✨Chandrilan fashion appreciation post✨

The plotline about Mon Mothma's daughter's marriage walks a really precarious tightrope. She essentially sells Leida so that she can keep funding the rebellion. If she gave her teenage daughter to a grown man, against her will, then her actions would be obviously unforgivable. But that's not what happens. She merely allows her daughter to choose to marry her banker's teenage son. Leida doesn't know she's sold out for money, she doesn't know she's sold out for a rebellion that she hasn't even heard about, she thinks she's choosing something for herself in spite of her mother's wishes. And yet that doesn't mean this isn't a betrayal! If Mon wanted to do right by her daughter more than she wanted to save the rebellion, she would have forbidden Leida from the Chandrilan tradition of early marriage, even despite Leida's wishes, even if Leida hated her for it. The betrayal of allowing her daughter to choose wrong, the betrayal of allowing her daughter to believe she chose at all, when the choice was in fact made for her, is a truly morally compromised action.

the relationship between mon and leida lives rent free in my mind because. it’s the way that leida resents mon for never putting her first, and is justified in doing so. it’s the way that leida rebels against mon by adopting the ultra-conservative traditions that mon hates, and thinks she’s committing the ultimate rebellion by getting married, when really the marriage is something mon arranged for her own rebellion. it’s the way that buried deep down (i think) leida does have doubts about the marriage, is terrified that mon might be right, can never admit this to anyone ever because she’s a teenager. a child, who is getting married for reasons she doesn’t even know of.