Are actual lightsaber crossguards effective?

Question

Referring to Useless cross-guard on a lightsaber? fans here should be very familiar with the crossguard debate when Kylo Ren's lightsaber was first revealed. However, we've since proven that those are actually vents for excess energy from Kylo's flawed crystal.

Since then, we've observed a Jedi's lightsaber bearing the same crossguards. In Twilight of the Apprentice, we see Ezra pick up an ancient Jedi lightsaber that ignited fully, including two crossguard blades as stable, controlled beams, before the entire weapon shorted out due to age.

That didn't appear to be vented energy. It looks exactly the same as the main blade, like Anakin/Luke/Finn/Rey's lightsaber's blades. But on that note, Kylo's vented energies look kinda like the flawed main blade too. But then again, if the crystal hadn't been flawed, those side vents would never have been needed (resulting in the classic lightsaber), suggesting the ancient lightsaber's crystal wasn't flawed (given the stable blade), and so the crossguards might have been there for intents different from Kylo's.

Are those (the ancient Jedi lightsaber) really crossguards and not some design with a primarily utility function? If it's really a crossguard, how does it serve as an effective combat component? Does the old discussion over Kylo's now-proven-to-be-not-primarily-a-crossguard hold true here?

Answer 1

To know if a cross guard on a light saber would have worked we have to look at how the Jedi fight. The Jedi fighting consisted of 7 different forms. (Found here ) Because of the nature of this question we will be looking at form 2, Makashi, which was a form base solely on dueling other light saber wielders.

To determine whether a cross guard could be an effective tool while fighting we have to look at what Cross guards were originally used for. Traditionally cross guards were used to protect a wielders hand in real world combat. (Info found here ) So this brings us back to fighting style of Makasi, which was a fighting style developed to counter the fighting style of Shii-Cho which was a fighting style based on disarmament of an opponent. In most cases the easiest way to achieve this was to remove the hand holding the opponents light saber. An example of this is in the battle between General Grievous and Obi-Wan in which Obi-Wan defeats Grievous by cutting off his hands hold his light sabers.

So in a sense a cross guard on a light saber does make some sense, as a protection to deflect blows close to the wielders hand. But in practice it is not truly known which fighting style Kylo Ren uses, (Although I am personally pretty sure it is Juyo the fighting style of channeling ones emotions to fight) we won't know his uses in a fight with a cross guard, although it can be said that in the hands of a master of the first two forms of light saber fighting it could be a useful tool.