He went off the deep end but I can blame that on how he was taught,
How he was taught? The Jedi teach murder and vengeance?
Nah, the movie Anakin was squirrely from the first scenes of AOTC onwards. Hayden Christensen chose to give his performance weird stalker vibe, I noticed it almost immediately because I was thinking, "wow, they're not being too subtle about this, huh?"
He was psychologically damaged, and slaughtering Sand People and kids was not out of character for him.
But the TCW Anakin isn't psychologically damaged, at least not so badly that he'd go off the rails like that unless there was some other factor in the mix.
As for Luke, he was doing what had to be done. He didn't think about the poor, innocent Stormtroopers who were probably just draftees or the Death Star day care center. Maybe it hit him later, but we never saw that part of the story, did we?
Luke was not portrayed as psychologically damaged in the least. He was definitely naive, though. Maybe a savvier and more mature guy would have stopped to think, "you know, we're probably going to kill innocent people if we manage to do the impossible and blow up the Death Star," but that thought would have been followed immediately by the realization that not blowing up the Death Star would result in the deaths of the rebellion, followed by many other worlds like Alderaan, so in balance, the decision would have been the same.
As for Leia, I think she was in shock during the whole movie, from the moment Alderaan blew up. Otherwise, how could she be so calm and focused about
anything? She was running on emergency adrenaline. After the movie, she probably had a big ole nervous breakdown.
Look at it from Padme's POV. She's told that the Tusken Raiders "look like people but they're animals" and that they rape and pillage their way through innocents. She never saw what they looked like, she never saw their villages. For all she knew, they were predatory creatures without sentient thought, truly animals who just walked on two legs instead of four.
What, she couldn't look them up on the Republic's equivalent of the Internet?
I would expect a Senator from one of the Republic's worlds to have at least a passing understanding of the various races and cultures of the Republic, and not write any of them off as "animals," sight unseen.
Padme was portrayed at least on the surface as intelligent, perceptive and unfailingly moral. There's no way to reconcile that characterization with her failure to ask any questions about the incident, even to herself.
Plus Anakin was acting pretty psycho when he told her about the incident. A caring, loving Padme would have calmed him down and then when he was distracted, called the Naboo funny farm to send some guys to take him away in a straightjacket and get him some medical help. Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but at least she should have tried. And if the Jedi had objected, that would be her cue to deliver a furious and well-deserved lecture about their responsibility for noticing when one of their guys is about to go around the bend. The Sand People incident made Anakin look insane and both Padme and all the Jedi look stupid and oblivious.
Remember the guy from "Senate Spy"?
