Quote Originally Posted by Infernally Clay View Post
I will point out, however, that Errorname is correct. Anakin did not perform the same work as other Jedi Knights during the war. He was one of the most prolific generals of the war and his peers were Jedi Masters not Jedi Knights. In fact I don't really recall ever seeing that many Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars, but that might simply be because Jedi Masters went on the most dangerous missions during the war and that's the material the show focused on.
There's a very bad tendency in Star Wars media to make Jedi characters Jedi Masters rather than Jedi Knights to make them seem important. This is sufficiently bad that in the various Wookieepedia categories for Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters the Masters outnumber the Knights even though presumably less than 1 in 10 Jedi Knights even make it to the rank of Master. As a consequence there are only a handful of stories focused on heroic Jedi Knights who are not Anakin. Ironically, the most complete of those stories might be the Republic Commando novels, since Etain Tur-Murkan was knighted early in the series (the end of book one if I recall correctly).

That said, Anakin did outperform his peers and there is evidence that performance during the Clone Wars did allow for some Jedi to achieve the rank of Master at quite young ages as a result of their war experience. The best example is Aayla Secura who appears to have been promoted during the Clone Wars from knight to master and who had only been a knight for 6-7 years at the time. Anakin and Aayla share a lot of similarities in terms of resume, with Aayla also being noted as proactive, hotheaded, and somewhat reckless, but Anakin's abilities and record absolutely crush Aayla's in every way. She was also only a handful of years older than him.

Anakin, of course, knew Aayla personally - she's one of a very few characters who even plausibly qualify as one of his peers in the Order - and would have been very aware of her promotion. He no doubt thought that since he'd accomplished everything Aayla had, only about ten times over, that he obviously deserved the rank of master. He probably assumed it was merely a matter of time. Anakin is not an idiot and is fully capable of understanding arguments like 'you haven't been a knight long enough' even if he would find them infuriating.

We, the audience, know that the reason Anakin wasn't made a master had nothing to do with his accomplishments and everything to do with his emotional maturity and understanding of the Force. No doubt the Jedi Council came to such conclusions in their internal deliberations, and they weren't wrong. Where they screwed up was in personnel management. Mace Windu breaks the news to Anakin in a manner absolutely guaranteed to make him feel unjustly slighted and to set him off. You don't tell the hot-head he didn't get promoted because he's a hot-head and expect him to not get mad!

Yes, Anakin's hot-headedness is his problem, but since the Jedi Order continued to keep him within its ranks, managing that problem was also an issue for the Order, and they really screwed that up.