Padmé dying during childbirth and Anakin going dark...a causal cycle?

[Darth Angelus]

I have been considering this plot point in Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, a long time ago a bit lately and I have not been able to come up with a satisfying answer to how this is meant to work or make sense.

Basically, early on in the movie, Anakin sees a vision of Padmé dying during childbirth, which leads him to do several bad things, which propel him towards the dark side. Padmé, knowing he has turned to the dark side, becomes so sad that she dies during childbirth.

Now, my problem with this is not that Anakin causes the very thing he is trying to prevent. That is, of and by itself, perfectly possible. Neither is it that a person should not die of sadness directly, which is something I at least believe is medically impossible (I am no doctor, so I could be wrong here, but I have never heard of a case of sadness causing death without an intermediate effect, for example suicide).

No, my problem is that it seems to be a causal cycle with no beginning. Anakin turns dark, which causes Padmé to die (of sadness) during childbirth, sending a Force vision back through time to Anakin, which causes him to turn dark. You see the issue here? Even if you could have some foreknowledge of the future (which is logically problematic of and by itself if you are to retain the ability to affect the future, making visions only possible futures, really), this apparent cycle seems to defy reason of causality.
Cause and effect is about the former event (which is independant of the latter) resulting in the latter event (which is dependent on the former).
When it comes to this plot, we seem to have a cause cycle like...

<--
A B
-->

Now, I have no logical problem with accepting that there are negative spirals of bad things happening, mutually causing each other in this pattern and causing things to become worse and worse, but they would need to have some other external cause to set them off initially by causing A or B to occur the first time and set this spiral in motion to begin with. They wouldn't just be hanging loose like a self-contained circle in the air like this.

Now, I think people are taking bad things more seriously by default. If an event is dark, we have been trained to accept it with less scrutiny. We often perceive the cynical to be closer to reality than the idealistic, by default. I would say that in general, with our trained psyche, a really dark movie is less likely to be questioned than one which portrays things in an overly positive light.
Well, while it is easy to think that dark is serious, it is really not hard to come up with dark events that are not logical in any way.

Think of an event where three billion people on Earth die in the very same second, without anything to cause it whatsoever. That event would no doubt be very dark. It would also still be ridiculously improbable and unlogical. So no, just because some event is dark does not mean we should accept that it could happen without question.

Here are a couple of possible answers...
1. Palpatine planted the vision in Anakin's mind initially:

Ok, but if so, how did he know Anakin's turning dark would cause Padmé to die during childbirth, or even die at all?. Has he had a vision of the future himself, one he has not yet set in motion by planting said vision?
Does not seeing the (even if only a possible and not definite) future require the chain of events to be in motion already? When Luke saw his friends in danger on Bespin in Episide V, had not the events getting them into that danger already started?
Can Palpatine feed an event that is not already about to happen (Anakin turning dark) into a Force vision, like an argument/parameter to a function, and thereby have the Force reveal answers to purely hypothetical "what would happen if?" questions, essentially having his visions acting like a mystical simulator. That is a far more powerful ability than just seeing the future itself, if you can test outcomes of arbitrary states in the universe without those states existing (yet). It would seem like he would need that ability to plant such an accurate vision in advance, if Anakin turning dark is not already in motion, but nowhere in the saga is he portrayed as having this, nearly godlike, ability to see the future of purely hypothetical situations. It is ridiculously over the top and I see no way the Empire could fall if he could do this.

2. Anakin's turn to the dark side is already in motion before Anakin gets the vision.

This may very well be the case, as it is the only way I see it could work, but should it not have been explained better, and would it not be against the way the movie portrays his motives for turning dark?


The key thing here is that the way the movie portrays things, we have this cycle of Anakin turning dark and Padmé dying during childbirth, each portrayed as causing the other, and with no initial event to set the cycle in motion. And barring that I have made some error in my reasoning (which I very much doubt, here), that would not logically happen. Unlike the literal chicken or egg, which I think has a rather satisfactory answer in evolution and also if you believe God made it all (to cover both sides in that debate), this one has no real explanation.

[Lilmizflashythang]

There's a reason when one half of a couple, that's been married at least 30 years, dies the other follows shortly afterwards. It is entirely possible to die of sadness. And yeah the Emperor implanted the vision in the first place.

[Darth Angelus]

Originally Posted by Lilmizflashythang

There's a reason when one half of a couple, that's been married at least 30 years, dies the other follows shortly afterwards. It is entirely possible to die of sadness.

Indirectly, sure. By some intermediate effect. But the movie says there is nothing medically wrong with her.
I am willing to buy this part, anyway, because it is a movie.

And yeah the Emperor implanted the vision in the first place.

That really only moves the problem. I already did cover that scenario. How does he know of a future that is not in motion yet?

[hopewrites]

We don't see her buried, and Leah as vague memories of her mother as sad and beautiful. For the sake of plausibility, I assumed the emperor lied about her death to claim Darth for himself knowing his bond with padme was no longer a useful tool and rightly guessing that he would bond as strongly with his children as he had with his wife and mother before them.
It would not be beyond Ben to hid the mother as long as possible, if not as a friend then as a possible chance to bring Darth back and set things right.

There are lots of reasons a woman may die in child birth. If the emperor needs her to suffer or die for any reason he could make it so.

I felt Darth's progress to the dark side was well mapped out from episode one. It is his possivness and in felt with abandonment issues that drive him to form the bonds that drive him to make choices that ultimately hurt those he feels most passionately about.

The cycle is not what it seems. Its a cycle of self sabotage where the choices one makes to protect the people one loves ultimately are the choices that lead to their distruction.

[Darth Angelus]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

We don't see her buried, and Leah as vague memories of her mother as sad and beautiful. For the sake of plausibility, I assumed the emperor lied about her death to claim Darth for himself knowing his bond with padme was no longer a useful tool and rightly guessing that he would bond as strongly with his children as he had with his wife and mother before them.
It would not be beyond Ben to hid the mother as long as possible, if not as a friend then as a possible chance to bring Darth back and set things right.

It is possible, but highly unlikely. We see the funeral scene, and for no one to discover she was really alive there she'd have to use some strong drug or something to seem dead (I am not a doctor and not sure whether it is realistic, but I have seen it in fiction) in a way that is never explained. Indeed she'd have to live for a few more years to not create problems with Leia's description of her in Episode VI, which is another possible continuity problem. You have to invent some weird Force stuff to explain that, too. But really, most people will have interpreted it like she died.

There are lots of reasons a woman may die in child birth. If the emperor needs her to suffer or die for any reason he could make it so.

While that is true (that the emperor could easily have caused her death) it does not affect this problem in any way whatsoever, except possibly to move it elsewhere. There is nothing to indicate he was involved in her death as it happened, and if he were the one planting the vision, he has all too accurate information in advance about a chain of events not yet in motion.

I felt Darth's progress to the dark side was well mapped out from episode one. It is his possivness and in felt with abandonment issues that drive him to form the bonds that drive him to make choices that ultimately hurt those he feels most passionately about.

That is true, but his fear of losing Padme is still what was shown to drive him over the edge. For this vision to appear in the first place, her death at childbirth needed to occur without him having this fear to drive him dark in the first place, and that chain of events is never explained. So we need to concoct answers not in the movie to break this cycle.

The cycle is not what it seems. Its a cycle of self sabotage where the choices one makes to protect the people one loves ultimately are the choices that lead to their distruction.

The way the of the chain of choices and events as shown in the movie is exactly as I described it in my initial post. Inventing stuff that is not onscreen changes nothing. While it is true what you say that Anakin's choices to protect Padme is what led to her death, he had no reason to make that choice to protect her because he did not have that fear until he saw the vision of her death, which was caused by that very choice.

[hopewrites]

Perhaps they were intended as a warning against his present path of possiveness, and missinturpereted as a certain future by him. By his past experience with visions of his mother's suffering, which Ben warned him against seeing as set in stone.


Really I don't understand what your asking because it seems your looking for a way to make the dream - choice - action cycle paradoxical by finding the break in it.
It could be broken and begun at many places, for multiple reasons.

[Darth Angelus]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

Perhaps they were intended as a warning against his present path of possiveness, and missinturpereted as a certain future by him. By his past experience with visions of his mother's suffering, which Ben warned him against seeing as set in stone.

Yes, that is probably how it was intended. These visions in general seem to have a rather high probability of happening, though. Both Anakin's visions about his mother and Luke's about his friends in Bespin were well-founded. Padme dying at childbirth was not really a well-founded danger until the dream vision took place. Not only did Anakin need another reason to take the last step over to the dark side that was not dependent on the dream (because that is the loop), he needed a reason to still turn just as soon as he did and not some vague time in the future. Yes, Padme learned the news of Anakin's turn to the dark side in more or less the last moment. She gave birth to the children only shortly after the Mustafar duel. If Anakin had turned a few days later and Padme had died of a broken heart, it would still be enough to invalidate the vision (her babies would have been born, hence no death during childbirth, as shown in vision).
The movie fails to provide a reason for Anakin to cross over to the dark side within this very limited timespan (to give dream even reasonable possibility of coming true) that is independent of the dream. It is possible to make vague assertions of the possibility of the Anakin turning to the dark side, but without reason (that is not inside the loop) it lacks substance and smells like sloppy writing.

Really I don't understand what your asking because it seems your looking for a way to make the dream - choice - action cycle paradoxical by finding the break in it.
It could be broken and begun at many places, for multiple reasons.

Yes, other events could occur to make Anakin cross over to the dark side, thereby breaking Padme's heart and killing her, I guess. The question is how likely any one particular scenario must be to merit a vision. Surely Force users can't dream of every danger with a slim chance of occuring? They would have nightmares 24/7 if that were the case. Speeder crash here, exploding malfunctioning spaceship there. Surely a lot could go wrong by mere accident. The possibilities of bad things occuring in that enormous galaxy are nearly endless, so there would be bad visions without end.
No, the only sensible way of interpreting the movies (since the Jedi aren't shown to have dreams about random speeder crashes and similar "Force noise" constantly) is that there must be a reasonably substantiated prospect, rather than a vague "possibility", of the bad event happening for a Force vision to take place. Anakin's turn without the vision first taking place is not substantiated because in that case he lacks enough motivation to go over within the limited timeframe allowed (again, it must happen before childbirth or the vision is invalid), and we must concoct other such motivations for him out of thin air that are not shown onscreen.

I admit I can't prove that it is a contradiction or a plot hole, but it certainly feels like Lucas made it easy for himself when coming up with an event to push Anakin over.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Darth Angelus

I admit I can't prove that it is a contradiction or a plot hole, but it certainly feels like Lucas made it easy for himself when coming up with an event to push Anakin over.

I personally find it hard not to be cynical and presume that plot integrity was least of Lucas's interests in the prologue trilogy.

[Huttman]

Her seemingly giving up so easily and leaving two newborn children behind because she lost the will to live is one of the things I also find a bit unsettling. I like to justify everything, so, in my mind Anakin was not the only thing she had on her plate. The entire Republic was crumbling, The Jedi order was being destroyed, evil was taking over including her beloved husband's soul, and she just couldn't fight anymore. Well, that's how I see it. Psychological defeat can best the strongest of us.

[Darth Angelus]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I personally find it hard not to be cynical and presume that plot integrity was least of Lucas's interests in the prologue trilogy.

Lol, yes, very much agreed. This is just one of plenty of plot issues I have with the prequels.

Originally Posted by Huttman

Her seemingly giving up so easily and leaving two newborn children behind because she lost the will to live is one of the things I also find a bit unsettling. I like to justify everything, so, in my mind Anakin was not the only thing she had on her plate. The entire Republic was crumbling, The Jedi order was being destroyed, evil was taking over including her beloved husband's soul, and she just couldn't fight anymore. Well, that's how I see it. Psychological defeat can best the strongest of us.

You are making a sort of valid point, but the way it is presented, and also various quotes and such if I recall correctly, indicate it was indeed Anakin's turn to the dark side that was the cause. Plus, all the other stuff you mention was due to Anakin's turn anyway, so it makes little difference.