#very very very heavily inspired by Ophelia by John Everett Millais

[beautifullymacabre]

i finally finished this piece after about 6 months of needing a break from it

[miss-nerd-alert]

Funny that you should describe them as “pulling each other under the water”. Padmé is very heavily associated with water (particularly in her costumes), for both obvious and subtle reasons. The obvious being Anakin’s being from a desert planet and his feelings for her being comparable to needing her the way a man dying of thirst needs water.

The subtle reason for Padmé’s being associated with water is this:

This is Ophelia by John Everett Millais, a painting of the character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who is driven to madness and eventually drowns because of the actions of her love, Hamlet.

The character Ophelia and this painting of her especially were very likely the inspiration for Padmé’s funeral gown, with books like The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Dressing the Galaxy, and even Natalie Portman herself making the comparison.

It’s especially poetic that Padmé is essentially buried in water while her love—who is responsible for her death—is destroyed by fire. Opposites who tried to come together, and were mutually destroyed in the process.

I think Anidala is intresting to look at because of how toxic it is and what it does to both parties ( Anakin and Padme) involved.

When I was a hardcore Anidala fan, that's what was my jam, too! I enjoyed the obsessiveness and the push-and-pull of their morals versus the way they made each other batshit, the way Anakin's moral compass was in pieces and shot into the sun, so he was ready to have an Empire that he'd co-rule with her, but you couldn't trust him because he was so unstable, too much power in one fragile person, versus Padme's dedication to her beliefs but also that she was batshit feral over him as well, that she was willing to overlook the murder of children to run away with him and raise their children with him, that she would try to temper him but also be sucked into his undertow, and it was a huge, glorious mess. It was a situation that couldn't last forever, eventually any bridge they tried to build would break because they couldn't be what the other needed from them, no matter how much they were driven to each other, Anakin couldn't have a moral compass for her, Padme couldn't stand strong against the terrible things he would do or resist his pain and trying to soothe it, so every conflict would spiral off in the same way, he would blow up, she would set aside her beliefs to just be with him, to hold each other, and so they couldn't build anything solid, and watching that fall apart was a majestic shitshow for me. Anidala is a pairing where I see them as pulling each other under the water, there's no solid ground for them to stand on, it's just an endlessly deep ocean they drag each other into, no matter how many times they (well, Padme mostly) try to bob back up to the surface. They can't talk about their problems, any time they try, nothing is resolved, Anakin changes the subject, Padme lets him, Anakin blows up, Padme soothes him, it's untenable and it was a HURRICANE.