There is a new Star Wars book out from Lucasfilm that breaks down the Skywalker family and their place in a galaxy far, far away.
The book has already questioned whether or not anyone from the Skywalker family truly is the Chosen One from the Jedi prophecy. On a lighter note, it also revealed why C-3PO was built to begin with.
Star Wars: Why was C-3PO built?
The revelation that the future Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, built C-3PO came in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
It was a shock that one of the two droids that fans followed throughout the entire first movie of the franchise was Anakin’s creation.
The droids’ original purpose was to have two characters that were in no way heroes following the actual heroes throughout the adventure. Viewers saw the adventure through the eyes of these innocent characters.
It was a plot device George Lucas borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, which was a huge influence on the first Star Wars movie.
However, it turned out these were not random droids dropped into the battle. They both were part of the history of the Skywalker legacy.
Anakin, as a child, built C-3PO as a droid to help his mother, but that was a strange use for a protocol droid.
Star Wars: Why did Anakin build C-3PO?
The new book, Skywalker: A Family At War by Kristin Baver, explains why Anakin Skywalker, as a child, built a protocol droid that was loaded with over six million forms of communication.
The boy longed for a life far from Tatooine, free to explore the galaxy and fulfill his dreams of becoming something far greater than a Toydarian’s property.
The droid he constructed was capable of millions of forms of communication.
Anakin dreamed that, one day, with C-3PO as his faithful traveling companion, he and his mother would be able to venture anywhere in the galaxy and be understood and be able to understand the natives, whatever their language.
Anakin ended up taken away from his home planet and his mother and was swept away to become a Jedi Warrior. This means he partially fulfilled his dreams.
However, his mother died while he was away and that caused Anakin to start to turn to the Dark Side of the Force, another example of why he was swayed by his anger at dreams that would never be completely fulfilled.
What is most interesting is that C-3PO ended up as a traveling companion of Anakin’s two children, Luke and Leia, so in a way, the droid ended up serving the exact purpose that Anakin originally intended.