I think that the key to understanding how padme could marry anakin even after what he had done to the tusken raiders, how she could plead with him on mustafar to come with her even after his massacre at the jedi temple, to me it's all in that deleted scene in aotc when she and anakin visit her home on naboo, when she shows him her bedroom and talks about the little boy in the holo on her wall. how his planet was dying and he had to evacuate, but his species could not survive on another planet, and so he died in her arms, with padme unable to save him.
the thing about padme is that she wanted to save everyone in the universe the way she wanted to save that little boy. as the queen, she was desperate to save naboo, she wanted to save her world. as a senator, she wanted to save the galaxy from war. and by mustafar, anakin had become her entire world.
when padme looked at grieving, furious anakin after shmi's death, all she saw was someone who needed her desperately, someone who needed to be saved from his own pain and grief. anakin had the deepest, most all-consuming, all-absorbing kind of need--he was someone who needed to be saved from himself.
and padme needed to be needed in that deep, primal kind of way. because padme had always been desperate to be someone who could save the ones she loved.
and the thing is that padme became the kind of person who was desperate to save people because in a very real way, she was the child in the room in omelas. as a child-queen, she was raised to take on the pain and grief and suffering of others. saving others was what gave her life purpose. she had no meaning unless she was actively sacrificing herself for someone else's sake. of course she was drawn to a relationship like she had with anakin, where she was needed so incessantly to be his savior, his angel who delivers him from his suffering. she makes me think hard of mille/the goddess from the lives of christopher chant. a child raised to be a sacrifice, for the good of a county.
and naboo is very omelas. it is thriving, it is prosperous, it is beautiful--just don't look in the room. don't look at the gungans and how they are treated. don't look at the political system relying on children as political figureheads, where they must expect to need bodyguards and doubles to take their places when danger strikes. of course palatine comes from a world like that. a bright and shiny exterior where everyone is smiling and laughing--just don't look too closely. don't look inside the room.
Iâve always found it striking that both of them were considered prodigies, and neither really had much of a childhood. PadmĂš went straight into a political career, and Anakin went straight from slavery to being a Jedi apprentice.
He never got to be in Jedi day care with other Jedi kids and make friends or have a supportive social network outside of his teacher. (He got a student and the clone soldiers later, but itâs telling that his social network is so small that Palpatine is able to arrange for every single one of them to be off planet when he falls).
Padmeâs supportive friend group is limited to her doubles. (Bail and Mon Mothma donât know about her marriage, so I donât count them as people she can trust enough to fully lean on.)
The point is that there were multiple points where they could relate to one another. I donât think it was completely based on âsheâs an angelâ âI can save him.â
Yes, that heightened everything. But there was something else there that gave them an actual foundation to base their relationship on.
