For me the main thing in this story was that cheap talk =/= real commitment. You can talk all you want about how “totally precommitted” you are, but this lacks some concreteness.
Also, I saw Vader as much less galaxy brained as you portray him. Destroying Alderaan at the end looked to me more like mad ruthlessness than calculated strategy. (And if Leia had known Vader’s actual policy, she would have no incentive to confess.) Maybe one thing that Vader did achieve, is signal for the future that he really does not care and will be ruthless (but also signaled that it doesn’t matter if you give in to him, which is dumb).
Anyway, I liked the story, but for the action, not for some deep theoretic insight.
For me the main thing in this story was that cheap talk =/= real commitment. You can talk all you want about how “totally precommitted” you are, but this lacks some concreteness.
Also, I saw Vader as much less galaxy brained as you portray him. Destroying Alderaan at the end looked to me more like mad ruthlessness than calculated strategy. (And if Leia had known Vader’s actual policy, she would have no incentive to confess.) Maybe one thing that Vader did achieve, is signal for the future that he really does not care and will be ruthless (but also signaled that it doesn’t matter if you give in to him, which is dumb).
Anyway, I liked the story, but for the action, not for some deep theoretic insight.