When you think about the prequels in context with the original trilogy a lot of it doesn't make sense. Take the final battle between Anakin and Obiwan for instance and then think about how they interact when they meet up in Episode IV. That doesn't sound like a conversation one would have after being left to burn alive in lava, I'm just saying. You'd think it would have gone more like:

Vader: Hey, super prick, burn anybody today?
Obiwan: Nah. Kill any innocent children lately?
Vader: No, but I'm about to gut an old man like a pig.
Obiwan: Not if I gut myself first!
Vader: What?
*slow lightsaber fight*
Vader: They just don't make them like they used to.
Obiwan: I agree. Oh, hi, Luke! *lets down his guard and dies*
Vader: What the--? *kicks Jedi robes* This feels... anticlimactic.

And I agree with Jiro that Anakin was no saint. Wasn't some of the sand people he killed women and children that had nothing to do with his mother's death?