin children--a boy and a girl--were Anakin's unseen legacy. Obi-Wan helped conceal the infants from their father's attention and the Emperor's depredations, hoping that one day the Skywalker offspring would rise to challenge the tyranny of evil. Darth Vader, meanwhile, helped his master solidify his claim to the title of Galactic Emperor by hunting down and exterminating the surviving Jedi Knights. As his control of the dark side deepened, Vader grew increasingly contemptuous of his previous life as a mere student. The Dark Lord possessed immeasurable power and unquestionable authority. He knelt before the Emperor and no one else...
