Tarkin and Vader have one of those quietly interesting dynamics in Star Wars. They speak to each other like peers, not like a mad sorcerer and a terrified bureaucrat. On the Death Star, Tarkin orders Vader to stand down, and Vader actually listens. That only really works if Tarkin understands who he’s dealing with.
By the time of A New Hope, Tarkin has served through the Clone Wars, worked with Jedi generals, and now walks the halls with the Emperor’s personal enforcer. So the real question is: did he ever put it together that Darth Vader wasn’t just some Sith attack dog, but the same Jedi general he once fought beside—Anakin Skywalker?
Tarkin Knows Vader Comes from the Jedi Order
The first real clue is right in A New Hope, and it’s easy to miss because we’ve all heard the scene a thousand times. When Vader senses Obi-Wan on the Death Star, he pauses and says, “The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old master.” You and I know he’s talking about Obi-Wan and the Jedi.
What’s interesting is Tarkin’s reaction. He doesn’t stop and say, “You had a master?” He doesn’t ask who Vader is talking about or act like this is new information. He just answers with the line we all remember:
“The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that’s left of their religion.”
So Tarkin is already treating Vader as part of the Jedi story. He’s not seeing him as some separate freak the Empire built in a lab. He talks about Vader as the last living piece of that “religion,” and Vader is comfortable enough to mention having a master right in front of him.
Now, if we bring in what we know from The Clone Wars, this lands even harder. Tarkin served with the Jedi. He knows exactly who Obi-Wan Kenobi is. He also knows Obi-Wan had a Padawan. So when Vader says “my old master” in the same breath as that familiar Jedi presence, a guy like Tarkin doesn’t need a lot of help to connect that to the general he worked with during the war: Anakin Skywalker.
Tarkin Basically Knows Vader Is Anakin
If we move from the films into James Luceno’s Tarkin, the book more or less lets us sit inside Tarkin’s head while he puts the puzzle together.
Early on, Tarkin notices that there’s something uncomfortably familiar about Vader. After one exchange aboard the Carrion Spike, he catches “that look again… or at least that suggestion of a look that always made him feel as if Vader knew him from some previous life.” That’s the first hint: Tarkin feels recognized, not just evaluated by some faceless enforcer.
Luceno then spells out how that feeling turns into a real suspicion. We’re told that “very early on in their partnership… Tarkin grew convinced that Vader knew him much better than he let on,” and that this is what “provided Tarkin with his first suspicion as to Vader’s identity.” Watching Vader work with stormtroopers and fight with a crimson lightsaber only reinforces it, until Tarkin “grew more and more convinced that his suspicions were right. Vader might very well be Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, whom Tarkin had fought beside during the Clone Wars, and for whom he had developed a grudging appreciation.”
So from Tarkin’s own point of view, he doesn’t know it as a formal fact, but he’s pretty sure: same presence, same way of fighting, same soldier he remembers from the war—now inside the armor.
We also get a confirmation from the top. In another passage, Luceno switches to Palpatine’s perspective and notes that Sidious assumes Tarkin has already solved it—that Tarkin has “puzzled out that Vader had once been Anakin Skywalker,” and simply never voiced that conclusion. The Emperor is not easily fooled; if he thinks Tarkin has put it together, we can safely read that as canon support.
Put all of that together with what we already know from The Clone Wars—that Tarkin served directly under Jedi General Anakin Skywalker—and it’s hard to see a version of events where he doesn’t realize who Vader used to be. He’s worked with Anakin, he’s watched Vader, he’s drawn the connection in his own thoughts, and even Palpatine assumes he knows.