PT Answered: How did Padmé die?

^ It's the Interstellar Federation Of Astromechs, Protocol and Medical Droids.

They're worse than the teamsters.

 

For me, the reason for her death would have been believable if I had truly been convinced through Portman's performance that she was honestly so much in love with Anakin that it caused her heart to break.

 

I''m sorry OP, I don't believe the Sidious-killed-Padme theory, and here's why.

Aside from the fact that no inside source has suggested that such a major event happened, it would be the Time Turner all over again. I don't think Palpatine would only use that power once if he has so many people that he hates so deeply, like the Jedi and rebellious Senators, like the OP said.
Unless Palpatine was pretending not to know the power after the Mace Windu confrontation, he had to confess to Anakin, "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved." If he indeed can save people (in this case Vader) from dying by transferring someone else's life force, then why wouldn't he use that truth to recruit Anakin? A lot of good liars use the truth to their advantage, and Palpatine certainly is one.

The way I see it, Padme died of a broken heart because her husband became evil, and that overpowered her children's need for her and her duty to the galaxy. To me, she is a weaker character because of it, and like many fans, I find it annoying, but it is what happened. Lucas confirmed it.

 

Well in most cases he prefers toying and/or the challenge of fighting his enemies (it's very common that he's overly arrogant and that probably increased over time). He could have tried to Force-choke Yoda, that would have maybe been the most direct way of defeating him, but he preferred to challenge himself in the fight and for the most part leave destroying the Jedi to others and he probably didn't see Senators as much of a threat.

There may need to already be a strong emotional connection for the process to work (and so Anakin wouldn't like living longer at the cost of someone close to him) and whether that was so or not he wouldn't want Anakin to become too independent.

 

As I've pointed out before, this is equivalent to calling a woman a bad mother for suffering from depression even though she might have two wonderful children who mean the world to her. After everything that happened--the love of her life becoming the greatest villain in the universe, slaughtering children, turning the democracy she'd dedicated her entire life to into an imperial dictatorship, and doing it all in her name--Padme had her heart broken so hard that it killed her. It's not that she didn't want to stay in this world and watch her children grow up; she just couldn't. Just like the Republic she held so dear, her time had come to an inevitable end, and she was fading away.

Star Wars is a legendary tale. In real life, it is indeed unlikely that a young, otherwise healthy woman would die simply as a result of being overwhelmed with grief, but Star Wars isn't real life. There's an ethereal sort of romanticism to it that periodically makes itself strongly known at certain key, dramatic turning points. I quite like the way Padme's tragic end mirrors one of my favorite Arthurian legends, that of Elaine of Astolat, which served as the subject of a famous poem by Tennyson and which in turn inspired a beautifully evocative painting by the artist John William Waterhouse:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott



Metaphorically, dying from heartbreak isn't a signifier of a morally reproachable weakness of either spirit or character. It's a signifier of a universal human experience--the oftentimes overwhelming suffering which is an everpresent quality of life, and the ultimate repose which comes only with death. This is not to be mistaken with the idea that Padme wanted to die. She didn't. Padme's death is a metaphor for the fundamental nature of life and death--a metaphor made literal within the narrative in some ineffable, almost mystical way, much in the same manner that the Ben Kenobi character's acceptance of death in A New Hope causes him to literally vanish into nothingness in a way which defies scientific explanation.

Personally, I find the notion that people who become so overwhelmed with grief that they die (or in real-world word terms, commit suicide) are weak of character to be quite offensive. Such occasions are tragedies, not opportunities to cast self-righteous judgments.

 

I don't buy that Padme lost the will to live, realistically or story wise. It does not make sense.
How does someone who wants to live, lose the will to live? They don't.
The med droid says she lost the will to live, but it does not fit in with her character or her dying words.
I don't find it romantic at all.


Now, if Darth Vader/Anakin lost the will, I would find that much more believable, since:

He suffered injuries that would have killed most people.
He lost much of his "force potential".
He lost his mother.
And he thought he killed his wife.
The loneliness he probably felt too.
I'd believe him losing the will to live under the grief of doing some much evil and losing his wife much more then Padme.

Anakin/Vader is the only character in ROTS that would make the most sense for a character dying in that way.
But of course that didn't happen, and I'm glad it didn't.

I do believe stress can be harmful to the body, but people can be capable of handling a lot, and stress doesn't usually kill people in a day/week.
Mothers can go through a hard time, experience sorrow, have abusive husbands, and still have the will to live.

It would be better if the med-droid turned out to be wrong, and Padme died from an undiagnosed condition.

 

Spam. Stop.

 

Hey guys! Maybe Sideous used a death star prototype as a vacuum to suck Padme soul to a Darth to reviewe him.

This is the proof.
1. Padme die for no reason.
2. Vader has about 3rd degree burns and a few flesh wounds. Very unlikely to recovery.
3. Obi Wan says to Luke your father died in agonising pain. Even he thought he died. Obi Wan is a Jedi. He wouldn't screw up his mission to kill his pal Darth for no reason. He leave him to die.
4. Sideous know padme is dead of what he tells Darth Vader. How he know when he is at least 100 miles away?
5. Sideous smirks at the end like he is up to something. Very suspicious indeed.
6. He has a purple saber.

Sorry my Engish is not a native language.

 

Are you saying Mace and Kyle are the same guy? That's just crazy! Where did you come up with this stuff?

 

Yoda had a green life saver yet he was blue!

 

I remember discussing this in an older thread awhile ago. My thoughts:

1) It IS possible for someone to die of a broken heart,as it were. There are stories of spouses dying within days,sometimes hours of each other. Hell, look at Carrie and Debbie. A lot of times this is because the grief exasperates an already underlying medical condition. she was going through a condition,at that point. Giving birth, which takes a tremendous physical and mental toll on a woman. Her heart just gave out due to it all.

2) The droid was wrong, plain and simple.The 2 droids in the birthing sequence were pressed into service because they were the most logical ones to use, bit that doesn't mean they were perfect for the job. and while the medical droid had extensive files, I imagine this was likely the first time it worked on a human, so it's more than possible it missed something in the scans.

 

A fair few people, when their children are born, are not just "ok, now I'm going to take care of these kid(s) and I am just SO HAPPY because of the miracle of birth/reasons." Many are utterly overwhelmed and not elated when their child(ren) are born, and pre and postpartum depression are real though poorly understood, from what I've seen. Incidentally, violence against women is positively correlated with postpartum depression, which certainly fits Padme's situation.

 

Not to mention, her entire life has just been destroyed. The Republic which she stood for and served over half her life is gone. A man she trusted and helped become Supreme Chancellor turned out to be the evilest person in the Galaxy, and her husband, the father of her child, became an evil Sith Lord, murdered children, and just assaulted her. And all this happened in the span of about a day, maybe 2 tops.

 

I never heard of anyone dying from being sad within 2 days.
Women can endure a lot of suffering and sorrow and not just drop dead.
How many mothers just die because they are depressed? None I've heard of.
My mother married an abusive jerk, how come she didn't lose the will to live and die in childbirth?

How come Anakin just doesn't die, he lost his mother and wife, why doesn't he die from "losing the will to live"?
Who he's got? Why does he carry on?

Why doesn't Yoda lose the will to live and just drop dead? He lost a lot of people he knew.

And I don't buy childbirth contributed to it.
Remember "medically she's fine".

And Anakin suffered injuries that would have killed most people.
Padme should have been able to survive childbirth even going through what she did.

And her dying words are not the words of someone in the depths of despair.

She even named her kids.

Once again Padme's death in ROTS doesn't not make sense.
If the PT ever gets a "special edition" like the OT, this is one place where change would improve the movie.

 

It's better than "She died of a broken heart"

 

I finally got around to looking into this. Very interesting, thanks.
So that's where the phrase "half sick of shadows" comes from!

This premise also brings to mind Arwen, who was willing to forfeit her immortality to be with Aragorn. Although the difference here being Arwen was aware of the specific consequences.

Padmé always leaned in 100% to everything she did and believed in. And like Elaine of Astolat and Arwen, and even the main character in Arrival, she was willing to accept any potential risks and consequences that came with the paths her heart led her down.
An example being when she returned to Coruscant for the vote despite the mortal danger to herself and her devoted decoys. Even using herself as bait in order to catch the assassin.

I feel after all was said and done up to the time of the delivery, she realized the best way to protect the twins was for her to be untraceable by the Sith (read: dead) and for their surviving to birth to remain secret. So she in a reluctant but brave act of self-sacrifice, did what I can only briefly describe as: accepted the fate of the consequences brought on by the situation she now found herself in (due to the actions of others).
But not that she was weak, quite the contrary. Like Obi-Wan, Luke and even Anakin later on, it's only fitting that she was willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Sometimes one must yield to overcome. And I think her sacrifice was the most heroic albeit tragic of all.

I'm certain she could have gone on living. Of Course. Humans are resilient in the face of suffering. But... I don't know... given these circumstances I think that would've been a grave mistake for the kids, and even inconsistent with her character. Yes, she was a fighter when need be, but she was also wise & cunning enough to know when there were alternatives to fighting.
As we saw when she was reluctantly, but eventually, convinced that hiding in the Lake Country was the best solution. She didn't like the idea but sometimes one must let go of their pride and do what is requested of them. She would do her duty. She's not afraid to die.

I think this is why Anakin has the dreams he does. Given the power of a threat-eliminating Sith Palpatine, Anakin's obsessions and Padmé being the person she is, unfortunate as it is her death/sacrifice in childbirth was almost inevitable - she loved her kids and this was the best & only failsafe way to protect them.

Much like the way in which Anakin was conceived, the way in which Padmé meets with death is a mystery. So I don't think we can answer exactly how this happened. But this is the why that resonates with me the most. Therefore the sophisticated inner specifics that deal with the nebulous concepts & theories concerning things like heartbreak and the will to live are open to individual interpretation - the way it should be. I can't really imagine a monumentous character like Padmé going out any other way. And it will serve as a topic of lively discussion for generations.
I don't think it can every be completely "answered".

And I think she deserves commending for fighting to stay alive long enough to deliver the twins, much like Shmi willed herself to stay alive long enough to be reunited with Anakin.

I kind of think of it as a team effort between Anakin & Padmé (and the twins) to destroy the Sith. Like in The Dark Crystal, it was Jen who was considered the Chosen One; but it took the knowledge, aid and self-sacrifice of Kira for them to both carry out what needed to be done.

 

The issue lies with the medical droids, I think. Even if we conclude that Padmé’s death was caused to the stress of what was happening within the last 24-48 hours, wouldn’t they realize something was wrong with her heart? Stress tends to have an effect on the heart rhythm and hers was probably working on overdrive.

There’s a story that happened a few years ago of a Japanese woman who essentially worked herself to death due to stress and other factors. Put simply, her body was taxed so much that it literally gave out despite whether or not she personally wanted to go.

Thusly, I conclude two things:

• The droids must not be experienced with handling human patients. They’re not familiar with how our anatomy works. If so, what are the patients they’re used to working with?

• Said patients must not be human, as when they were scanning Padmé for any sign of stress, they would’ve been doing it presumably treating her like one of their non-human patients and were perplexed when they couldn’t find anything. Because what was stored in their database vs. what was right in front of them didn’t match simply because both Padmé and their usual patients are not even of the same species. It’s the equivalent of a horse veterinarian being asked to perform surgery on a dog.

But hold on, even if said horse vet wouldn’t know exactly what’s wrong with an ailing dog, they would definitely know something was wrong. An organism clearly dying on the table isn’t ‘medically healthy’. They’re dying.

This tells me the medical droids are hilariously incompetent which, erm, yeah who programmed them?

 

I'm sure the med droids were perfectly proficient in human physiology and probably even mental health.

Some of themes Lucas works with particularly in the PT is the fine line between humans and AI. The fine lines between natural born humans and clones. And the blurred lines between clones and droids. Not to mention concepts of compassion and self-sacrifice which confound the Sith - which comes into play at the climax of RotJ.

C3P0 during the factory & battle scenes is one of the more underrated and misunderstood aspects of the PT and I feel it is a cornerstone for the first theme I mentioned, but that is probably for another thread.

The point is, from a dualistic perspective, there are things beyond the physical realm that define us as emotionally aware conscious beings, as human, and that go beyond the capability of technology to discern. Without trying to postulate exactly how Padmé died, I do think it likely goes beyond mere physical means; deep into the emotional field and the psyche, which etymologically signifies the soul. In combination with influences from the legendary tales and mythologies from classic ages, which has always been fundamental in Star Wars.

 

Exactly. Padme's death is meant to be something mysterious and spiritual. That's why the medical droid can't understand what's happening. Droids only deal with the physical. They don't understand the spiritual aspect of existence because they don't have souls in the sense that we do.

Ultimately, if Padme had died in a more mundane way, I don't think it would have been adequate to express the theme Lucas was dealing with: In the process of trying to preserve her physical existence, Anakin killed her spirit. What Anakin does to her in this film is more horrific than anything else that could possibly have been depicted. There are far worse things than injury to the body. This is the main point that has to be made, and I'm not sure what better way Lucas could have made it. Padme's death is distinctly metaphysical, in the same way that Ben Kenobi's death is in A New Hope.

 

Yes, Padme's death was caused by spiritual, not physical damage. However, the difference between her death and Obi-Wan's is that while he raised his blade intending to die willingly, the impact of the lightsaber was what ended his life, not anything going on inside him physiologically or emotionally. He became one with the Force, but he did not appear to be at all emotionally unable to continue living.

Actually, when Obi-Wan says, "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing," that raises the question of whether he had intended to die all along once Luke was old enough to fight. Did his perceived failure with Anakin actually make him lose the will to live like Padme, but he felt he had to complete his mission with Luke first? Very interesting, and it makes ANH much darker when you wonder if Obi-Wan was on a suicide mission the whole movie.

Back to Padme. Her canon cause of death is annoying to me and probably many others (for reasons I have explained at length), but there is nothing to suggest that an external source such as Palpatine caused it. The fact of the matter is, the existence of the OT meant she had to go, despite her important role in the overall PT, and I personally think that leaving her fate offscreen would have been as much of a disservice as what we saw, and apparently Lucas thought so too. Padme was too important a character to be last seen alive and then be stated as dead, when she still would have been relatively young in ROTJ, not nearly old enough to die of natural causes short of unexpected terminal illness. Even in that case, mentioning a more specific cause of death would definitely have been warranted, even though the role of Luke and Leia's mother was largely a mystery both in the story and behind the scenes when the OT was made.

 

She lost the will to live, and by that point, so had I.

 

(Long post, start reading at your own risk.)

In my last post, I talked about the inability of droids to understand the spiritual meaning behind physical processes. It's interesting to look at the script and see how a cut exchange between Threepio and Artoo reinforces this theme:

POLIS MEDICS work, on PADME in an operating theater. OBI-WAN and one of the MEDICAL DROIDS enter an observation room where BAIL and YODA are waiting.

MEDICAL DROID: Medically, she is completely healthy. For reasons we can't explain, we are losing her.

OBI-WAN: She's dying?

MEDICAL DROID: We don't know why. She has lost the will to live. We need to operate quickly if we are to save the babies.

BAIL ORGANA: Babies??!!

MEDICAL DROID: She's carrying twins.

YODA: Save them, we must. They are our last hope.

The MEDICAL DROID rushes back to the operating room. ARTOO and THREEPIO watch, greatly puzzled. ARTOO BEEPS.

C-3PO: It's some kind of reproductive process, I think.

We can see here how, immediately after the medical droid's inability to comprehend the spiritual reasons for Padme's death, Threepio demonstrates a similar inability to comprehend the significance of childbirth beyond its mundane biological function. We see that Artoo and Threepio are both "greatly puzzled." Droids can't understand death, and they can't understand birth.

But we viewers, as human beings, are perfectly capable of understanding that these things have meaning beyond the strictly biological. Padme's death actually means something about the spiritual nature of reality, as does the birth of the twins. Padme's death in despair represents the tragic aspect of existence, while the hopeful birth of the twins represents the potential for a universal redemption of the spirit.

Padme's death is then revealed as a metaphysical necessity. It had to happen the way it did in order to give the birth of the twins its proper meaning. To put it in Biblical terms: If Christ hadn't suffered and despaired on the cross, his glorious rebirth would have been robbed of its redemptive value. A prominent theme in the prequels has to do with women and mothers suffering in sadness for the sake of others' happiness, a situation which Lucas casts as explicitly Christ-like:









(It's impossible not to notice the crucifixion imagery being employed here.)






Essentially, Lucas is highlighting the tragedy of motherhood, which is really the tragedy of Creation. In order to bring forth hope and new life, there must be pain and sacrifice on the part of the creator. The nature of creation, or of childbirth, is such that one must give something of one's own substance in order to generate and sustain that which is brought forth. To create is to become in some way diminished, so that something internal can become external, so that the potential within oneself can be brought to fruition in the world.

We see this in the way Shmi must sacrifice her own happiness so that her son can have a better life. We see it in the way Padme sacrifices her desire to have a life of her own so that she can continue to devote herself to the service of her people. We ultimately see it in the way Anakin sacrifices himself for the sake of his son, moved to action by the memory of Padme and the notion that Luke's compassion represents a survival of her spirit:

"It really has to do with learning," Lucas says (regarding the end of Anakin's story). "Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused. He doesn't right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love - primarily the Emperor - and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die. Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son."

-- The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Far from being an example of a sexist trope about the weakness of women, Padme's death is actually a profound celebration of women and the role they play in allowing the human race to even exist. It's a celebration of the maternal nature which exists in all of us, and which makes acts of extreme self-sacrifice like Anakin's in Return of the Jedi possible.

Return of the Jedi is in many ways all about Luke and Anakin becoming reunited with a feminine aspect which was lost. It is in this film that Luke finally discovers that he has a twin sister, a female counterpart. This completes the quest he began in A New Hope to in some sense become Leia:

No doubt in his readings Lucas had come to appreciate the mythological significance of twins, which have been regarded as sacred by many cultures since the beginning of recorded history. Their use as a literary device for defining characters in relation to each other was also helpful: “The princess is everything Luke wants to be,” Lucas says. “She is socially conscious, whereas he is thrown into things; intellectually, she is a strong leader, and he is just a kid.”

-- The Making of Star Wars

It is after making this discovery of his female half that Luke, for the first time, inquires after his mother. Though lamenting his lack of memories of her in what many consider to be a plot hole, Luke actually confirms that he does retain some memory of her. It is in this very conversation that he repeats his mother's dying words: "There is still good in him." And it is this very faith in his father's goodness which Lucas, in the quote before last, says reminds Anakin of Padme and the broken heart which killed her. Padme's unconditional love for Anakin literally killed her, and this is how Anakin comes to the realization that he must allow himself to die if he truly loves Luke. He must give of his own life for the sake of his son, just as his mother did for him, and just as Padme did for him and their children.

What Padme's death represents, at its core, is a mother taking all the pain and suffering and tragedy in the universe onto herself, even to the point where it breaks her heart and kills her, so that hope may survive in her children. Thus we have this symbolic image of the inert form of the mother's body surmounted by twin circles of fetal life, linked together by a larger circle displaying vital signs, the heartbeat that unites them all:



This larger circles gives way compositionally, in the very next shot, to the circular Imperial emblem which encloses and imprisons Anakin's similarly failing body, which yet flails and struggles in stark contrast to Padme's peaceful repose:



This is followed by a shot which directly mirrors the first shot of Padme, driving home the visual and thematic associations being made:



While the father selfishly clings to physical existence and becomes trapped inside a circle representing a mechanically sustained and unnatural life, the mother selflessly dies while the circle of natural life rises above and transcends her. (Tellingly, droids are able to save Anakin where they cannot save Padme.) There's another parallel here with the twin suns of Tatooine endlessly setting and then rising above the expanse of the horizon in an eternal cycle, representing duality, change, hope, and new life, just as the twin Skywalkers do:



And I end with Joseph Campbell's thoughts on the topic, expressed during his conversation with Bill Moyers at Skywalker Ranch:

 

@The_Phantom_Calamari great and very insightfull Analysis and Interpretation. THX for that. Shows how much of Joseph Campbell influcene was used through all of the Lucas SW movies! Amazing!

 

Good insights from The Phantom Calamari. I am mostly in agreement with what you’ve said except for one small but important caveat. I don’t think Padme’s death as an act of despair or broken heart, but rather a conscious and joyful decision on her part.

As Padme is the lotus flower, the symbol of compassion, she represents this willful choice to suffer with others. This is stark contrast to Anakin who is afraid to suffer at all costs until the very end. This is a choice made not out of despair but rather of joy.

Padme willingly chooses to suffer with Anakin, and if given another chance, she'd do it again. I suppose in the end you love someone and have compassion for them not for just what they can give to you to make you happy, but rather for their being in general and of who they are. Indeed you can love a person even if you don't love their actions. That doesn't mean you condone, or like their actions, or even decide you can physically be with them, but it does mean that you don't stop loving them or having compassion for them. Anything otherwise would betray the meaning of the word. Padme suffers for the sake of love. That is her strength. For all the powers that Luke learns from Obi Wan and Yoda, it is compassion that he inherits from his mother and teaches to his father. That is the power that saves the galaxy.