Kylo Ren's Crossguard: A Weapon That Barely Works
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Most lightsabers are engineered to contain their plasma cleanly. Kylo Ren's is engineered around the fact that his doesn't.
The crystal at the centre is cracked. Ben Solo bled it himself when he turned, and the bleeding damaged it badly enough that the crystal can no longer regulate the energy passing through it. The blade that results is unstable — visibly ragged, spitting, audibly unlike any other lightsaber.
The crossguard quillons exist to solve that problem. They're not decorative, and they're not primarily for trapping an opponent's blade, though they can do that. They're vents. Excess plasma the cracked crystal can't contain is bled off through lateral emitters, which is the only thing keeping the weapon from destroying itself. The hilt's heavy, rough-finished construction follows from the same constraint.
It's a weapon that broadcasts its owner's condition. Ben Solo built it out of a crystal he damaged during his worst act, and then built a machine to manage the damage rather than fix it.
He threw it into the sea off Kef Bir after the confrontation with his mother's memory and his father's — the last object tying him to the name Kylo Ren.
A crossguard is unmistakable at any distance. shop sabers