this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Vader wasn't a figurehead. He was more or less the third most powerful person in the galaxy, right behind Grand Moff Tarkin, up until he died. He basically operated as the head of the Imperial military in their war with the Rebel Alliance. But he never gave rousing speeches or acted as a political figure. He was just the guy who told you what to do and if you fucked up, he would choke you to death with his creepy magic powers. Also, Palpatine was literally the Emperor of the galaxy. People knew who he was: he was the last Chancellor of the Old Republic who'd been granted greater and greater emergency powers during the Clone Wars, up until the point he could effectively stage a coup and seize total power for himself. Nobody knew who Vader was, because, publicly, all the Jedi had been killed, Anakin included.
Wow I never really thought about how Vadar is basically unknown outside of the inner circles of the empire.
Now I am kind of wishing for a suspense horror movie of some grunts who are being hunted by Vadar, only they don't really know who or what he is. He's just a myth or a dark scary rumor. Yet they know something is hunting them.
They kind of do this at the beginning of one season of Star Wars: Rebels. The protagonist brings down a TIE fighter on top of Vader and he basically just shrugs it off. They were like...."Uh, who the fuck is this guy?!"
He absolutely was, no one even knew nutsack face was the actual power behind the empire. And no the retconn doesn't make any goddamn sense so yes I ignore it.
No he clearly wasn't, obi wan probably still could have taken him because Vader would lose himself in anger again as always. Not to mention his untrained son bested or at the very least held his own against him so maybe 5th or 7th most powerful.
He never needed to it was says pretty specifically in universe that Vader was thought to be the empire. Sure he never played geopolitics, instead he instilled fear and let his administration do administrative shit that doesn't mean he isn't the defacto leader.
No, during empire literally no one knew nutsack face was the chancellor. It's not mentioned and everyone would 100% know what the fucked up looking king of the galaxy looks like.
He staged a coup, then faded into the shadow and very obviously immediately moved into the disinformation and replacement work. They literally show it on the movies.
Everyone knew Vader, no one knew Anakin and no one would in the same way I don't know what rey mysterio looks like but I'm still certain I know who he is and I'm 100% not willing to get thrown by my neck but dude a third my size.
All of this is your own personal headcanon. Which is fine, but let's not pretend like it's factually correct. And while I know wookieepedia is far from a perfect source, it at least tries to get as close to the canonical truth of the often contradictory backstories of characters in Star Wars media. On the page for Anakin Skywalker, one section starts
That's from the books which aren't Cannon anymore.
Well, the books were never really "canonical" in the same sense as the films. But the films themselves, if that's what you're going on, never make any reference to Vader's presence in the empire in a larger context. We just see that he is, generally speaking, the person in charge, aside from Tarkin in A New Hope, and the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. So, if we are going purely off of that, then we have no way of knowing how various parties in the galaxy perceived Vader or understood his role in the grand scheme of things. Which is probably fine, because it's fundamentally unimportant to the story being told. But it still makes more sense for him to just be an agent of the Emperor who operates with virtually unlimited authority and who is outside of any kind of formal military command structure.
If we're adding the books then nutsack face was never in control or in fact that strong basically everyone around him paying lip service were stronger and more in control, they essentially yes manned a senile old man who thought himself more grand then he actually was.
This is all just blatantly, completely untrue. I'm gonna go ahead and do the thing I initially told myself I wasn't, but you're so off base I literally have to: do you have any source, at all, that backs up any of what you're saying? Any specific piece of Star Wars media one could look at to verify that what you are describing is at least even close to accurate? Because I've literally read dozens of Star Wars novels and graphic novels, have played most Star Wars video games, and seen most of the Star Wars television series ever created, and at no point have I ever encountered anything that supports what you're describing.
Introduction to the original Star Wars novelization from 1976. Of course, basically every piece of media since The Empire Strikes Back ignores the whole "isolated Emperor" bit.