Things in History You Should Know: Padme Amidala... and Anakin Skywalker

As originally published in the Meliorist, on April 1st. Yes.


Greetings, and welcome to week two of Historical Relationships That Ended Badly Month! And boy, do I have a treat for you today.

A long time ago (say, about 500,000 years ago) in a galaxy far, far away (the Sunflower Galaxy, perhaps), politics were giving everyone grief. Into this fraught atmosphere came a young queen, Padme Amidala of Naboo, elected to great acclaim by her people. During the subsequent confrontations with the Trade Federation, she spent a great deal of time running about, speaking to the Galactic Senate, recruiting young slave boys and other allies, and generally getting things done.

Eventually, the Trade Federation embargo was brought to an end by means of action sequences and cunning. She let loose the aforementioned slave boy, one Anakin Skywalker, to the care of the Jedi, and carried on ruling for another eight years. These were prosperous years for Naboo, so prosperous that she had to publically refuse to defy the constitution and run for the position of queen for yet another term. She was soon thereafter appointed – not elected – to represent Naboo in the Galactic Senate. Work that one out.
Two years after becoming senator, Padme took an unpopular stance against the Military Creation Act.

Justifiably, as it turned out, she feared the implications of militarization and their potential to undermine the democratic nature of the Senate. After numerous assassination attempts sparked by this stance, she was forced to go into hiding lest she wind up in a pine box. It was during this time that all of her work against the MCA was undermined by the individual who was brought in to provide a temporary replacement for her. The identity of this individual is lost to the mists of time, but doubtless once it is learned, it will be a focal point for curses the like this universe has never known.

Up to this point, I have made little mention of young Anakin, Jedi warrior. Allow me to redress this point. It so happens that Padme’s bodyguard during her temporary exile was none other than him and that he still remembered their previous acquaintance with much fondness. How could he not? She and her compatriots did deliver him from a lifetime of slavery, after all. Given all this, the fact that he was four years her junior and Padme’s purported beauty and charm, it is only natural that the young man would become smitten with his charge in defiance of Jedi prohibitions against attachments of the heart.

But Padme would not be wooed so easily. It would take several action sequences, the likes of which would stress our modern workstations to their utmost, before she could allow his courtship of her to continue. Once this was done and Anakin received the artificial hand he required as a result of his troubles, she was happy to let the courtship and marriage proceed so long as they did so under terms of strictest secrecy. The young Jedi was comely, for certain, but she could not let marriage of any sort damage her political reputation and influence.

Then the Clone Wars began and everything went to hell.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, formerly occupying Padme’s own position as senator of Naboo, had been granted any number of emergency powers since the onset of the war with the Separatists. (Not to be confused with Quebecois separatists, who still do not have access to neither droids nor Sith.) This alone was a subject of concern for Padme, who feared not only his becoming a dictator of sorts but the dangerous activities of her husband in the course of his many exciting action sequences.

To further her anxiety, she discovered that she was pregnant with twins prior to Anakin’s return to Coruscant. As she knew that the Jedi Council were intelligent enough to put two and two together, what with her close acquaintance with Anakin and the timing of her pregnancy and all, she endeavoured to keep the matter secret for as long as possible. Historians speculate how she planned to deal with the matter once the twins were born; inconclusive evidence has been found that indicates that she intended to give birth on Naboo and pass the infants off as belonging to her sister.

Whatever her intentions were, her husband went, how shall we say, completely fucking crazy – a process that included killing off an entire temple full of children, among other misdeeds. Padme braved a confrontation with Anakin, which came to naught. Seeing that he was beyond help, she left him to his own devices and involved herself with the burgeoning rebel movement against the newly deemed Emperor Palpatine before the onset of labour. Anakin, meanwhile, become Darth Vader. You may have heard of him.

The chronicler George Lucas states that upon giving birth to the eventual heroes, Leia and Luke, Padme “died of grief.” Mere words cannot describe the silliness of this medical diagnosis, especially in light of Princess Leia’s testimony that she possessed memories of her mother.

So what explanation can serve for Lucas’ inaccuracy? Think of his patrons, the American film industry – he was just as beholden to them as Shakespeare was to Elizabeth I and James I. As we are all aware, the presence of a woman who has not only birthed, is no longer beholden to her love interest and holds a position of authority is anathema to them. Padme proved resistant to further director-enforced romantic tension and so, she had to die.

In defiance of Lucas, the historical record indicates that the twins’ birth went off without a hitch. She sent Luke off into hiding with his step-relatives, whom she had previously met, and sent herself into hiding. Passing off Leia as the child of her good friend, Bail Organa, she posed as a servant of his household while secretly conducting the activities of the newborn Rebel Alliance. This continued until she came down with a nasty case of food poisoning when she was thirty-two, to which she succumbed. Such is the reason for the blackened cuisine for which Alderaan was known before it was destroyed.

Darth Vader became a lackey and then died.