#as king i would use some sort of royal privilege in this very specific situation tho

[fatedprophetess-perfectstorms]

Ok guys, this is it. Show them what we are made of 🧡

[cassatine]

Chapter Three finally! Although I toyed with the idea of doing one post for the whole chapter I decided not to in the end, because it’s turning into a monster but also because it’s just easier for me to go over bits of interest one by one. 

After Padmé’s Tatooine Plan, it’s back to regular Naboo fuckery for a bit, and Chapter Three brings a rather generous helping - in fact I went excUSE mE in record time, because we get into election results, and of course it’s an occasion to remind us the Naboo Do Democracy Best before anything else:

Theed was the last region of the planet to vote, and once time zones were taken into account, they were always finished by noon. The Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter Three)

I swear I’m like ‘maybe I should tone it down’ and then the book throws “the Naboo had more than mastered efficient democracy”, which is one of these things I’d love if only I was supposed to take it as bias from Eirtaé, handmaiden and Naboo POV, rather than as a statement of fact. Also it’s the kind of thing that should have been fixed at editing - and I don’t mean fixed to conform to my take on Padmé and Naboo, but to EKJ’s, because I very much doubt she wanted Eirtaé to sound like a sanctimonious ass here. More than mastered efficient democracy? Come the fuck on, even if Naboo actually was a democracy that’d just be grating, and it doesn’t have to be - Eirtaé can think her planet’s system efficient without sounding like she’s quoting from some propaganda-filled guidebook.

But also, since apparently I’ll die on that hill, Naboo’s still not a democracy. Yes, Naboo monarchs are elected. They have a constitution that at the very least limits monarchs’ terms, in length and number, although it’s unclear how much latitude they have to modify the constitution. The Royal Advisory Council’s role seems limited to, well, advising, but there is a legislative assembly made up of elected local representatives that we don’t know much about yet. So the Naboo government does have some features in common with contemporary representative democracies - short of term limits, monarchs’ powers don’t seem much limited, however, and ideologically what they do is rule by the wise. The notion that children have a sort of pure wisdom that makes them more qualified to lead isn’t a 1:1 for Plato’s philosopher-kings, maybe, but the fundamental idea remains that exceptionally wise people should be in charge; and lbr that’s about as anti-democratic as you get. Ironically enough, Padmé’s pretty quick to shut down Anakin when he himself suggests someone wise should make people agree in AOTC, with seemingly little awareness that it’s literally been her job description for four years. Then again, it doesn’t seem like political philosophy in the GFFA ever got to the difference between elective and democratic.

I swear I will get to the election results someday, but I wanted to go back to another, previous passage:

The gears of democracy were well oiled, and centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters for only the second time in the planet’s history. Though few of them chose to vote, Padmé knew her efforts to include them were appreciated because Boss Nass had told her as much. Loudly. (Queen’s Shadow, Chapter One)

*cracks hands* AND NOW THE GUNGAN SITUATION. And more specifically, Padmé’s answer to it once they turned out instrumental to saving her own people, ie “her efforts to include them”, ie giving Gungans voting rights. I was a little too brain-stuck on Lucas’ garbage colonial fantasy from the TPM commentary when I first went over that passage (see Chapter One notes), but I’ve thought some more about the voting thing, and since my conclusion is that it’s one of these things that’s supposed to sound good - and to make Padmé, who made it happen, look good - but that kinda breaks down if you think about it, now’s as good a time as ever to go over the details. 

Going back to the situation in TPM, the thing is that Naboo and Gungans are basically separate societies, each with their own government. We’ve touched upon the Naboo, but the Gungan have a High Council, presided by Boss Nass - unlike the Naboo, however, the Gungans do not have space-travel capacities, and since they live separately, it means only one of them has representation at the level of the Galactic Republic. That’s the underlying problem of the Gungan Situation, not whether they get voting rights within the Naboo government. 

In fact, depending on how you look at it, the voting rights are skeevy - again, the Gungans have their own government. The Naboos don’t have a say in choosing Gungan Bosses, whatever the process for that, which leaves us with the question of, should the Gungan vote in Naboo election, actually? Or, put differently - if they vote, they acknowledge that the Naboo monarch’s authority extends to them, because the social contract goes both ways; they become a part of the Naboo polity, rather than remain a separate one. Which is what they are in TPM, and I don’t really see why they shouldn’t want to remain one. After Padmé’s speech and the Battle of Naboo they’re in a pretty good position to ask exactly that, but also to be that on equal standing with the Naboo. To make something like that work you’d need planetary joint institutions, because there will be aspects of local planetary policies of concern to both groups, a legal framework to work out for cases with shared jurisdiction between Naboo and Gungans - basically a bunch of common institutions to smooth things out wherever and whenever there’s the need at the local (planetary) level because of different ways to do things - they actually have it pretty easy, compared to Earth. And finally, representation in the Galactic Republic would be shared; that one’s kinda tricky, because Naboo’s seat in the Senate is for the Chommell Sector - if I remember well some Core planets have their own seats but most seats stand for a conglomerate of planets, Sector or otherwise - also some corporations have seats, which is probably Elon Musk’s wet dream since money can’t buy that yet. AnyWAY, the equivalent of regional capital gets a seat, and everyone else gets Junior Representative, standing for a planet or a specific cultural group. 

Which is what the Gungans get! Jar Jar Binks as Junior Representative. In the hypothetical scenario outlined above, that could work within a rotation system to ensure fair representation for both Gungans and Naboos within the system as it exists - one group gets a Senator, the other a Junior Representative and every so often they switch. I mean, the Naboo are supposed to care about democracy, and the GFFA only knows representative democracy, so you’d think they care about representation and fair systems and the like. 

Buuut this all a hypothetical scenario, since the Gungans vote in the Naboo election! And thus surrendered their sovereignty because Padmé handing voting rights sounds like she cares a lot about democracy so she used her queenly powers to make some more of it happen. That’s some prime fuckery, right there. 

Now, unsurprisingly, we don’t have a lot on specifics on what exactly Padmé did with her queenly powers wrt the Gungan Situation, but the voting rights do imply the Gungans are now her citizens - and there is, I suppose, an argument to make for that scenario, which is that the Naboo are the ones with Republic-level representation, and if you reform their government to ensure that constitutionally it ensures equal participation and representation for the Gungans within it, specific provisions to protect their culture, semi-autonomy as a previously independent polity, etc etc this be the best of all possible worlds… we can come up with something pretty similar to the first hypothetical scenario I went over; instead of preserving the two polities and building a bridge between them, you’d merge them, with a mind to preserve their specificities. Might sound like splitting hairs, but policy and organization-wise the differences aren’t small. For example, the bridging of different legal frameworks would be done differently - you can create a legal body expected to rule over cases implying two different legal systems, which comes down to a system built in great part on precedents but also that treats each case on its own, which does sound complicated, but go retooling a legal framework so it accounts for both Naboo and Gungan systems without privileging either and tell me which is option is actually easier. As far the basic, easier-to-figure-out stuff goes, you’d have a Royal Advisory Council constituted of Gungans and Naboo, in equal numbers or proportional to the overall population, or with double representatives for each post since they’re kind of like ministries, with known posts centering on urban planning and The Arts; the local representatives of the legislative assembly would number both Naboo and Gungans, and again you’d have to chose between different modes of representation: do you have Naboo and Gungan regions, or does each region have a representative that could be Naboo or Gungan, maybe with some constitutional provisions in place to ensure everyone gets their turn? And of course, the office of monarch would also be open to both, again with some provisions to ensure everyone gets their turn, same for the office of Senator. 

Alas, nothing points to that. For now there’s literally nothing to tell me the Gungans get to participate into Naboo politics beyond voting - all the candidates and the people they’ll replace that have been mentioned so far are humans, and the bigger hints to tractations between Naboo and Gungans was a quick mention of treaties in the context of environmental conservation, mainly to make a point that the Naboo cared about the environment before those treaties anyway. Just like the voting thing, the only reason it’s even mentioned is to have yet another ‘Isn’t Naboo/Padmé Great’ moment.

I should reserve judgment, because more info might be revealed, but if the narrative makes a point to tell me Padmé gave voting rights to the Gungans, then I think it could also make a point of telling me whether that’s all they get - and that wouldn’t take an organizational chart. It wouldn’t even take actual Gungans. It could take as little as two words, not even kidding on that one: “centuries of tradition made the biennial event run smoothly, even with the inclusion of Gungan voters and candidates for only the second time”, there you go. 

I wouldn’t even insist that much to be given something substantial to know for sure the Gungan Situation isn’t just a new kind of fucked up post-TPM if the novel didn’t read like an attempt at a panegyric. Admittedly I wasn’t the target audience in the first place, since I’m rather attached to Naboo fuckery for thematic reasons. I don’t exactly expect brilliant political commentary from Star Wars novels either, and this one is YA coming-of-age, the politics an aesthetic more than anything with actual substance. But like, there’s a wide range between brilliant political commentary and accidentally robbing the Gungans of sovereignty because you thought Padmé handing out voting rights has good democratic vibes.

Previous notes: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2.a / Chapter 2.b