*A few Padmé-related spoilers.*
As with a lot of characters and elements from the prequels, my thoughts on Padmé are a little at odds with each other. I think she isn’t as well-served by those films as she could be, even though, in truth, there’s a lot of good that gets overshadowed by some unfortunate choices. And as I’ve said before, The Clone Wars is giving me fonder feelings toward that whole era, which helps further.
We meet Padmé when she’s queen of Naboo, even though we’re not really introduced to her as that queen. Padmé is clever and uses her ornate makeup and hairstyling to make it easy for one of her handmaidens to serve as a decoy. This purpose is twofold. First, there’s a practical protection element here, keeping the queen safer from those who’d do her harm by hiding her in plain sight among the handmaidens while the decoy wears the grand robes and white face paint. And second, it allows her to learn more unvarnished truth. People will say things in the presence of a handmaiden that they won’t say to a queen, and she gets her decoy to “assign” her to accompany Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace.
Because even though the use of a decoy can be a protective measure, that doesn’t mean Padmé shies away from risk. She still finds her way into the thick of things, staying involved and only revealing her true identity to the Jedi when she needs to. When the droid army attacks at the end of The Phantom Menace, she leads the charge to defend her people. Her bravery stays with her when her reign as queen ends and she becomes a senator. After she’s sent away for her safety following an assassination attempt in Attack of the Clones, Padmé convinces Anakin to leave their hideaway when they find out Obi-Wan is in trouble. Consistently, her curiosity, courage, and intelligence serve her well. On The Clone Wars, she regularly balances senatorial diplomacy with clandestine snooping, and she’s good at both.
As I said, these are a lot of good points. However, Padmé’s heroic qualities can be overshadowed by the frustrating and sexist turn of events for her in Revenge of the Sith. After realizing that her secret husband has fully turned to the Dark Side in a pretty horrific and decisive way, she gives birth to twins and immediately dies. And not even dying in childbirth—dying seemingly of a broken heart, having “lost the will to live.” It’s like a more tragic version of the way some fans look at Leia and only think “gold bikini.” Padmé’s smarts, tenacity, and nerves can get washed away by a wave of, “Yeah, but she died of a broken heart.”
But that’s why I enjoy seeing her on The Clone Wars. In the prequel trilogy, Padmé’s story is always ultimately in service of Anakin’s, but in a long-running TV show with frillions of mini-arcs and side quests, we get to see Padmé in all sorts of different contexts: giving impassioned speeches in the Senate, navigating complex and sometimes dangerous diplomatic visits, investigating shady business on the downlow, enjoying secret rendezvous with Anakin, and more. Anakin is one of many characters that she has significant interactions with, so she’s given many more chances to assert herself as her own character, which I appreciate.
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