#i have a lot of thoughts on naboo but i haven't been like super good about writing them down

[the-royals-ts4]

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The next week at the Thorton Palace, 1 Naboo street, Cavalier, Stralia

ISamuel:... I haven't seen him in 2 days.

Amidala: Two days? Didn't you have a meeting last night?

S: Meeting? What meeting?

A: He told me that you guys had a meeting about the GWACA or something.

S: Oh dear.

A: Why what's wrong?

S: We got security footage from across the street that Benjamin was seen at our HQ before the bombing.

A: What was he doing?

S: *Sighs* Planting the bomb.

A: I-I don't believe you and I won't! Benjamin would never do something like that!

S: Look, we think he is planning something worse.

A: Like what?

S: That's why I'm here, I thought you would know. You're his best friend and he's your personal guard.

A: I don't know! This morning he called me saying that he would be meeting up with his friends.

S: He has been very secretive lately .

A: He has been spending a lot of time with Senator Afterland.

S: Senator Afterland wouldn't affect him.

A: I-I still don't believe it. You're lying! He would never do anything that horrendous.

S: Your highness, I know about you two. I know that you're super close and you would do anything for him. I've seen the way he looks at you and I listen to the way he talks to you. You make him happy. When I met him, he wasn't at his best state. However, you made him the person he is today. You are his sunshine. He needs you to be happy. I know that he loves you and you love him. I pretend that I don't know, but I do. You're the only thing he needs. I'm sorry to tell you this, but he's changed, and you're the only person who can make him come back.

A: ...

S: *Get's up to leave*

A: Where are you going?

S: To find a troop so we can-

A: You're going to kill him aren't you?

S: He's too dangerous. He has a whole army now, it's an empire.

A: I see the good in him.

S: I don't. All I see is the darkness rising inside of him.

A: There is still good in him, I know there is.

[eleutheriana-archive]

May I ask where you're getting that arranged marriages are common on Naboo? I'm curious, since I haven't seen that anywhere. Is that a headcanon of yours or something you've found? If it's a headcanon of yours I'd love to hear your reasoning for it since, as you say, the two Nabooian marriages we see (three if you include Padmé's) are not arranged. Or if you've already written the headcanon would you mind linking? I'd love to read it.

so it’s actually legends canon that arranged marriages are common on naboo, and cited if you look up jobal and ruwee’s marriage because they were actually originally intended to be an arranged match by their respective mothers, but they fell in love on their own time while ryoo and winama were busy working out the idea / terms of the arrangement, which just worked out better for everyone involved. the idea of them being more common than not is hinted at in legends canon but to my knowledge i don’t believe it’s directly outright stated so that is something that’s like…a combination of inferred from the text and headcanoned by yours truly, you feel me ? and the reasoning for thinking that it’s more common than not is basically that it makes a fuckload of sense to me when you look at it through the eyes of like…padmé’s mentality and psyche ? 

so okay we don’t have a lot to go on for naboo culture ( which btw nabooian is actually a common misconception and not the actual terminology, it’s literally just ‘naboo’ no matter what, the people are not nabooian people, they’re ‘the naboo’ ) other than that they’re really heavily focused on the arts, value purity and innocence above all else, do not have a standing army and do not prize warrior culture, and humans colonized the planet and nearly eradicated the gungans in the process. ( let’s play a game called ‘one of these things is not like the others’. ) everything else is pretty much just inferred, and because padmé is the only main character from this planet other than palpatine and we tend to get more of her viewpoint than his during the films, ( granted, it’s still not a lot that we get from her POV bc lucasfilm hates her and owes me so many apologies and reparations but w/e ) we have to go off what she gives us. the one line that i’ve always cited as my reasoning for about 99% of my personal naboo headcanons is the line from ROTS where she says 

“ anakin, this baby will change our lives. i doubt the queen will continue to allow me to serve in the senate,* and if the council discovers you are the father, you will be expelled from the jedi order. ”

* emphasis mine

so what i found interesting about this was the fact that a baby would force padmé out of the senate, and given that we’re looking at neeyutnee’s rule here, it led me to a specific conclusion, something that is entirely my own headcanon for my portrayal and not to be taken as actual film canon. ( this is a bit of a deviation from your original question here but i’m getting to it in a very roundabout way i promise. ) so it’s been seen from interactions with the former and current queens that jamillia had a very personable and friendly relationship with padmé. jamillia is also the one who asked her to serve in the senate originally. her reign ended shortly after the beginning of the clone wars, and neeyutnee took over for her from there. we don’t know a lot about her in canon, but what we’ve seen of her interactions with padmé in the clone wars are….not great…..and we also know that when the election at the end of the war began, padmé put her public support behind apailana, who was one of the youngest queens ever elected and took office literally weeks before padmé’s death. so. padmé and neeyutnee did not get along. god only knows why. it’s not for me to judge. the point here being that it’s clear neeyutnee would have pulled padmé from the senate if padmé gave birth to a child out of wedlock, which says a lot about naboo culture to me. 

they elect mainly female children to rule their entire planet, they prize innocence and purity, they would’t allow a senator to serve on the senate if she had a child out of wedlock, for me, all signs are pointing towards a very traditional and old fashioned sort of society on naboo, which is something that i’ve always implemented for my own headcanons and for my portrayal. and something that makes perfect sense for the more aristocratic class on a very traditional and old fashioned planet is a history of arranged marriage over what we tend to think of as ‘love matches’. canon supports evidence that they’re at least common on naboo, and with my own personal interpretations of the culture we’ve been given via padmé, i’ve extended that a bit. 

another important note, especially in regards to padmé and the way she views this and the way this has all influenced her, is the fact that in legends canon, she was the one to propose to anakin, not the other way around. padmé holds a lot of stock in marriage, and it actually makes a lot of sense that they rushed into marriage if you look at it with the idea of just how traditional and old fashioned naboo culture is. marriage is important to her, and i’ve always felt like if she and anakin had never fallen in love on varykino and circumstances hadn’t led to the events of their lives together, she very likely would have returned home at some point and asked her parents to look into a match for her, especially given how badly padmé wanted kids and to settle down, but that’s, again, all just personal interpretation.