PT If Padme had lived........

Well they did rescue her from giving birth in lava. That's kind of supportive.

I think it should have been obvious to Padme she should live for her children at least. She ironically had more to live for and more options than the Jedi did. All they had was the faint hope that their order had survivors, a hope that was rapidly fading fast. She still had family she could have hid out with on the planet of Naboo, or her rebel friends in the senate could have sheltered her.

 

I'm confused why this thread is still open,

there is a locked thread about Dooku on page 2 (the reason for the lock is that speculation threads ended a long time ago)

but isn't this thread the same?

genuinely confused.

 

Padme's death still annoys me. You can't die of sadness.

 

From what I understand, it is actually possible and that there is a "broken heart syndrome" that has been known to arise in people after the loss of a loved one and is similar to a heart attack. However, from what I understand (which is very little), the incidence of those killed by it is low, and the average age of those killed by it is high (60s-70s, not young like Padme).

But the diagnosis wasn't even a broken heart, it was that "she lost the will to live" and that otherwise they were baffled as to why she was dying, which was ridiculous.

 

I still think the human will to live is stronger than "love." Call me cynical. Those things could have been some sort of chemical reaction, and the fact that they are old.

 

That was actually a pretty big critique of the prequels. Kinda weird that no one bothered to see if it was a real thing.

@OP, I suppose that Padme would become a Rebel leader. Leading to some interesting showdowns between her and Ani.

 

Probably because a person suffering from that condition would never be declared "medically, completely healthy" and the condition is treatable. Conclusion: Padmé did not die of broken heart syndrome

 

Not in our universe, anyway.

 

Well I feel like a jackass. ANYWAY, so how about that heart failure?

 

Luke levitating stuff with the Force still annoys me. You just can't do that!

 

It wasn't heart failure that killed Padme.

I was merely correcting someone that it IS possible for people to die of "sadness"/stress following the loss of a loved one in real life. It does happen. My maternal grandfather died within two months of my maternal grandmother (who had died of cancer) from heart problems. It could have been a coincidence, but from what mother and her sisters recall, he pretty much just sank into a depression and was devastated. I suspect that it might have been "broken heart syndrome" that led to heart failure.

BUT he was also old. I don't think that's prone to happen to someone in their 30s who loses a spouse young. They might suffer from the same levels of stress but I think their bodies are hearts are strong enough to handle it.

AND this is NOT what killed Padme since the droid says that:

This is not how things would go for someone that dies of "Broken Heart Syndrome." This is more of a supernatural death like you'd expect to find in a mythology. That her spirit was weakened and she died simply because Anakin was her only reason to live (apparently).

It was an incredibly idiotic death IMO, not only because she merely gave up, but because that kind of giving up was completely inconsistent with how her character had been portrayed. She was not of weak spirit nor once that was known to give up really under any circumstances.

 

Exactly. It makes her seem weak, and it seemed to be a kind of suicide.

 

A poltergeist killed her.

 

Just want to point this out, but from the research I've read on the subject, there have been documented cases of young people (even teenagers) dying of broken heart syndrome. Considering that Padmé's been under an intense amount of psychological and physical stress, that would really degrade her reserves. More than that, though, you can't forget that when the droid says "medically she is completely healthy" that doesn't necessarily mean that there's nothing wrong with her.

How do we know this? Because, for the droid to be able to tell that she is dying, it must have some way of picking up on the fact that they are losing her. A huge surge of stress hormones could be one possibility and she would, still, be completely healthy (technically) since she hasn't been injured in any way. More to the point, though, the droid is essentially saying that there is nothing that they can do for her and they don't know why this is happening. Hence they can't help her.

Additionally, such a death isn't indicative of a weak spirit. Nor was Anakin in any way implied to be her only reason to live. In fact, everything in the movie goes against that idea. If Anakin was all she cared about, she would have gone with him on Mustafar and stood by his side, and if she had given up, she wouldn't have told Obi-Wan to keep believing in the goodness in him.

Here's the citation for it occurring in young women: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/asc/faqs.html

"... it can also occur in young women and even in men…"

Here's another case:

"The other mystery of broken heart syndrome is who it strikes. While literature agrees that post-menopausal women make up approximately 80 percent of broken heart syndrome patients, no one knows why exactly. And that doesn’t mean that everyone else is safe from it.
While taking a course in Philadelphia, Skotnicki said a physician at the University of Pennsylvania shared a recent case with the class.
"They had a young female dental student taking her dental boards to go out and practice after she finished dental school. During the exam, she had chest pain and she sustained this event.” She was 28 years old."

Now, granted, exams are stressful, but I don't think it's in anywhere near the same league as watching your former friend and Senator destroy your life's work, watching someone you love claim to have killed children on your behalf, and then being choked to unconsciousness by that same man.

http://www.pennlive.com/bodyandmind/index.ssf/2013/11/when_love_hurts_midstate_docto.html

 

They would have been able to give a better diagnosis than "we don't know why."

Had they merely said that she was weak when they found her and the added stress of child birth killed her, then OK.

Or if they said that she was experiencing heart failure due to extreme stress (but not knowing that the stress was caused by the emotional turmoil that Anakin put her through) then OK.

But they say that she lost the WILL to live and that otherwise she was completely healthy, which apparently followed Anakin's "death" in becoming Darth Vader.

I agree that everything else in the movies goes against the idea that she is weak willed, which is why I think her death was stupid. She had other stuff to live for, like her children and fighting for the preservation of the Republic. But instead she merely lost the will to live following Anakin becoming a monster, which implies that if she had the will to survive, she would have.

 

Medical Droid: We don't know why. She has lost the will to live.

Obi-Wan: How could you let this happen?

Medical Droid: EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE

 

Was Bender the Medical Droid?



Now I won't be able to watch the ROTS scene of Luke and Leia's births without picturing the medical droid mumbling "kill all humans" in the background during the delivery.

 

Well, essentially every death is caused by the heart failing at some point

 

No it was actually Robocop.

 

*Facepalm*

 

It depends upon the individual and the emotional state he or she is in. I don't believe that everything is written in stone.

That is because you want to believe that all strong-willed people are incapable of caving into weakness or despair at some point in their lives. And that is an illusion that the majority of human beings wallow in . . . especially when it comes to fictional characters.

 

The way she dies is inconsistent with this: