The later it gets the less inhibited I am in my AU thoughts 👀
Thinking about TCW becoming SWTOR which just enough of a twist?? Anakin still turns to the dark, though not because he's possessive of PADME this time, but because he feels betrayed by her plans against Palpatine?? He found out somehow and it just,, shifts his whole world around. Obi and Padme are dropped from his "I care deeply and too much for these people" mental grouping and into "those who I can never trust again", leaving him sorely without anyone but Palps. HOWEVER, he's caught soon enough, and Palps' machinations are exposed by Anakin's need to talk and rant and read out his list of crimes committed against him.
Palpatine is forced to flee into CIS space, to abandon his plans of crushing both at once and taking over their ruins. Instead he reenacts times long past and starts his rule much like Darth Vitiate did, quickly binding the worlds in his hold to his rule and unleasing horrors upon neutral worlds that won't bow.
Perhaps this results in another Jedi schism, leading a force—not unlike those so many millennia before—to be exiled from the Order and cast into the space beyond the Republic's reach. Palpatine maybe decides that having a plethora of viciously bitter and violent dark Jedi isn't as bad an idea as his predecessors thought, and reforms the ancient Sith Order.
Clones and remaining Jedi are then thrust into trying to push back against new forces, help old enemies, deal with how war shifts when dark-side use isn't so restrained and paltry in knowledge and power.
The Chiss perhaps return from the Unknown Regions, recognizing this return to an old formation, intrigued by how it'll play out this time. Planets long thought lost are rediscovered as Jedi and Sith alike seek new territory and new soldiers for their armies.
Anakin breaks out of his prison eventually, and carves a path of wanton destruction to Palpatine, where he is found kneeling, and is so gifted the first title of its kind in literal ages: not acolyte, not Darth Vader, but only known as The Emperor's Wrath, the personal weapon and carrier-out of Palpatine's most devestating or complicated plans.
I know I'm being long-winded and purple-prosing here, BUT-
Also: think about Padme giving up the twins still, refusing to put them in danger, knowing their father will likely no longer see them as his own, but as a threat or something to take and twist and torment into following his path to damnation. Owen and Beru take Luke still, hide him on a planet that means little to Palpatine, as Hutts are better used than fought with. Leia is still a princess, beloved of Bail and Breha and princess of Alderaan, the Organa family again at the center of a galactic war as this new Empire seeks someone else to put on the throne.
And now I'm done and time to play SWTOR for daily points and go to bed 😘👍
(Edited to fix some spelling and grammar errors 😅💀)
