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| Star Wars Family |
I have previously posted on theFORCEbook.com during some familial rant that my mother is Darth Vader. I was wrong. I did what Mace Windu warned against, I made an assumption.
My mother is NOT Darth Vader! It's much worse than that - She IS the Emperor!
I know this seems excessive, as if I may need years of intensive therapy, but hear me out. I have always had a tenuous relationship with my mother, I love her, but the woman is Dark-side and has a killer FORCE choke.
However, my mother is so much more than that. She is crafty, manipulative and seductive - when she needs to be. My mother is the hands down ruler of the galaxy known as my family. Which was not a simple task to accomplish in a family grounded in Judeo-Christian traditions where the man is the head of the family. She skillfully used her role as wife/mother to befriend all sides of the family individually - my brothers, my sisters and my father - and used her privileged information to keep us at odds with each other and rule the empire.
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| Mom |
I kid you not, my mother was, and is, very jealous of any relationship between myself and any other family member. She had to be the the most important relationship in my life to the exclusion of all other family members, even my father. She would take me into her confidence and then leak twisted snippets of information so that I would feel that I shouldn't trust anyone else. All the while, believing she had my best intentions at heart - Now tell me that isn't Palpatine! Actually, I'm kind of proud of her. Ian McDiarmid is after all - BAD ASS! Senator Palpatine's masterful manipulation of the galactic senate makes our own congress look like a bunch of preschoolers playing tiddlywinks.
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The faces of mom.
But this leads me to an even more startling revelation. If my mother is actually the Emperor...then my Father is Darth Vader!
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| I can't get away from this. |
When I was a little girl the fact that Darth Vader, who we found to be Luke's father, could betray his child, cut his hand off, try to kill him or turn him to the Dark side was the ultimate betrayal for me. I have been and will always be a Daddy's girl...so the idea of "daddy betrayal" stops me cold in my tracks.
My father was also my most revered teacher - My Yoda. Because of this, I just naturally assumed that my mother, the darker and less affectionate of my parents, was Darth Vader. I was wrong.
A closer look at the Emperor/Vader relationship and it is all now so clear to me.
My father, the handsome and powerful, young Jedi - the Chosen One - was seduced to the Dark side by my mother, the Emperor. Like the Emperor she had access to his secrets and desires and she used that information to cause a rift in the FORCE. My father and I also had a very tenuous relationship when I was a teenager (and thought I knew everything) but with maturity and growth on both our parts that relationship was repaired. (Not unlike Luke and Darth Vader)
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Now I realize that my father had the more unpleasant ordeal. He had the long, close relationship with my mother only to later realize that she was Sith, and like Vader, he could not resist her seduction. He remained with her until the end, but again like Vader, he saved me when I needed it most and returned to the Light side. I now see my battles with my father as epic, the fight for my independence on Bespin, the knowledge that there was still good in him on Endor and finally the fight to rescue him from the emperor's clutches on the Death Star.
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| And you thought your family bickered... |
However, my Episode VI ends very differently. The emperor does not fall and it is up to me to battle on alone without Vader/Yoda - my father. Maybe the key here is to be like Obi-Wan and Luke, self-sacrificing and dutiful. You never know, who says there's no good in the emperor. Like the FORCE maybe there are two sides to every story. If Darth Vader can be redeemed, I might be able to save my mom yet...
May the FORCE be with you, always!
