Man, one characterization of Vader that I love but rarely see is: Vader as deeply religious.
Because from an in-universe perspective, that’s so weird! Vader and the viewer know that the Force is not a matter of faith, and that it does in fact give him powers up to and including the ability to accurately see the future, but the galaxy at large doesn’t know that and his fellow Imperials definitely don’t. I think the point of Motti, besides introducing Vader’s ruthlessness toward even his own faction, is to demonstrate that Force use is not just a known factor of the Star Wars universe.
In that context, Vader is inexplicable. Not only does he have uncanny and inscrutable powers, like those the murdered Jedi are rumored to have had, but he is the only figure in the Imperial military who seems to talk about his religion. At least among the military leadership, he’s not secretive about it; if he’s got to leave a conversation to hunt down Obi-wan, he’ll just come right out and say that he has supernatural knowledge which he needs to go address now. He wields a banned, antique Jedi weapon. He has several times invoked the Force while speaking to his officers.
In-universe, the general public doesn’t know why he’s like this! The Empire isn’t a theocracy; besides banning the Jedi religion, Emperor Palpatine doesn’t really seem to make a lot of overtly religious policy choices, and I don’t think the general public knows if he subscribes to any specific faith. Except for people who know what the Sith are, Vader just seems like an extremely devout sole adherent to a religion that is all but dead, its other practitioners hunted for treason. He’s like if the president had a weird murder pet who was a Catholic nun, only Catholicism was banned and all other church officials had been murdered by the government.
also like if catholicism was banned because it was DEFINITELY fake lunatic bullshit that so-called ‘catholics’ made up specifically to seize power from the former government, except the murder nun has just turned your manager’s blood into wine right in front of you and you’re both just standing there watching him die horrifically in the middle of your fucking office
This is excellent meta, also Vader-as-murder-nun is an eerily accurate analogy