i really like your take on padme in mermay au, she is straight up vicious, it somehow suits her better than her canonical persona? i don't know i never saw her as particularly, overly kind in canon, more like someone who definitely cares but is downright manipulative? idk if i'm making sense, long story short, this version of padme scratched an itch in my brain i didn't know i had
i think padme is always fun to write because versions of her can be very complex and when i write her i like to focus on her capacity for anger (in fics where she and anakin are still together when the fic starts) i'm sure that gets a bit tiring to read for people but i just can't see her character just being calm and placid and ok with losing anakin immediately. she seems too fiery in canon, and she seems to love anakin too much to just let him go
and when im writing padmé in canon fics, i want to balance that part of her with her other parts, like her kindness and a sense of justice and empathy ('a more perfect union' padmé for example is all of those things), but i think all those parts are important.
so i've really liked how easy it's been to lean into padmé's viciousness in the mer au!! it's been super fun for me, because one of my favorite parts of writing different aus is playing with how much a character is of a particular trait (ie., how much of a bitch obi-wan is, how much of a brat anakin is, how much of a good jedi is anakin, how much infinite sadness does obi-wan have etc etc) so i've liked dragging padmé's viciousness all the way up to the top of the scale here
she's a mermaid queen who is queen of a vicious and vain society and being queen means different things in this au than it does in star wars canon, a lot of which boils down to never really hearing the word no and maybe being a bit callous and naive because of it. she's also the most mer in the au because anakin was human for 21 years and obi-wan was human for likeee ~15 years (?) but padmé has been mer all her life and would never want to be human - she's fascinated by anakin, but not in the same way obi-wan was by the humans when he first discovered them and i love trying to distinguish that
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