Anakin Skywalker was a Force-sensitive human male who served the Galactic Republic as a Jedi Knight and later the Galactic Empire as the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Believed to have been conceived by the Force, he was born to Shmi Skywalker and came to reside on the Outer Rim planet of Tatooine as a small child, where he and his mother were slaves of the prominent crime lord Gardulla the Hutt before falling into the ownership of a local Toydarian junk dealer named Watto. An engineering prodigy, Skywalker rebuilt the protocol droid C-3PO using scavenged parts to help his mother. Soon thereafter, during the Naboo Crisis, he was discovered by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who freed Anakin from slavery after a successful wager on the youth's podracing skills. Bringing him into the Jedi Order, Jinn hailed Skywalker as the Chosen One of Jedi prophecy, destined to defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force.

In the years leading up to the Separatist Crisis, Skywalker was apprenticed to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Around ten years after being apprenticed, Skywalker returned to Tatooine to find his mother, of whom he had premonitions of being in grave danger, he learned that his mother married a moisture farmer named Cliegg Lars, who freed her in his absence, he soon found out that his mother had been abducted about a month before his arrival by Tusken Raiders , who tortured her, Anakin later slaughtered the Raiders including women and children out of rage. Following the events of the Battle of Geonosis—the opening engagement which sparked the devastating, galaxy-wide conflict known as the Clone Wars—Skywalker secretly married his childhood love, Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo. As the war progressed, Skywalker saw very little of Amidala, prizing the moments the two were able to share with one another. Early in the course of the war, the Jedi High Council assigned Skywalker a Padawan of his own, Ahsoka Tano, a gifted student who, much to Skywalker's chagrin, eventually left the Order before the war's end.

Towards the end of the war, Skywalker was blessed with the news of impending fatherhood when Amidala announced she was pregnant with his child. This blissful moment proved to be short-lived, however, as Skywalker became plagued with visions of his wife's demise in childbirth. In a misguided attempt at saving the lives of Amidala and their unborn child, Skywalker was driven to the dark side of the Force and ultimately betrayed his fellow Jedi by pledging himself to the teachings of his former confidant and friend, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine—the public guise of the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious—who rechristened him Darth Vader. In a swift sequence of events, Palpatine officially ended the war, destroyed the Jedi Order, and proclaimed himself Galactic Emperor.