PT Why some people hate "Padme dying of Sadness" ?

Padme's death is one of the PT criticisms that I can actually understand and with which I can sympathize at least to an extent (when people use it as an excuse to completely discount Padme's character or her agency as one, that tends to be when I disagree). My biggest issue with it is to me it doesn't fit with Leia's memories in ROTJ. In ROTJ, Leia seems to remember her mother as kind and beautiful but sad. That would be an awful lot for her to grasp as a newborn, so to me it would have made more sense for Padme to have survived her pregnancy and gone into hiding on Alderaan so that Leia could've had some secret contact with her on Alderaan as Leia was growing up that she couldn't have with Luke (explaining why Leia remembers her but Luke does not). I do think it would have been better if Padme had survived childbirth (because really I think deaths in childbirth in a galaxy far, far away with more advanced medical care than we have in our world would be astronomically rare) and been the one to decide not just the names of her children, but where they should be hidden from the Empire.

I also wouldn't have minded if ROTS went even darker and had Anakin/Vader explicitly kill Padme rather than just indirectly kill her by being the cause of her sorrow. It would have been very compelling to see Padme establish the Rebel Alliance with Bail and Mon Mothma, and that be the reason for Anakin choking her to death but that might be a bit hard to reconcile with the timeline of ROTJ.

So, yeah, I can understand why some people aren't a fan of Padme's death especially because it is something of a cliche to have mothers die in childbirth that can get annoying especially in the context of an otherwise very medically advanced society

Now, does it destroy Padme as a character for me? No, she is still a favorite character of mine. Does it ruin ROTS for me? Nope, ROTS is my favorite Star Wars film of all time.

But is it the one thing I'd change about ROTS if I could and probably about the PT as a whole? Yes.

 

@Kenneth Morgan I think a person could explain Leia's memories as Force visions she misinterpreted as memories, but that isn't really an explanation given by the movies themselves and that wasn't the interpretation most would've had from seeing ROTJ for the first time especially prior to the release of the PT. So, I think an explanation like that is going to feel like a retcon to many of the people who have an issue with Padme's death in childbirth in ROTS and going to feel like an area where the puzzle pieces of the OT and the PT don't fit together perfectly. To me, it is fair to acknowledge that is the case and a factor in some of the criticism Padme's death receives.

For me, the PT works best as a tragedy, and I'm not sure anything in it could have gone too tragic for me especially if we still have the hope of Luke and Leia being placed with their adoptive families (which to me is the promise of a restoration of order that many tragedies offer at the end). Definitions of what is too tragic will likely vary from person to person. To me, the more tragic the better typically. That's why many of my favorite plays are tragedies. Macbeth. King Lear. Othello. Hamlet. All some of the best drama ever created for me, and not too tragic.

What would leave room for redemption is also open to individual interpretation. For me, Anakin/Vader's worst act that we ever saw on screen was him holding Leia back and watching as Alderaan was destroyed. To me, millions or possibly even billions of children were killed when Alderaan exploded, and Vader/Anakin was fine with that--didn't speak a single word against that or indicate any moral qualm about that--so I didn't think that Lucas went too far with having Anakin slaughter the Tusken Raider children and the younglings at the Jedi Temple. To me, he was just showing how Anakin/Vader got to the point where he was morally fine with blowing up an entire planet and millions or billions of innocent children in the process. Like to me the worst and most unforgivable thing Anakin/Vader did came in the OT (hard to top standing by while a planet is blown up and not voicing a moral reservation to me) and the PT worked because it provided the tragic backstory and context for that downfall.

I think this just shows that what people like about the PT differs. For me, my favorite aspect of the PT is the tragedy of it all, so I don't have a problem with more tragedy.

 

I wouldn't say I hate it but I wish there would have been another cause. I'll admit I'm one of those people looking at the medical standpoint of if someones "completely healthy", can't really understand how they just suddenly die from losing the will to live. I'm willing to bet you would have a near impossible time finding the cause of death listed on a certificate as sadness. To me, there has to be some other underlying cause outside of a state of emotion.

And yes, I fully understand that this is a universe where people come back from being cut in half and exploding.

 

I had an issue with it because it was such a regression from her character in TPM. She could rule a planet when she was 14, but she can’t handle her man turning evil? Her identity is so wrapped up in his that she can’t stay alive without him being what she thought he was? What happened to her independence and leadership? Her survival skills? Her emotional strength? The pregnancy isn’t an excuse, pregnant women are not wilting flowers, that’s a Victorian idea that doesn’t belong in Star Wars.

TBF I didn’t want her dying from Anakin’s Force choke either; prior to ROTS I envisioned her being injured in a late-TCW attack or battle, succumbing to her injuries later, and Anakin blaming the Jedi for her being hurt—and that being the final straw for him.

 

—Because women characters have always been written that way, to the point where many in our society think that it’s natural for women to be that way or that women are supposed to be that way, although we could argue a chicken or egg scenario about whether the societal narrative came first and the stories just reflected it—either way it needs to disappear. I come to Star Wars to escape that garbage. George Lucas took heat in 1977 for not making Leia “nicer.”

—I disagree. And it is really disappointing because Padme was a character that I liked and respected.

The notion that being too dependent on their husbands is supposed to be a positive, or beautiful, or even acceptable, is blatantly dangerous in the real world and I can’t turn it on its head and pretend it’s great in a story.

The best I can say about Padme’s storyline in ROTS is it does show the consequences of trying to fix a man turned evil through romance, instead of pretending that it can actually be done and is worth attempting.

 

I didn’t take from that that she would just wither away like a wilting flower. I took from it that she was sad that her husband had turned and joined the Empire. Which is understandable. The codependent “I literally cannot live without him” is not.

 

Remembering your mother as sad doesn't mean she died of sadness.

Leia's ROTJ memory at least should mean that Padme survived childbirth and lived long enough for Leia to remember her.

So, I wouldn't cite that conversation in support of the ROTS depiction of her death. More in contradiction to it and a person to me would have to do some mental gymnastics to try to fit both together.

Which, again, is one of the reasons why I do think criticisms of Padme's death are valid for a variety of reasons.

 

Yeah, I would've been more inclined to accept a medical explanation for Padme's death like you describe @Nehru_Amidala. That would've made a lot more sense.

I will say that Padme's death from sadness becomes harder and harder for me to accept in the context of a medically advanced universe where Maul apparently survives getting stabbed by a lightsaber and falling into a void; Sidious somehow survives falling into a void and a Death Star explosion; and Darth Vader himself survives multiple maimings and a dump in a lava flow. All those deaths get to be explained around, but somehow we can't come up with a way to have Padme survive childbirth because she is sad. Sadness is somehow a bigger obstacle to life than an exploding Death Star, a fall into a seemingly bottomless void, or a dump into a lava flow.

If Star Wars took place in a quasi-medieval society with medieval medicine, I'd accept death in childbirth due to sadness as an explanation and just assume that a complication occurred in childbirth that medieval people didn't understand. In a world more advanced than ours, I'd expect Padme to be hooked up to a machine that can breathe for her and whatnot until she regains the will to live or whatever. Not for the medical droids to do the equivalent of shrug and be like, "Ah, well, nothing we can do, because she's sad and lost the will to live. Can't try hooking her up to an oxygen machine or something. Just going to let this person that we've just determined has nothing medically wrong with her expire right before us." Like can droids be sued for medical malpractice in a galaxy far, far away because that is a pretty sad attempt at keeping Padme alive in a universe that seems more medically advanced than our world?