#i mean i still think her reaction to the tusken massacre can only be explained with some fantastic racism

[ladystoneboobs]

got prequels on the brain lately, and i think i can explain padme in rots, even if it might not be exactly what lucas was thinking of. see, it's not just that she loves her husband and wants to believe there must be still be some good in him, it's also that she is now not just anakin's wife, but the mother of his child(ren) too. like, literally about to pop right as obi-wan/yoda have decided anakin needs to be killed. she doesn't feel she can stay on coruscant anymore as a senator under the emperor's reign, she was already doubting doing that job as a working mom. then she learns the jedi have all been deemed traitors and their order outlawed, while she's carrying offspring very likely to be highly force sensitive since the force itself is pretty much the paternal grandfather there. so, she herself is a potential political target as someone who opposed palpatine's war efforts from the beginning in a more public way than bail organa or mon mothma, and her child(ren) would also be targeted just for existing as potential jedi before ever really using the force against the empire. being a single mom to outlawed and untrained but very powerful l'il jedi while the both of you are being targeted and hunted down on the run/in exile without the skills really needed to protect any jedi child, that's just a no-go. her only anti-palps and anti-anakin alternatives would have to include never being a mother after giving birth, whether going into exile alone somewhere or wearing a mask and playing the long game like bail organa. (even if he still adopted leia as in otl, how much time could she really spend with her without drawing more suspicion from palps? how painful would it be to watch someone else raise your child while possibly never even knowing if your other child is ok?) in that sense, knowing how wanted that unplanned pregnancy was, is it any wonder that she chose to make a last attempt to save their family instead? to run away with her husband, who happened to be the only man strong and powerful enough to protect them all from the empire, the only man she could trust and wanted to trust, with the safety of their whole unsplit secret little family. so it is only after he refuses to run away with her, when he insists that he's only interested in using his new dark powers to protect her, and when he reveals that his only idea of defying palpatine is to replace him, making padme into a new dark empress, a dictator rather than the public servant she once thought she could be, only then that she starts feeling he may just be lost to her after all. but when you've gone so far together already, brushing off his first massacre, marrying him mere days later, and then truly tying yourself to him permanently through pregnancy, it's really too late to ever go back to your ol' "normal" life either.