Second Look: The Case for More Padmé Amidala

senator-padme

Last April, with the Leia-centric novel Bloodline fast approaching, Sarah Dempster took advantage of the calm before the storm to advocate for more content, a novel in particular, focused on Padmé. Despite being Luke and Leia’s mother and an important part of Skywalker history, the Expanded Universe, and the new canon thus far, have been very hesitant to spend serious time sketching out her life, or even her headspace during the sweeping events of the prequel trilogy:

How does her relationship with Palpatine change as he goes from her subject to her Chancellor? How does Sidious feel towards her, since she nearly singlehandedly undermined his plan due to her tenacity and smarts when faced with adversity? How do the events of TPM affect her and inform her going forward? She mentions in AotC that she was relieved when her two terms were up…but then the next queen asked her to serve as senator and Padmé says she couldn’t refuse.

Sarah goes on to note that while the character started out strong in The Phantom Menace—as arguably the main character, no less—she suffered a great deal from cut plotlines in the next two films, meaning that her life as both a politician and as Anakin’s wife was never explored satisfactorily; a perfect opportunity, in other words, for tie-in material to fill in the blanks and give more depth to one of the most hotly debated characters in the prequel trilogy.

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