That's kind of what I mean, though. His motivations were contrived. Originally, he just turned his back on his life as Anakin when he went Dark Side -- Padmé was still alive and (unbeknownst to him) pregnant. He was a hero of the Clone Wars and a powerful Jedi. But then the Prequels happened. Just throw out the mom-dying-Padmé-dying-premonition-dreams-forbidden-love stuff. He's not supposed to be a central focus anyway, but his fall should be more motivated by watching people die in a messy series of wars that can ultimately be traced back to squabbling politicians with opposing viewpoints. I keep pointing to his best motivation for going Dark Side being what he was talking about with Padmé in the meadow on Naboo:
ANAKIN: I don't think the system works.
PADME: How would you have it work?
ANAKIN: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.
PADME: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.
ANAKIN: Then they should be made to.
PADME: By whom? Who's going to make them?
ANAKIN: I don't know. Someone.
PADME: You?
ANAKIN: Of course not me.
PADME: But someone.
ANAKIN: Someone wise.
PADME: That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.
ANAKIN: Well, if it works...
Then he plays it off like he was kidding, but that's a really good look into his thinking. In my rewrites of the Prequels, which spread them back out over six films, Episodes V and VI have Anakin supporting Palpatine's move toward Empire for this reason, creating some tense moments between him and his wife, and him and his friend Obi-Wan, eventually cementing his certitude that he's in the right and they must be made to see.
Part of the reason I don't have him getting so bent out of shape over his mother dying is because I fix the timeline. He's in his late teens/early twenties when he leaves Tatooine with Obi-Wan, around 30 when he marries Padmé, and in his early 40s when he goes Dark Side and the twins are born. And all along the way he was much more stable. So yeah it hurts, and a simmering hatred of slavery will be in the back of his mind, and the fact that no one's done anything about it, going back to that conversation, above. He wants to be more powerful -- in the Force, in influence, and in action -- to be able to Get Stuff Done™. We don't know at this time, but Palpatine's offered him that option. But no going off the rails as in the actual films. That's what I mean by badly written. 1) We're not supposed to know, at the end of the Prequels, that Anakin is Vader. Therefore, 2) we don't need to be shown reasons for him Turning Evil. Letting it happen subtly in the background eliminates the call for his peers to be blatant jerks to his face, alienating him and otherwise causing him to angst his way to the Sith Lord's creepy white van.
--Jonah
