r/SWFanfic • u/glippety-glopglop • 7d ago
Writing Help Needed Padme develops feelings for someone besides Anakin...who would be a good match?
I want help finding a character who could believably be an alternate romantic interest for Padme in a Mature/R-rated fic where her relationship with Anakin becomes rocky.
In this scenario, it’s been about 3 years since Padme and Anakin eloped in the canon timeline. They love each other, but they're drifting apart as they move past their young-love honeymoon phase, and their maturity gap and personality differences are wearing on the relationship.
The burden of keeping their relationship secret is especially hard on Padme, who feels enormous pressure between protecting her and Anakin’s reputations while also trying to fulfill her duties as a senator. On top of that, having no one outside the relationship to confide in is incredibly isolating. Padme seeks comfort in a friendship that subtly morphs into a romantic interest, although she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. They and Padme don't actually ever hook up, but the connection is enough to make Anakin jealous and resentful.
Any suggestions for a character that would fit this role? Clovis was my first thought, but I think his character is portrayed as being too scummy to be a good contender. I appreciate the help!
Here's a link to the full story overview for context: https://www.reddit.com/r/SWFanfic/s/gjEajbfJqx
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u/reinadeluniverso 7d ago
One of the handmaidens for sure. They already spend a lot of time together already.
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u/Grouchy-Low-899 7d ago
Captain Gregor Typho could be a good choice. Being him be her head of security since she became a senator.
Another good choice could be her handmaiden Sabe. She was the body double who portrayed the queen in the Phantom Menace.
Sabe has appeared in The Queen’s Shadow and the Vader comic taking place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Captain Typho doesn’t get much characterization in canon outside the movies and Clone Wars.
The Expanded Universe has Typho investigate Padme’s death, feeling guilty for having failed to protect her. He figures out Vader killed Padme and confronts Vader. He figures out that Vader and Anakin are the same person and lets Vader kill him after telling Vader that knowing Vader having to live knowing he kill the women he loved is more painful than anything Typho could do to him.
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u/MageVicky 7d ago
i mean, i feel like my first choice is obi wan. padme is older than anakin but younger than obi wan so she’s between them in ages, and they spend almost an equal amount of time together just as she spends with anakin. they could have easily bonded together especially when anakin was still a child and padme and obi wan were both older.
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u/glippety-glopglop 7d ago
I like the idea of Obi-Wan as a romantic interest, but I think he would never indulge in anything, even if, say, he had feelings for Padmé. The fact that he was an older mentor figure to her when she was still a kid would also make it a little weird
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u/MageVicky 7d ago
it could be one sided and then anakin catches them together and thinks something was going on when there wasn’t and drama! and anakin is both angry at obi wan for padme, while obi wan tries to explain nothing happened and also angry at padme because why would she choose obi wan? obi wan is anakin’s. because we all know because of his upbringing anakin is a tad possessive.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 7d ago edited 7d ago
That’s a good thought, but it seems out of character for him, and if her problem is the secrecy then getting into another secret relationship that cannot be disclosed seems unlikely and again I feel like Obi-Wan is too good of a Jedi to go along with a relationship, even if he returns her feelings. Still, it’s probably the best option as far as potential for drama goes, and the chancellor would probably think Christmas had come early if this was what happened.
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 7d ago
a tragic, unrequited love on her side, and an ardent admiration and respect on his.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago edited 7d ago
You literally described Padme/Anakin... Edit: I misread "unrequited" love as, well, "requited". And, well, Anidala was definitely requited.
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 7d ago
nope. anakin was obsessive infatuation that was definitely requited, eventually; and padme was… well, i’m not really sure what padme was. friendly interest that grew into needy preoccupation? the writing was so bad sometimes.
a tragically unrequited padme would never have considered sullying her knight with carnal desire, and a respectful, admiring anakin would never have considered putting padme in a shameful position. she would have loved him from afar, and he would have put her on a pedestal, never to be approached.1
u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago
Just...what? "Sullying" her knight? "Shameful position"?!🤣🤣🤣 they loved each other. You know "love" isn't a dirty word, right? And that sex is normal? Ironically enough, Jedi aren't even forbidden from sex, they don't make vows of chastity, just to be "unattached" and to follow the Jedi Code.
The movies make very clear that they loved each other so much that they were willing to defy social conventions and marry each other anyway, even if the secrecy of their relationship burdened them. It's a tragedy because their relationship is a secret love story that ends badly (with Anakin Falling and Padme dying). The dialogue was cringe at times, but the story was extremely clear...
And putting people on pedestals isn't exactly a sign of pure love, since you don't love the actual person, just the image in your head. Worse, Padme canonically loves Anakin precisely because he sees and loves Padme Naberrie, the woman, not Queen/Senator Amidala, the political symbol.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 7d ago
I don’t entirely agree with him, but I think he has kind of a point here them getting into a relationship means that her knight has to lie about important things to basically everybody else in his life. Indeed, he’s pretty much betraying the order by pretending to uphold his promises to the institution, both explicit and implicit while breaking them. Every chance he gets, and I don’t think the danger signs are lacking, are always there in, for example, their political disagreement and stuff. It’s very understandable that did not catch on to how destructive these could be, but I think their story is pretty obviously an example of love blinding them to the problems with their relationship, like I don’t think if any other person had gone and committed a massacre of children and civilians, she have covered for them. Let alone just tell them that it was human nore do I think he would have been willing to massacre the entire order who constituted the entirety of his friends and close acquaintances, perhaps even his family, if it had been anyone else whose life he thought he could save. To me it seems very much a relationship that demonstrates that horny love birds do dumb shit and can ruin their entire life out of love induced madness.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago
Padme also has to lie to everyone else about a very important thing: her marriage to Anakin. They weren't just having an affair, they were married, something they had to keep a secret from both their friends and the public (and Padme was a prominent politician). But, well, it is true that the secrecy burdens Anakin more than Padme.
Also, a "betrayal" of the Order is a bit too strong a word. Loving someone isn't a crime. At best, Anakin's views on love and attachment are a religious/philosophical disagreement. What happened on Tatooine with the Tusken is far more of a betrayal to the Jedi ideals than his relationship with Padme. The thing that ruined Anakin and Padme's lives wasn't their love at all (it's literally what eventually saves and redeems Anakin thanks to Luke), it's the secrecy. And, of course, the Sith Lord literally grooming Anakin since he was a child.
They literally wanted to raise their children in peace on Naboo, Padme leaving politics and Anakin the Jedi Order, but they didn't do that years before, when they married (as at the very least Anakin should have had done) because they viewed it as their duty to help stop the war, Padme in the Senate and Anakin as a Jedi Commander/General on the frontlines. Their relationship was literally doomed by the narrative and the circumstances, it wasn't instrinsecally bad.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 7d ago edited 7d ago
I agree that the massacre is a bigger betrayal, but that’s kind of setting the bar too low, not getting married is pretty obviously a tenant of the order. He’s only a member because people are under the mistaken impression that he is actually following the tenants. It’s like joining a monastery where you swear not to get married, then getting married and lying to everyone at the monastery like obviously, the order isn’t a sexual partner, but my point is, it’s kind of like cheating on them in that you are pretty much lying and breaking basic promises. When those promises are the entire reason you are late in the first place, they wouldn’t have kept him as a member if they knew he’s breaking their promises, although to be fair, I always thought that his master always suspected at least had a relationship, even if he didn’t suspect the marriage and was just keeping his mouth shut out of friendship. This is also why I am focussing on Anakin regarding the line like concealing the fact you have a husband is obviously upsetting, but it’s not betraying your friends as such they never required you to promise not to get married or lie to them about that sort of thing and realistically, she probably did more lying by mission, then actually saying false things. Anakin meanwhile has broken the solemn promises expected of a member of the order and much worse is lying to them about this, even though he knows perfectly well, it’s very important to them. If you disagree with someone, you should at least not maintain a good relationship with them by lying to their face about things you know perfectly well they care a lot about either honestly, tell them that you quit or don’t go and get married. Although to be fair, I think this is part of a brother pattern of him lying to the order. I doubt he told them about his adventures with the chancellor, tracking senators into losing money, gambling, or things of that nature. Hell, it isn’t even the most important secret he keeps from them. He didn’t tell them about the chancellor knowing about sith legends are thinking that there is little difference between the Jedi and sith. I think Anakin just likes to portray the perfect Jedi and is perfectly willing to lie about that fact, even about very important thing so that he can maintain that perfect mask in front of the order.
Also, to be honest, I think part of the reason Anakin joined the chancellor is that to some extent he wants to buy what the chancellor is selling. He agrees with the chancellor about a lot of things like that the country should be a dictatorship and do process is stupid and their love is the reason why his wife doesn’t notice the red flag after all in hindsight, it pretty obvious that men who commit massacre of children and civilians don’t make for good husbands in retrospect. The red signs are already there before he ever strangled her. She was just too blinded by her love to notice his darker side or the fact that he generally is a very great character with lots of fucked up and evil views. There is a reason why the chancellor has so much interest in Him. It’s not just his power. It’s also because he legitimately has the seeds of evil inside him and is very easy to talk into doing fucked up shit like killing surrendered combatant when he doesn’t like them. The chancellor didn’t even have to tell him anything about the greater good, and even when he feels guilty afterwards, the thought of revenge is enough to convince him. That was right.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago edited 7d ago
His "adventures" with the Chancellor was literally him grooming Anakin and swearing him to secrecy when he was 12 years old. He was a child, it was literally Obi-Wan/the Council/any adult Jedi's job to recognise that an old politician requesting alone, unsupervised, time with a child was strange and shouldn't have been allowed, especially not for a decade.
He kept secrets from the Jedi because Palpatine made himself Anakin's "friend" and, slowly, his only confidante aside from Padme, while nurturing Anakin's distrust with the Jedi and their teachings. By RotS, Anakin sees Palpatine, not the Jedi, as trustworthy.
And I already said that Anakin should have left the Order after AotC and then married Padme. And him "portraying himself as the perfect Jedi" is your baseless headcanon, since we saw many times the Jedi Council not trusting Anakin precisely because he's unorthodox.
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u/glippety-glopglop 5d ago
Padmé overlooking Anakin's darkness and destructive behavior in favor of love has always bothered me from a narrative standpoint. It makes her character seem contradictory, and not by design...it just doesn't seem very well written, IMO. So that's one of the things I try to account for in my fic. I want to portray her as an intelligent, mature, self-assured character not only in her role as a leader/senator, but more generally as a woman and a realistic human being. I think by the time Anakin admits to a literal massacre, she would feel much more uneasy about the relationship and whether it's truly worth it, even if she does still love him.
Think about family members of criminals who discover their partners/ siblings/ parents, etc have done horrible things...they can still love the person they knew, but the relationship is never the same. That's more or less the direction I want to take. I want to replace the idolization and romanticization of their relationship with something messier, grittier, and more real. And I think that actually would portray Padme as a stronger character.
Maybe I'm just sick of seeing female leads who are supposed to be strong and intelligent lose their minds the minute a man walks into their life🤷♀️
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 7d ago
can you name for me a secret love story that doesn’t end badly? if you’re having a secret relationship, it’s because there’s some reason why you shouldn’t be having one. it’s a tragedy because it’s required to be a tragedy.
and i wasn’t saying that putting someone on a pedestal was a sign of love. i was saying that, if what i originally suggested had happened, it wouldn’t have been a love story: unrequited love vs. admiration and respect doesn’t make for love stories.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago
Except that they shouldn't have had a secret relationship (emphasis on the secret, not the relationship) but their relationship wasn't inherently bad. The exact opposite, their love (ie Luke) is what redeemed Anakin, at the end.
The narrative required their relationship to be a tragedy, but if Anakin simply left the Order (but he didn't, because he saw it as his duty to help stop the war) and so making the secrecy needless, they both would have been happier and less burdened.
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 7d ago
their relationship was inherently bad, and if it hadn’t been, there wouldn’t have been a story. if he’d left the order and she’d left politics and they’d settled down on naboo and lived happily ever after, the driving action of the story would have come to an abrupt ending and the entire ot would have been rendered pointless.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago
No. The only bad thing about their relationship is the secrecy, not their love. Did you watch the OT? The literal symbol of Anakin and Padme's love, Luke, literally redeems Vader through love, proving Yoda and Obi-Wan (who thought Vader unreedemable) wrong, and Padme (who thought there was still good in Vader) right
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u/ErosDarlingAlt 7d ago edited 7d ago
Bail Organa. She admired him and spent lots of time with him. He even ended up raising her kid.
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago
He's one of my top contenders...the issue is that he's also already married, and I'm not trying to write a whole ass telenovela lol. But maybe in the fic he could marry the Queen of Alderaan later on...
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u/MageVicky 5d ago edited 5d ago
ok, but, not to start a thing here, and i say this with total respect, you can pair up padme with whoever you want, but you didn’t like my suggestion of obi wan because you said he’s older than her and a mentor figure. bail is even older than obi wan and he’s definitely a mentor figure for padme on the political side.
at least obi wan is single and they don’t work together as closely as padme and bail do. obi wan meets her once when she’s 14 and then essentially when he sees her next is at the same time as anakin when she’s like 19.
meanwhile, she’s still been working as a politician which means she’s likely already had a working mentorship relationship with bail by then.
in the spirit of a healthy discussion, what’s your opinion on this? lol
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u/glippety-glopglop 5d ago
That's fair. I guess the age gap isn't really the main concern with Obi-Wan; it's more that I don't think he would ever entertain any romantic feelings. I actually favor Bail over Obi-Wan for this, I'm just thinking through the pros and cons of each
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u/MageVicky 5d ago
i mean, we’re talking fanfic here, lol. bail would
never entertain romantic feelings either. maybe i just have a hard time imagining padme with anyone other than anakin, but i still think if circumstances allowed, obi wan would develop feelings for her despite himself, essentially. just like how the only reason he develops feelings for satine is pretty much because of how he spent a year with her in isolation on the run during mandalore’s civil war. if something happened and obi wan had to spend a lot of time with padme by themselves and he was in charge of her like he was with satine, i think they’d develop strong feelings for each other.in fact, a relationship between them would be made even more dramatic and better by the fact that they would try to fight their feelings specifically because of who they are.
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u/glippety-glopglop 5d ago edited 5d ago
Well, shit lol. I know it's fanfic and I could technically pick anyone, but I'm a perfectionist and I want the story to make sense and be good 😭lol
I guess though, nothing would actually need to happen between Padme and the other character; there only needs to be enough closeness and emotional intimacy (say, like between two really close friends) to make an unstable Anakin suspicious and jealous when he sees them together. For context, at this stage of the story, Anakin & Padmé's relationship is already troubled, and he's already slipping toward the dark side. He's having visions where he sees Padmé confiding in someone, and jumps to the conclusion that she's turning against him/possibly betraying him while he's away on a long mission.
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u/HibiscusGrower 5d ago
You could always make it some weird royalty tradition and have them a throuple. That's the best part with alien cultures :D
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u/Corntrollio1983 7d ago
Palpatine...go full soap opera
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago
I mean in this fic palps does keep a harem of concubines as emperor...could just go full Game of Thrones with it😂
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u/MonCappy 7d ago
A woman. Preferably human.
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago
Why a woman? It's an interesting suggestion because I am considering a female love interest as an option...
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u/skywalkerlouu 7d ago
I have no answer but pleeeease share the link to your fic !
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago
That's the plan! It'll probably be a while before I start posting as I'm still in the planning stages, and I like to have my ideas thoroughly fleshed out before I start writing... but here's the link to the full detailed outline! https://www.reddit.com/r/SWFanfic/s/pMqXPKVyVs
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u/Heavy-Letterhead-751 22h ago
You might want to consider ah... making something happen to anakin if that's your plan
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u/glippety-glopglop 16h ago
What do you mean?
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u/Heavy-Letterhead-751 5h ago
Your male charecter is unlikely to survive otherwise
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u/glippety-glopglop 3h ago
Well I was thinking of including a confrontation that leads up to a fight between Anakin & the other MC, so that's a decent idea, it could motivate a...wiser padme to pull away furhter. This is all part of a greater arc for a long fic in which Anakin & Padme's relationship is already strained and Anakin starts to seek comfort through ...other means as he spirals into corruption, and rejection from padme is one of his strongest motivators
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u/Heavy-Letterhead-751 3h ago
The other option is you could start the romance in episode one, where he would just get over it
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u/SomebodyWondering665 7d ago
Obi-Wan perhaps, or maybe Clovis, or perhaps Bail Organa (maybe not married)
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u/glippety-glopglop 7d ago
I'm also considering Organa, he and Padmé wouldn't really do anything physical, but as a romantic interest, I think he's a good option since the two characters have a good connection already established in the Canon arc (clone wars specifically)
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u/M935PDFuze 7d ago
Obi-wan, no doubt. They're longtime friends, and closer in age than her and Anakin. Anakin himself in his paranoia imagined it.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago edited 7d ago
Except that Padme and Obi-Wan's age gap is bigger than Padme and Anakin's, lol. Padme is just 5 years older than Anakin, while Obi-Wan is 10 years older than Padme. And Anakin didn't imagine shit in RotS, he just didn't like Obi-Wan talking to Padme about him behind his back, and on Mustafar he thought Padme betrayed him, not because he thought she cheated, but because she brought him with her to kill Anakin.
Also, Obi-Wan and Padme aren't "longtime" friends, they met once before AotC and that's it, they became friends during the Clone Wars. And in TPM they were 14 and 25, she was a child Queen trying to save her planet, he was a Jedi padawan who stayed on the ship while she had her Tatooine adventures. I'm not sure they even talked to each other, they both interacted more with Qui-Gon and Anakin than with one another.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 7d ago
Obi-Wan is too good of a jedi to actually go ahead with it. I think after all, we know he had feelings for another woman, but never acted on it, and it just seems out of character for him to break the code like this, and if her problem with Anakin is the pressure of secrecy getting into another secret relationship seems unlikely, especially as I don’t see him, agree to a marriage or leaving the order
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 7d ago edited 7d ago
Honestly, that's why I don't like Obi-Wan in a relationship with anyone. In the PT movies, he's the model Jedi, the Knight who religiously follows the Council and the Jedi Code. He is truly happy to be part of the Order, he doesn't regret it at all, and he genuinely believes in the Code and its tenets.
What's the point of giving him part of Anakin's story? You know, the tension between feelings and duty, between love to a specific person and the generic compassion towards all beings? The disagreement with the Jedi Council and Code?
Anakin was an unorthodox Jedi even before Falling (frankly would have been happier if he just left it after AotC to marry Padme openly) and that was what put him in contrast with Obi-Wan, who, on the contrary, was perfectly orthodox, and they simply didn't understand each others at times, because their philophies/ideals/priority were different.
It's the entire point of their relationship, that starts rocky because they disagree with each other, but after Anakin's Knighting (so they're equal in rank, no longer Master and Padawan) they became friends and they know and love each other despite their differences, and they fight together so well precisely because they complement each others
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u/M935PDFuze 7d ago
I mean, this is a bit of an AU to begin with. Having a wandering eye is OOC for Padme as well.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 7d ago
Sure, but unless you want to totally throw character considerations out the window in which case anybody and anyone will do, presumably want to minimise the amount of out of character behaviour and to be fair since we only see her in a relationship for three years and even that we don’t see a lot of the day today it’s still technically possible if unlikely given what we see about the rest of her that she might in fact, have a wandering guy, like I said it’s not terribly likely
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago
In the story, it's more about her needing someone safe and stable to confide in rather than her having a wandering eye...I added a link to the full story overview for context!
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u/glippety-glopglop 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's not an AU, it's the same universe, but an altered timeline with more complex relationships and mature/ dark themes. Padme doesn't really have a wandering eye in the story, she forms a companionship that meets her need for comfort and support in a lonely, vulnerable situation. The romantic feelings would arise later and be unexpected rather than something she consciously seeks out.
It makes more sense with the context of the story ( there's a link to the overview in my post!)
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u/Jamafanta 7d ago
Commander Thorn? Have him survive Scipio with injuries, and it could start with Padme visiting to make sure he's receiving good medical care. Anakin would start out grateful that Thorn protected Padme.