Not a bot

“…he had earned her. As he had earned the child she bore. He had paid for them with innocent blood.”  –Revenge of the Sith novel

“No, you would do it all again. You would still sacrifice all of those innocent lives if it means stopping the Empire…”  –Star Wars Annual #2

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I’m kind of obsessed with how glaringly alike Anakin and Leia are in terms of personality. And behavior. And temperament—particularly temperament. And snark (I’m pretty sure they’re the only Skywalkers we’ve seen rag on somebody’s height to their face). They’re probably the most psychologically similar pair from the Skywalker-Naberrie-Solo clan. And the depth and breadth of their commonalities is both hilariously, and sadly, ironic. I love it.  

There’s one major difference in attitude though, in which they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. In typical Skywalker fashion, both Anakin and Leia can be intensely, fiercely, dang there tunnel-visionly devoted and loyal. But the difference lies in the objects of their devotion—or at least, what they each respectively deem more in need of their loyalty and effort and so, primarily motivates their actions. While the ways in which they act on these motivations tend to be similar—the need to be in the thick of the action and get things done themselves; casual disregard for protocol and direct orders (that aren’t their own); the ends justify the means—they have completely differing mindsets on prioritizing the personal vs the principle, or internal vs external. Anakin was primarily internally, emotionally driven by the personal, and Leia is primarily externally, pragmatically driven by principle (but still in an emotional way, because she’s a Skywalker, and those people are nothing if not living, breathing balls of Force and emotion).