What if Count Dooku trained Anakin?

So let's say the Council stick to it guns that Anakin is too old to train even in the face of Qui-Gon opposition, and we get the following scenarios: 1) Anakin is given to (let's assume a decent) foster family. Qui-gon and Oniu-wan return to Naboo, Qui-gon is killed, and Obi-Wan doesn't want to go against Council. 1a) Some other pilot takes down the droid command center 1b) Nobody takes down the Droid command center and the Battle of Naboo is lost 2) Qui-Gon goes rogue and takes Anakin. He trains the boy in the ways of teh Jedi but none of them become part of the Order trying to avoid the Jedi loyal to the order. 2a) Obi-Wan stays with Order 2b) Obi-Wan goes with them. Caveat: In all of the scenarios Anakin does meet Palpatine, as it gives an easy pivot to "Anakin becomes Sidious' apprentice".

How do you think things would have played out.

1) Anakin is given to (let's assume a decent) foster family. Qui-gon and Oniu-wan return to Naboo, Qui-gon is killed, and Obi-Wan doesn't want to go against Council. 1a) Some other pilot takes down the droid command center

1b) Nobody takes down the Droid command center and the Battle of Naboo is lost

Except . . . the 1b scenario. If Naboo was lost, then it's likely that Padme was removed from action as well. That cuts Anakin free from a lot of the movie history. He might simply grow up and get a good job, then take a trip to Tattooine to check on his mother. Since destiny is still involved through the Force, he'd discover that she'd been freed and gotten married, but was taken by the Tuskens. That would leave Anakin on Tattooine with a new family and an enemy. He might not leave Tattooine. For all I can guess, he might unite homesteaders to wipe out the Tuskens, or join a criminal group to gain the firepower to kill them off. Or, he might simply leave, going back to the Core Worlds and living a relatively simple life. With bitterness against the Jedi for taking him from his mother, he would probably stop talking to Obi-Wan, which means that there's nobody to interfere when Palpatine inevitably (because it's a requirement of this thread's question) finds Anakin free from Jedi observation and starts training him. Anakin winds up feeling like more of a henchman, just a replacement for Darth Maul, in this scenario, especially because Dooku would have his movie role in this version of events. Dooku would probably end up killing Obi-Wan, so the bleak final scenario would be Darth Vader and Darth Tyranus dueling to become the one true Sith apprentice. Whoever wins, the galaxy loses.

2) Qui-Gon goes rogue and takes Anakin. He trains the boy in the ways of teh Jedi but none of them become part of the Order trying to avoid the Jedi loyal to the order. 2a) Obi-Wan stays with Order

2b) Obi-Wan goes with them.

There are far too many moving parts to work with in this scenario, but it's far less likely that Anakin and Padme would end up in the same place at any point. It can't be underestimated how much of a game changer it is for Anakin to traveling the galaxy with a highly capable Jedi knight like Qui-Gon Jinn instead of remaining close to Coruscant between missions. Palpatine would have a very hard time communicating with Anakin at all. Unless some out-of-left-field scenario brought Qui-Gon back to the Order with Anakin then nothing from the original Skywalker saga would happen. At best, Anakin would be found by Palpatine much later and trained as, perhaps, a replacement for Count Dooku in the Imperial period. I think it's a totally different story, different enough that, since Sidious seemed inspired by the Dark Side to rename Anakin, he might not even give him the title of Darth Vader.

The council didn't actually change their mind on Anakin until after the Battle of Naboo if I remember correctly, so presumably that would have gone the same as it did OTL. Similarly, in that conversation with Yoda, Obi-Wan affirmed that he would train Anakin without the council's permission, so presumably he goes and does that. At most, he leaves or is kicked out of the jedi order, but as Dooku (and some other characters in legends at least) show, the jedi can't really stop an exiled jedi from using the force and training other people in it.

So the real big question is that how does Palpatine fit into all this? Does Obi-Wan going off on his own to train Anakin mean that Palpatine wasn't able to manipulate them? Or does he worm his way into their graces, maybe by offering them resources and support the order won't give them? Or does he just send some assassins to kill Obi-Wan and kidnap Anakin to train himself?

As Junglefowl said, we know that the Council said "no, no training the boy", and then Qui-Gon said, "Up yours, I'm definitely training the boy", and then the Naboo situation exploded so everyone ran back to Naboo, at which point Anakin comes to Palpatine's attention. So, let's go with the following: For whatever reason, it takes Amidala a few more weeks to get annoyed and decide to return to Naboo; maybe Palpatine makes it look like progress is being made. Because of this, the fight between Qui-Gon and the Council has time to come to a head, and Qui-Gon quits the Council dramatically and leaves with Anakin. If this happens, we have a cascade of disasters. Some other Jedi (maybe Mace, since he's present) goes back to Naboo with Obi-Wan and fights Maul. The Trade Federation probably still loses, because the deck is stacked against them, but without Anakin taking out the command ship it's likely a much costlier victory.

We don't know exactly what the Council does if a former Jedi chooses to give someone Force training. I'm not clear that they do anything beyond sternly disapproving. I also think it's pretty much impossible that Palpatine doesn't hear about this; according to the next movie, only twenty Jedi Masters have left the Order in its 20,000 year history, so Qui-Gon quitting is going to cause a stir. Doubly so since Dooku quit ten years earlier; now you've got a situation where an average of one Master quits every thousand years, and two have now quit in a ten-year period. Not only that, one of them trained the other one!

It's possible that in this timeline, Anakin still runs into Padme again, and the two of them hook up before he falls, leading to kids, but I suspect they're not nearly as close through to the end.

I think it's reasonable to presume Qui-gon and/or Obi-wan try to 'do right' by Anakin and try to get Shmi back, and within a week find themselves at the head of the great Tatooine Slave Uprising

There's one question that is the bantha in the room: do you go along with the old fan theory that Anakin's fatherless birth was caused by either Darth Plagueis or Darth Sidious?

I actually think not training Anakin at all would make things more tricky for Palpatine. They might not take him on, but his potential for the Force is still strong enough that it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on him. What becomes Palpatine's route of access then?

I think it's reasonable to presume Qui-gon and/or Obi-wan try to 'do right' by Anakin and try to get Shmi back, and within a week find themselves at the head of the great Tatooine Slave Uprising

I think the Plagueis novel upgraded that to actual canon, at least in the old continuity.

Just to add another data point, Count Dooku was a Jedi Master and Qui-Gon's teacher, and as far as I can tell, the Jedi did nothing about him until they found out he'd put out a hit on Senator Amidala. So in the "Qui-Gon says 'screw you guys, I'm gonna teach Anakin' {1}' timeline" it would make perfect sense for Qui-Gon to seek out Dooku. Then there's an "accident" and Dooku raises Anakin, either with the plan of using Anakin against Palpatine (and Palps turning Anakin against Dooku).

{1} ...with blackjack, and hookers.

Just to add another data point, Count Dooku was a Jedi Master and Qui-Gon's teacher, and as far as I can tell, the Jedi did nothing about him until they found out he'd put out a hit on Senator Amidala.

Still, Dooku was supposed to be somebody who had formally renounced membership in the Jedi Order, distinct from somebody who is technically a member but not really toeing the line.

1b) Nobody takes down the Droid command center and the Battle of Naboo is lost

In the grander scheme of things, this shouldn't change all that much for the Clone Wars. There's no shortage of matches to set off the conflict Sidious wants and losing Naboo isn't a major strategic or logistic setback, I think. Even losing Amidala, while a personal tragedy, won't really influence all that much.

There's no shortage of matches to set off the conflict Sidious wants and losing Naboo isn't a major strategic or logistic setback, I think.

Although on the other hand, perhaps he would very deliberately leave Naboo in a state of limbo; part of what was supposed to be the basis of the Separatist movement was despite the energy behind his election, Palpatine proving to be a less than impressive chancellor in terms of dealing with the special interest groups, the corruption, and the excess of bureaucracy. Sabotaging his own response to the crisis he was elected through would probably help that narrative.

I think it's actually the opposite. Palpatine didn't want Amidala to win, that's why he sent Maul to Naboo to kill her. His goal was to use the ongoing conflict on Naboo to start the process of militarizing the Republic. My memory is that when the Naboo conflict failed to do this, he moved on to his backup plan of drafting the clone armies and starting a ten-year mission to set up the Confederacy.

So I'm gonna pull on a completely different thread.

In an early-ish Clone Wars episode, we learn how during Obi-Wan's padawan times, he was part of protecting Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore in the closing days of a long running civil war of their people. He fought and bled for her, fell more in love with her than he did any other person in his life (at the time of writing, who knows what the new show will pop up with), and the line "If you had asked, I would have left the Jedi Order" comes up. Because she did not ask this, too dedicated to her own duty and knowing he would accept, Obi-Wan shoves his feelings into the same deep dark secret cage that Anakin does with his own feelings towards Padme in canon, and pursues his duty relentlessly as a Jedi. Looking at my dates, this all happens about ten years before TPM.

I think Obi-Wan bails, and takes Anakin with him. I think he chooses to fix what he was told had to be a certain way. To live for himself for once in his Force-forsaken life. He goes to Mandalore before any excommunication word can spread, uses his rapidly-expiring status as a Jedi to get an audience with the Duchess, and tells her everything.

...I can only imagine how confused Satine is upon seeing Obi-Wan now apparently a single father. Especially given Anakin is aboouuuut the right age to have been her own child, except she's pretty damn sure Obi-Wan is human and humans don't work like that. She will have a lot of questions. Some of them might be shouted quite angrily, depending on just how poorly Obi-Wan rolls on that particular charisma check.

And two, Anakin desperately wants someone to tell him what to do, to tell him what he's doing and what he wants to do is right. He spends basically his entire life seeking this. It's what makes him fall when Palpatine gets his hooks into Anakin, and after the fall, Anakin keeps seeking it from Palpatine, until ultimately making the deeply personal choice at the end of his canonical life to choose his own son over the man who guided him down the road to his own personal hell.

The boy's going to be drawn to old Mandalorian ways just as readily as he got drawn to the Dark Side in canon. We know Deathwatch was looking for recruits basically their entire existence, right up until the end of the Clone Wars...And only stopped because Mandalore fell so swiftly and brutally that even Deathwatch had to get the fuck out and go to ground. This could go...a lot of ways, depending on how alternate-Phantom-Menace went and what resources are where at the end of the war. To say nothing of what Anakin's position could do; there is a statistically significant chance in that scenario, that he gets his hands on the Darksaber, and all of its myth of power and leadership according. I don't know what happens if someone like that takes charge of Mandalore in its most beseiged hour...But I know it's far too broad a possibility to speculate on further.

Anakin ends up a Mandalorian Foundling, with all of the crazy bullshit that comes with that title.

(1a) Padme helps Anakin settle with a family on Naboo. She also buys and frees his mother, but she has met Lars and stays on Tattoine. Anakin has, on the surface, a good life on Naboo, but always feels a bit of an outsider and rebel. He becomes a fighter pilot when the Clone Wars happen, where Obi-Wan runs into him again. This time, even though Anakin is now an adult, Obi-Wan takes it upon himself to try to train him while the council is too busy to do anything about it. Things from there go more or less per the original plot. Alternative: Palpatine initially recruits another Jedi as “Darth Vader”. Anakin, in an ongoing campaign against him, finds himself drawn to the Dark Side. He eventually switches sides and takes his place by the Emperor by killing the previous Vader.

This makes the description in ANH a lot closer to true.

So, I keep seeing a scenario where it turns into a romance comedy where both Qui-Gon and Palpatine are trying to woo Shmi, and thus by proxy become the major guiding influence over young Anakin.

Saw this today. Not quite the same, but...

I think the Plagueis novel upgraded that to actual canon, at least in the old continuity.

My impression even within the films was that the prospect of somebody being trained by a Jedi a bit maverick from the Council was undesirable but not too exceptional, and Jedi training is mostly one-on-one anyway, so I don't think those options make a massive amount of difference.

* I still maintain that Palpatine's ability to foresee events is mostly making obvious predictions and improvising well when his plans fall apart.

Plagueis is "Legends" continuity, so it's not in continuity with Star Wars unless Disney says it is.

So, instead, maybe Anakin only destroyed the ship because the Force was with him, and no one else could have pulled it off even if they actually knew how to fly. Naboo falls to the Trade Federation, and Palpatine is in charge of a Republic that's knocked onto its back foot by an ascendant Trade Federation. Somehow, this is still according to Palpatine's plan*, and he makes concession after concession to the Trade Federation, until they're basically running the Republic. Rather than have Count Dooku lead the Separatists, he has Dooku lead an anti-Trade Federation rebellion, using the clone army, and forcing the Jedi to choose between supporting the obviously shady Dooku, the openly corrupt Trade Federation, or to sit the conflict out and let the conflict drag out with innocent people in the middle.

After all, as depicted in the first film, the droid army isn't exactly impressive. They manage to seize control of a world that is quite lacking in any military capacity of its own, and does not make the best showing against their force of barely experienced security/stunt pilots and the... not incapable but still outgunned Gungans. I feel as though a more legit army would have routed them handily. The Clone Wars were predicated on massively increasing their manufacturing output and supplementing with superior combat models.

Hmm, I feel this kind of highlights a bit of a hole in the narrative of the films. Attack of the Clones is all about how the Republic lacks a standing army, but the Trade Federation, heavily militarised as it is, doesn't exactly come across in the first film as some kind of rogue power that can do as it pleases by virtue of military strength. Like, they employ their army to blockade some insignificant backwater as a protest of taxes, occupy that planet while trying very hard to keep that fact from becoming known and accepted to the wider galactic community, and are concerned with pressuring the head of state to sign a treaty to legitimise their occupation, all of which implies that there's some action the Republic could have taken against them that they wanted to avoid.

After all, as depicted in the first film, the droid army isn't exactly impressive. They manage to seize control of a world that is quite lacking in any military capacity of its own, and does not make the best showing against their force of barely experienced security/stunt pilots and the... not incapable but still outgunned Gungans. I feel as though a more legit army would have routed them handily. The Clone Wars were predicated on massively increasing their manufacturing output and supplementing with superior combat models.

The last two really stand out - the Federation alone? Probably not much of a threat. The Trade Federation and the other mega corps and a punch of separatist planetary governments and mercenary armies and volunteer corps and so on and so forth? That is a bigger threat.

This went on waay longer than I intended, but I was kind of enjoying puzzling out all the political twists and turns. Here's my take on 2a, Sblocked for length

Like FrivYeti suggested back in post #6, Anakin and Qui-Gon quickly fall into Dooku's orbit. A few weeks after Dooku meets Ani, Watto is dead in a ditch and Shmi has been set up with a nice house and a lucrative book deal highlighting the Republic's utter failure to enforce sentients' rights laws in outlying systems. (Meanwhile, Obi-Wan still defeats Maul on Naboo, confirming- at least to Him and Yoda- that the Sith are still around.) Anakin is raised by his mother on Serrano, and trained in the Force by a pair of brilliant and unorthodox ex-Jedi. Palpatine is secretly in communication with Dooku, and- a bit too confident in his own powers of persuasion- he trusts that he can corrupt Qui-Gon and Anakin by proxy. Then the clone wars kick off, and Dooku decides that he's going to go off-script and play for keeps, because how many Chosen Ones have you got over there on Coruscant, Sheevy boy? That's right, zero.

Also as FrivYeti suggested, Qui-Gon and Dooku come to blows over Anakin, and also over the Separatists' brutality, and Qui-Gon's suspicion that Dooku's fallen to the Dark Side, and a whole bunch of other issues that have been boiling under the surface in their relationship. Instead of killing his old apprentice, though, Dooku lets him go- after conveniently letting slip that Palpatine is a Sith and plans to murder all the Jedi using mind-control chips he had installed in the clones.

Qui-Gon immediately flees to warn his old apprentice Obi-Wan of Palpatine's treachery, but, because he's in a stolen Separatist shuttle, he's conveniently blown up before they can rendez-vous- a tragic mistake that Palpatine swears he had nothing to do with, honest. Even after his death, though, he's able to reach out to Obi-wan through the Force and relay the details- something Palpatine hadn't anticipated.

As the war progresses, the walls close in on Palpatine. His plans are in ruins. Dooku's assassins are getting more and more annoying. And no matter how harsh his crackdowns get, and how many senators and leaders meet with unfortunate accidents, the Republic continues to bleed systems to the Separatists. He takes some comfort in the fact that, while he may no longer be able to kill off the Jedi, he's getting closer and closer to destroying them in spirit. It'll be a pyrrhic victory, certainly, but when he's done they'll have been reduced from enlightened agents of the force to simply another squabbling political faction. Just as soon as they finally launch that coup that they must be working on. Any day now...

So he isn't expecting it when Padme Amidala- stupid, soft-hearted Vice-Chancellor Amidala- beats them to the punch and quietly slips a dagger between his ribs after returning from a particularly harrowing humanitarian mission. Nobody asks many questions when she ascends to the Chancellorship, and they especially don't ask many questions when she immediately eases up on Palpatine's martial law and punitive austerity measures.

And what about Palpatine's fourth post-mortem message- the one that went out to some planet called Exogol?

Well, yes, that's why I specified "old".

Well, yes, that's why I specified "old". Hmm, I feel this kind of highlights a bit of a hole in the narrative of the films. Attack of the Clones is all about how the Republic lacks a standing army, but the Trade Federation, heavily militarised as it is, doesn't exactly come across in the first film as some kind of rogue power that can do as it pleases by virtue of military strength. Like, they employ their army to blockade some insignificant backwater as a protest of taxes, occupy that planet while trying very hard to keep that fact from becoming known and accepted to the wider galactic community, and are concerned with pressuring the head of state to sign a treaty to legitimise their occupation, all of which implies that there's some action the Republic could have taken against them that they wanted to avoid.

After all, as depicted in the first film, the droid army isn't exactly impressive. They manage to seize control of a world that is quite lacking in any military capacity of its own, and does not make the best showing against their force of barely experienced security/stunt pilots and the... not incapable but still outgunned Gungans. I feel as though a more legit army would have routed them handily. The Clone Wars were predicated on massively increasing their manufacturing output and supplementing with superior combat models.

The fact that the Gungans gave them a tough fight is actually kind of irrelevant - the Gungans don't have a planetary invasion package built and ready to go.

According to some of the comics and novels, Anakin was born as a result of some powerful Sith(s) running some experiments to create a Super Force User. This doesn't really explain why Shmi was the one chosen to be his birth mother, however. And it doesn't explain why the Sith(s) lost track of the baby who eventually was named Anakin, either. My theory : Anakin's real father met Shmi, realized she was some kind of quiet powerhouse in Force terms, and seduced her. His homegrown experiment to create a Super Force User didn't seem to work, however, and his enemies were coming after him, so eventually he ended up blocking Shmi's memories and running away. Nobody was keeping track of Anakin because his real father thought the fetus in Shimi's womb was dead and gone. The only reason Anakin was born alive and was healthy was because his mother wanted him to be that way, and subconsciously used the power of the Force to make him that way. Canonically, I think it's pretty likely that Shmi had some kind of Force affinity - Anakin could feel she was in trouble from across the universe, after all.

As for the original question - The Council says no. Perhaps Qui Gon takes Anakin and goes back to Tatooine?

As for the original question - The Council says no. Perhaps Qui Gon takes Anakin and goes back to Tatooine?

Qui-Gon was a bit of a maverick, but I'm not sure he was so tangential to Jedi practice to do something quite so tumultuous that they seem averse to. He freed Anakin with the intention of taking him away from Tatooine to find him a master on Coruscant. If it had fallen back upon himself to be that master, I think returning to Tatooine is the last thing he would do.

I mean, do we think he disagreed with the Council's attitude that fear surrounding the subject of his mother is something that could take him down a dark path?

Ten years later, his master dies, and they deny the man's literal dying wish because of their orthodoxy.

I think Obi-Wan bails, and takes Anakin with him. I think he chooses to fix what he was told had to be a certain way.

...

And two, Anakin desperately wants someone to tell him what to do, to tell him what he's doing and what he wants to do is right. He spends basically his entire life seeking this. It's what makes him fall when Palpatine gets his hooks into Anakin, and after the fall, Anakin keeps seeking it from Palpatine, until ultimately making the deeply personal choice at the end of his canonical life to choose his own son over the man who guided him down the road to his own personal hell.

... But in summary. The Jedi Order puts their foot down?

Anakin ends up a Mandalorian Foundling, with all of the crazy bullshit that comes with that title.

This Anakin is someone who has been explicitly chosen by his father figure; he’s not just a burden, an obligation, or a bequest in Qui-Gon’s will. In this scenario Obi-Wan isn’t coming across as the perfect Jedi that Anakin has to live up to, he’s a father figure (and probably paired with a step-mother figure in Satine as well) who is probably also more emotionally healthy himself. And he’s not going to be trying to teach Anakin to forsake attachments, which means Anakin has no reason not to go to him with his fears and nightmares. All up, there are then far fewer obstacles to healthy and honest communication between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Whatever fear and anger Palpatine could generate and play on to drive Anakin to Fall, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to accomplish it.

Which probably means Obi-Wan gets assassinated, but even that could go very badly for Palpatine depending on how Anakin jumps.

and a week later at the absolute latest, Qui-gon finds himself at the head of a planet-wide slave uprising

This complicates things when she eventually meets the Cliegg Lars.