Sharkssss

Like Queen Amidala was one of the most beloved Queens of Naboo in history, to the point that they literally wanted to overturn their own CONSTITUTION in order to keep her in power and only her refusal to allow it or to even run if they did kept that from happening. She's remembered as being kind, intelligent, brave, and beautiful. She is almost literally perfection incarnate.

And Senator Amidala is primarily known and remembered as someone who fought against war and corruption, someone who was willing to put her life on the line when it mattered and one of the few who was willing to speak out and fight against injustice. She's remembered for being powerful and clever and strong and moral.

There's never any real smear campaign against her the way there is against, say, the Jedi. Palpatine wants to stop Padme sometimes, sure, but he never sees her as such a big threat that he needs to turn the entire galaxy against her. In fact, her pristine reputation probably ends up helping him by proxy since he was her mentor. Even the reveal of Padme's pregnancy after her death, something that would've exposed that she'd had a scandalous affair, never seems to tarnish her reputation as a paragon of moral perfection. Even decades after her death, she seems to still be remembered extremely positively.

But the REALITY of Padme is far different. She's a corrupt politician, she's willing to help cover up several different crimes committed by her own husband, she's potentially going against her own planet's rules by having gotten married at all, she's going against some other rules by getting married to a JEDI. She's a liar and a hypocrite, she's selfish and greedy, and she's more and more willing to let herself be convinced into doing things she knows are wrong by the end.

But no one seems to truly know that person. The one person closest to her who does know about some of these choices often refuses to acknowledge or accept the reality of her because it obviously benefits him that she is this way and he's choosing to see what he wants to see. And everyone else is kept at such a distance that they don't get to see the darkness that lies beneath the pristine lie she wears.

Part four to this series

Thank god I’m not delusional, I KNEW I’d seen that before

POV: you’re trying to find your missing wife, but the detectives you paid to investigate her disappearance are too busy flirting

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 3.04: The Devils Road TVLTwT/IWTVTwT Version.