Padmé Amidala/Legends

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Padmé Naberrie of Naboo was the mother of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo, two of the most important figures in galactic history. She was also the grandmother of Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin Solo.

Biography

Birth of the twins and Padmé's destiny

In the last minutes of her life, Amidala gave birth to healthy twins, Luke Skywalker and Leia Amidala Skywalker, both of whom would later go on to join the Rebellion Padmé and other Senators had started and defeat the Empire together. In her final breaths, she told Obi-Wan Kenobi that good still remained in her husband, now Darth Vader. Padmé Amidala died at the age of twenty-seven. Her daughter, Leia, was adopted by Senator Bail Organa and his wife, and her son, Luke, was taken in by his father's step-brother and his wife.[source?]

Legacy

"She was… very beautiful. Kind, but… sad."
―Leia Organa, to Luke Skywalker, reminiscing their deceased mother[3]

Shortly after her funeral, Amidala's son, Luke Skywalker, was given to the care of her husband's step-brother, Owen Lars, and his wife, Beru, on their moisture farm on Tatooine. Luke would follow in his father's footsteps, becoming a powerful Jedi.[3] Leia, meanwhile, was formally adopted by Bail Organa and his wife, Breha, becoming the heir apparent to Alderaan as Princess Leia Organa.[4] Her life would mirror her mother's, with Leia also serving the Senate as well as championing similar causes.[5]

A painting of a young Padmé Amidala hanging in the Imperial Palace during the Thrawn campaign.

Shortly before the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, Luke asked Leia if she remembered her mother at all. From very faint recollections, Leia described her as "very beautiful, kind, but sad." Luke remarked that he had no memory of Amidala whatsoever.[3] Unknown to either of them, a large painting of Amidala still hung in the Imperial Palace, even up to the Thrawn campaign, twenty-eight years after her death.[6]

Behind the scenes

Continuity

Padmé's image first appeared in the Star Wars universe in the comic The Last Command 5,[6] which was published around a year before The Phantom Menace premiered. At the time the comic was being created, the decision to cast Natalie Portman as the mother of the twins had just been made, so the authors of the comic decided to place her likeness in a portrait in the background. This has an important bearing on the dispute over whether Leia ever knew what her real mother looked like.

In Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke she remembered her real mother dying when Leia was very young, and described her as very kind, beautiful and sad. Since Padmé dies, in Revenge of the Sith, while Leia is a newborn, it is not clear how Leia has these memories.[4] (It's possible that Leia felt her mother's sadness through the Force; however, this is not confirmed. Leland Chee admitted that this inconsistency is not yet addressed in the Holocron continuity database.[7])

The Return of the Jedi novelization said that Obi-Wan took both Leia and her mother (Padmé) to Alderaan after the birth of the twins,[8] while in Revenge of the Sith, Padmé dies shortly after childbirth.[4]

The 2004 junior novelization of Return of the Jedi suggests her last words were truly prophetic, and that, years after her death, she would play a very significant role in restoring freedom to the galaxy: placing the reader inside the Dark Lord's mind as he watches Luke suffer under Palpatine's wrath, the book implies that, somehow, the thought of Padmé and her undying love broke through to him, bringing about the realization that he could not allow this to happen to her child, and it was at that moment that Anakin Skywalker overcame Darth Vader and destroyed the Emperor.

Quotes

One of Padmé Amidala's lines, "So this is how liberty dies.... with thunderous applause," said in reference to Palpatine's transformation of the Republic into an Empire in Revenge of the Sith, was later quoted by James Cameron in his interview with George Lucas in his AMC series James Cameron's Story of Sci-Fi, regarding how Empires continuously make the same mistakes throughout history, with Lucas also saying in the middle of Cameron's quoting of the line that they're "in the middle of it," referring to the surge in populism as a result of the 2016 United States Presidential Elections.[9]

Appearances

Sources

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Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The New Essential Guide to Characters
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
  5. ↑ Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Last Command 5
  7. ↑ StarWars.com Holocron continuity database questions on StarWars.com Message Boards. Posted by Tasty Taste on November 2, 2005 at 09:12 AM. (content now obsolete; backup link)
  8. ↑ Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi novel
  9. ↑ George Lucas on Star Wars Being Anti-Authoritarian | James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction on the AMC YouTube channel: "GEORGE LUCAS: That went on for hundreds for years, or sometimes thousands of years. We never got it. We never said "woah, wait-wait-wait-wait! This isn't the right thing to do." And we're still struggling with it. // JAMES CAMERON: And they fall because of a failure of leadership or, or government often. // GEORGE LUCAS: Yep. // JAMES CAMERON: And you, you have a great line which is "So this is how liberty dies..." // GEORGE LUCAS: We're in the middle of it. // JAMES CAMERON: "...With thunderous applause." Exactly. It's the pi... there was the condemnation of the nation of populism in a science fiction context." (backup link)

External links

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