Chewing over what ifs...
Feb. 27th, 2016 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe Citadel arc in s3 of the The Clone Wars introduces one Captain Tarkin (to the audience and Anakin Skywalker alike). He shows up now and then on the show thereafter. (His voice actor is no Peter Cushing, but the characterisation is v. plausible as a younger version.) My question is this: in A New Hope Admiral Tarkin clearly knows Darth Vader used to be a Jedi (he refers to Vader being the last thing left of the Jedi in the 'verse), but do you think he's also aware Vader used to be Anakin Skywalker? I'm usually going with the assumption that on the Imperial side, no one other than the Emperor and Vader himself is aware of this, and the official Imperial story is that Anakin Skywalker died on Mustafar (or just plain died, maybe defending Palpatine against the Jedi coup - something like this). However, Tarkin, who shows up at the end of Revenge of the Sith in a favoured position and presumably was involved in the execution of Order 66 before that, may just have been enough of an insider to have either figured it out or have been told by Palpatine for some Machiavellian reason (playing out Tarkin and Vader against each other to a certain degree to ensure they don't team up, for example). (Tarkin clearly outranks Vader in ANH in the Imperial hierarchy. One my pet peeves in reviews of The Force Awakens is when reviewers sum up the backstory by referring to Vader as the dead ruler of the Empire; guys, not only was he never No.1., he arguably wasn't No.2 as of the start of the OT, either.)
The reason why I'm asking may or may not have to do with an idea for a New Hope AU in which Vader figures out at the worst possible time that Leia is his daughter, i.e. either when he's interrogating her or when Alderaan gets destroyed. (Maybe either occasion inadvertendly makes Leia's Force potential break through a la Rey in TFA.) Which wouldn't immediately make him repent, of course, let alone go light side, but being Vader, he's bound to strongly react and do something, and then I think it would make a difference whether or not Tarkin is aware of the Vader = Anakin truth. (Not least because near the end of The Clone Wars, Tarkin headed the trial that nearly got Ahsoka executed if Anakin hadn't found the proof of her innocence at the proverbial last minute, which would invite possible parallels in Tarkin's mind.
The reason why I'm asking may or may not have to do with an idea for a New Hope AU in which Vader figures out at the worst possible time that Leia is his daughter, i.e. either when he's interrogating her or when Alderaan gets destroyed. (Maybe either occasion inadvertendly makes Leia's Force potential break through a la Rey in TFA.) Which wouldn't immediately make him repent, of course, let alone go light side, but being Vader, he's bound to strongly react and do something, and then I think it would make a difference whether or not Tarkin is aware of the Vader = Anakin truth. (Not least because near the end of The Clone Wars, Tarkin headed the trial that nearly got Ahsoka executed if Anakin hadn't found the proof of her innocence at the proverbial last minute, which would invite possible parallels in Tarkin's mind.
