I committed fic
Aug. 6th, 2011 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineSo I finished the final chapters of my two au_bigbang fics (I must say, the end of The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker makes me so happy) and decided to celebrate by ... writing more. But for something other than au_bigbang or school. Sooo, inspired by several recent conversations with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyhadhafang, I wrote a story that's one part love letter to Luke Skywalker, one part hate mail to the EU, and one part frolicking in my post-ROTJ (primary)canon-compliant EU-ignoring personal universe (following from Daughter of Time). Ta da!
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Title: The Quality of Mercy
Fanverse: the general EU-ignoring, canon-compliant headcanony personal 'verse. I guess I could call it the quality of mercy too.
Blurb: Compassion is central to a Jedi's life.
Pairings/warnings: Han/Leia, Han-Luke-Leia platonic life partnership nakama thing, OCs, offscreen moral ambiguity. Also, I really don't like the EU.
Length: one-shot (2226 words)
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It felt like years since Padmé had been inside the Coruscant Temple. She missed it, a little.
She wasn’t the Jedi that her cousin and siblings were. But she’d been born here, right in the original Jedi temple; they all had. They’d spent hours playing in these halls, running up and down the twisting staircases, poking into dusty, half-forgotten corners. Anakin, she remembered, had once discovered a training saber from before Mother and Uncle Luke were even born - and then wandered off when Bail and Lyra fought over who got to play with it first.
Most of their arguments had ended that way. Padmé smiled a little wistfully. Her childhood had been a good one: a little odd, perhaps, but she’d been comfortable, safe, and happy -- all four of them had been. She couldn’t live out her life within the walls of the temple, but she still missed it. She was glad to be home.
Padmé walked on, beyond the gurgling waters of the fountain. She recognized just about everyone she passed, met each respectful murmur of “Jedi Organa” with a smile, nod, and quiet reply. There wasn’t time for more, and she hurried past the creche.
It was no longer silent and uncanny, as she remembered. Not like in the old days of the Order, either; these were boarders and orphans, laughing, shouting, sulking, scolding -- being children. Padmé tried to ignore their stares; she’d worn her Jedi robes, but that didn’t seem to diminish their curiosity.
“-- I don’t think --”
“-- Jedi? I’ve never seen --”
A slightly lower, more authoritative voice -- “One of the Skywalkers, I think --”
“Master Organa’s --”
Padmé hurried on, climbing the stairs almost as quickly as she used to do. She stopped towards the end of the hall, at a door lit around the edges by the light within its room. It was slightly ajar -- which, since it had no handles and opened automatically, served no purpose except to make random intruders feel welcome.
She poked her dark head through the doorway. Her uncle sat at his desk, which seemed to be covered in piles of tedious forms. In true Uncle Luke fashion, he was dealing with the backlog by leaning back in his chair and levitating an apple.
Padmé grinned.
“Good morning,” she said.
He glanced up. “Padmé! Come in, please -- ” he caught the apple and swept a pile of datapads onto the floor.
Padmé suppressed a giggle. She half-suspected that the only reason her mother had become a Jedi at all was to keep the Order running. Someone had to do it, and it certainly wasn’t going to be Uncle Luke.
Bail always said that Mother managed the rules and discipline, Dad managed the food and common sense, and Uncle Luke managed the wisdom and sympathy. Padmé thought that pretty much covered it, even now. In some ways, she felt less like she had a mother, father, and uncle than three parents -- in much the same way that Anakin felt less like her cousin than her older brother.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Uncle Luke said, waving his arm at a chair as he wandered over to prepare a cup of tea. She wasn’t thirsty, but that didn’t matter -- drinking tea was a sort of ritual when she visited, comfortable and familiar, and they both had a high regard for the familiar.
“Thanks,” said Padmé, and hesitated. “I know I should have warned you I was coming --”
Uncle Luke laughed. “I should be warned about natural disasters, faulty equipment, and impending doom,” he said. “I think I can survive anything else, even a visit from my niece. Do you still like cream?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Besides, I’d already heard that you were coming back home. Though I’ll admit I didn’t think your mother would let you out of her sight for another day at least.”
Padmé looked away. “She didn’t want to, but I -- I needed to come back home, and she won’t be here until tomorrow.”
Her uncle made a vaguely encouraging noise and returned to his chair, handing her tea over to her, and sipping at his own. Padmé warmed her hands around the cup.
“How did your mission go?” he asked. “It was to Naboo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It -- well, I did my best. It’s difficult to discuss child labour laws with a fifteen-year-old head of state. Grandmother was even younger, wasn’t she?”
“Fourteen,” he said.
She shuddered. “Everyone says I’m like her, but I -- when I was fourteen, my most serious thoughts were that I hated telekinesis, and Princess Padmé sounded better than Padawan Organa-no-the-other-one. I couldn’t have run for office any more than I could have raised the dead.”
“You’re not Naboo,” said Uncle Luke, in a tone so scrupulously neutral that it was impossible to miss the unspoken thank the Force. “Well, I hope you stopped by Varykino, anyway?”
“Yes -- and then I had lunch with Ryoo and Janira. It was -- you know -- the usual.”
Her uncle smiled. “Awkward but pleasant?”
“Exactly.” Padmé tapped her fingers on her legs, then stilled the restless movement. “Lyra’s here too, you know. Not the Temple -- Mother’s apartments by the Senate.”
“I know,” he said calmly.
Of course he did, she thought, almost smacking herself for her stupidity. Uncle Luke always knew exactly where Lyra was, and not just because he was Uncle Luke and knew more about the Force than anyone living. He couldn’t sense Bail and Padmé like that -- just Lyra. Lyra and Mother and Grandfather.
Padmé sometimes thought she could glimpse something between the four of them, something that bound them together even though Grandfather was dead(ish) and . . . Grandfather. If so, she had no idea what it was, and in any case, it was pointless to tell Uncle Luke where Lyra had gone.
“Lyra and I . . . might have had an argument,” Padmé said, feeling as if she were a scapegrace young apprentice all over again, shamefaced before Mother’s disapproval and Uncle Luke’s disappointment. (Dad didn’t bother himself much with “Jedi stuff,” unless it crossed over into family stuff.)
In less than a day? That’s got to be a record, Bail had said. Uncle Luke just looked at her over the rim of his cup. She forced herself to met his gaze, her blue eyes steady.
“She wants to formally repudiate her place in the succession,” Padmé told him, twisting her fingers. “We all know the Order is her life; she’d never take the throne, even if she were eighty by the time Mother abdicates. Dad and Bail and I just can’t see why she has to make a point out of it.”
Uncle Luke opened his mouth, then shut it again. He settled for a cautious, “She’s mentioned it once or twice. Has something else happened?”
“You remember when she went on that mission to Tatooine? When she found the humanoid trafficking ring?”
“Of course,” said Uncle Luke. His even voice was edged with something that reminded Padmé a little of her mother and a great deal of her grandfather.
“She, well, she used a sort of pseudonym when she was there.”
The frozen blankness that had come over her uncle’s face shifted to bewilderment. “That’s common procedure, especially in a case like this. Leia knows that. Organa isn’t a name you use for undercover work in Mos Espa. I, myself, advised her to adopt a Tatooine surname while she was there.”
“She did,” Padmé said.
Uncle Luke stared at her. Then he paled, his eyes widening. “Not --”
“Mm-hmm. She used it a few other places, too -- off-duty. Often enough that it got back to Mother.”
Her uncle rubbed his forehead.
“We managed to calm things down, and Bail was just making conversation about the different things we’d been. That went well enough at first, even though she sounded -- I know she deals with terrible atrocities, and she’s had to develop a thick skin to even function. I couldn’t do what she does and it’s not my place to judge.”
“Mm,” said Uncle Luke.
“It’s just -- it’s not like she could do my job, either. If she wants to mind-control her way into tracking down criminals, fine. But I’m an ambassador, not a merciless crusader. I’m trying to help people, not hunt them down. I don’t want to be too compassionate, but -”
“It’s impossible to be too compassionate,” he said, a little didactically. Then he smiled. “It’s possible to be stupid about it, of course, but that’s true of anything.”
“Exactly! I tried to tell her that, but . . .” She shrugged.
“She doesn’t agree?”
“Lyra says compassion is for those who deserve it,” said Padmé.
His cup made a sharp clink as he set it down. The tea almost sloshed over the edges.
“She said what?”
His voice rang out -- not cold and hard, like her mother’s became when she got angry, but harsh, furious. His eyes were blazing, and for the first time, Padmé thought she understood why people stepped so carefully around her gentle, serene uncle.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Padmé said, a little alarmed. “It was just a petty argument, and she didn’t approve of how I dealt with Queen Aemila. I’m not sure she even understands what diplomacy means. But it’s not exactly like she spends a lot of time with the . . . the deserving.”
He looked at her for a moment, then walked to the window. “Compassion is not deserved,” he said, almost to himself, and absently rubbed his hand.
His right hand, she realized. The one he always covered in a glove, as if it were something shameful, rather than a perfectly functional cybernetic that could hardly be distinguished from flesh. Padmé swallowed.
She knew what had happened. Mother and Dad and Uncle Luke didn’t like to talk about it, of course. But she’d gotten the story out of Grandfather, who was, if not eager, always ready to own up to everything he’d done, and the best storyteller in the family besides.
“I . . . don’t know,” Padmé said, frowning. “I think anyone with the smallest shred of goodness in them deserves compassion.”
Uncle Luke was silent for a moment. Then he turned back, looking thankfully like himself again.
“Compassion,” he said, in the low, calm voice she remembered from countless lessons, “is not a reward for virtue. There is no exchange. It’s given by one person to another without reservation. It’s a kind of unconditional love. And without it, a Jedi is nothing more than a soldier or a vigilante.”
“Lyra’s not --” Padmé said, and stopped. How many times, lately, had she been disconcerted by her sister’s indifference to the Order’s protocols? Avoided Lyra’s accounts of her latest misadventures?
This was the real reason she’d rushed off to the Temple. Not to see the uncle who, beloved as he might be, would be at tomorrow’s private family dinner anyway. Not to gossip about a petty quarrel with her sister.
She looked up. “Uncle Luke, I’m worried about her. I think something’s wrong. Not the Dark Side, exactly, but . . . something. I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t listen to me -- she won’t even listen to Mother and Dad, any more. But I have to so something.” She gestured vaguely. “How can I . . . all these mercy missions and charitable interventions and I can’t help my own sister?”
Her uncle fell silent for a moment. His blue eyes were very distant. “She is a Jedi Knight,” he said finally. “She will account for her actions to the Council. Otherwise . . . I can only tell you what my sister once told me. Lyra has to find her own way. You can’t choose it for her.”
“Mother said that?” She considered her hands, then sighed, and rose. “You’re right. I just . . . I just worry.”
“Of course.” He walked around the desk and clasped her hand, smiling down at her. “The Force will be with you, Padmé.”
“Thanks, Uncle Luke,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “For listening. And the tea. And everything.”
She smoothed her robes and walked towards the door, a little distracted by something flickering on the edges of her awareness. Not her brother -- the presence was, at once, too remote and too intensely near for that. It felt more like --
“Oh, and Padmé?” her uncle called after her.
She paused on the threshold. “Yes?”
“When you see Lyra, can you ask her to come to the Temple as soon as it’s convenient? There’s someone who wants to speak to her.”
“All right,” she said, glancing back, and froze. In the last two minutes, Uncle Luke had -- improbably though certainly not impossibly -- been joined by another man. A tall, distinguished man of about seventy, with a head of silver curls, straight, somewhat harsh features, and a familiar pair of clear blue eyes. At the moment, those eyes blazed as hotly as her uncle’s had earlier.
“Grandfather,” Padmé said faintly. For once, she had no difficulty believing that he had once been Darth Vader.
“You can tell your sister,” said Anakin Skywalker, “that if she uses my name, she will answer to me for what she does with it.” He paused. “Also, you did excellent work on Naboo. Congratulations.”
ladyhadhafang, I wrote a story that's one part love letter to Luke Skywalker, one part hate mail to the EU, and one part frolicking in my post-ROTJ (primary)canon-compliant EU-ignoring personal universe (following from Daughter of Time). Ta da!-----------------------
Title: The Quality of Mercy
Fanverse: the general EU-ignoring, canon-compliant headcanony personal 'verse. I guess I could call it the quality of mercy too.
Blurb: Compassion is central to a Jedi's life.
Pairings/warnings: Han/Leia, Han-Luke-Leia platonic life partnership nakama thing, OCs, offscreen moral ambiguity. Also, I really don't like the EU.
Length: one-shot (2226 words)
----------------------
It felt like years since Padmé had been inside the Coruscant Temple. She missed it, a little.
She wasn’t the Jedi that her cousin and siblings were. But she’d been born here, right in the original Jedi temple; they all had. They’d spent hours playing in these halls, running up and down the twisting staircases, poking into dusty, half-forgotten corners. Anakin, she remembered, had once discovered a training saber from before Mother and Uncle Luke were even born - and then wandered off when Bail and Lyra fought over who got to play with it first.
Most of their arguments had ended that way. Padmé smiled a little wistfully. Her childhood had been a good one: a little odd, perhaps, but she’d been comfortable, safe, and happy -- all four of them had been. She couldn’t live out her life within the walls of the temple, but she still missed it. She was glad to be home.
Padmé walked on, beyond the gurgling waters of the fountain. She recognized just about everyone she passed, met each respectful murmur of “Jedi Organa” with a smile, nod, and quiet reply. There wasn’t time for more, and she hurried past the creche.
It was no longer silent and uncanny, as she remembered. Not like in the old days of the Order, either; these were boarders and orphans, laughing, shouting, sulking, scolding -- being children. Padmé tried to ignore their stares; she’d worn her Jedi robes, but that didn’t seem to diminish their curiosity.
“-- I don’t think --”
“-- Jedi? I’ve never seen --”
A slightly lower, more authoritative voice -- “One of the Skywalkers, I think --”
“Master Organa’s --”
Padmé hurried on, climbing the stairs almost as quickly as she used to do. She stopped towards the end of the hall, at a door lit around the edges by the light within its room. It was slightly ajar -- which, since it had no handles and opened automatically, served no purpose except to make random intruders feel welcome.
She poked her dark head through the doorway. Her uncle sat at his desk, which seemed to be covered in piles of tedious forms. In true Uncle Luke fashion, he was dealing with the backlog by leaning back in his chair and levitating an apple.
Padmé grinned.
“Good morning,” she said.
He glanced up. “Padmé! Come in, please -- ” he caught the apple and swept a pile of datapads onto the floor.
Padmé suppressed a giggle. She half-suspected that the only reason her mother had become a Jedi at all was to keep the Order running. Someone had to do it, and it certainly wasn’t going to be Uncle Luke.
Bail always said that Mother managed the rules and discipline, Dad managed the food and common sense, and Uncle Luke managed the wisdom and sympathy. Padmé thought that pretty much covered it, even now. In some ways, she felt less like she had a mother, father, and uncle than three parents -- in much the same way that Anakin felt less like her cousin than her older brother.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Uncle Luke said, waving his arm at a chair as he wandered over to prepare a cup of tea. She wasn’t thirsty, but that didn’t matter -- drinking tea was a sort of ritual when she visited, comfortable and familiar, and they both had a high regard for the familiar.
“Thanks,” said Padmé, and hesitated. “I know I should have warned you I was coming --”
Uncle Luke laughed. “I should be warned about natural disasters, faulty equipment, and impending doom,” he said. “I think I can survive anything else, even a visit from my niece. Do you still like cream?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Besides, I’d already heard that you were coming back home. Though I’ll admit I didn’t think your mother would let you out of her sight for another day at least.”
Padmé looked away. “She didn’t want to, but I -- I needed to come back home, and she won’t be here until tomorrow.”
Her uncle made a vaguely encouraging noise and returned to his chair, handing her tea over to her, and sipping at his own. Padmé warmed her hands around the cup.
“How did your mission go?” he asked. “It was to Naboo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It -- well, I did my best. It’s difficult to discuss child labour laws with a fifteen-year-old head of state. Grandmother was even younger, wasn’t she?”
“Fourteen,” he said.
She shuddered. “Everyone says I’m like her, but I -- when I was fourteen, my most serious thoughts were that I hated telekinesis, and Princess Padmé sounded better than Padawan Organa-no-the-other-one. I couldn’t have run for office any more than I could have raised the dead.”
“You’re not Naboo,” said Uncle Luke, in a tone so scrupulously neutral that it was impossible to miss the unspoken thank the Force. “Well, I hope you stopped by Varykino, anyway?”
“Yes -- and then I had lunch with Ryoo and Janira. It was -- you know -- the usual.”
Her uncle smiled. “Awkward but pleasant?”
“Exactly.” Padmé tapped her fingers on her legs, then stilled the restless movement. “Lyra’s here too, you know. Not the Temple -- Mother’s apartments by the Senate.”
“I know,” he said calmly.
Of course he did, she thought, almost smacking herself for her stupidity. Uncle Luke always knew exactly where Lyra was, and not just because he was Uncle Luke and knew more about the Force than anyone living. He couldn’t sense Bail and Padmé like that -- just Lyra. Lyra and Mother and Grandfather.
Padmé sometimes thought she could glimpse something between the four of them, something that bound them together even though Grandfather was dead(ish) and . . . Grandfather. If so, she had no idea what it was, and in any case, it was pointless to tell Uncle Luke where Lyra had gone.
“Lyra and I . . . might have had an argument,” Padmé said, feeling as if she were a scapegrace young apprentice all over again, shamefaced before Mother’s disapproval and Uncle Luke’s disappointment. (Dad didn’t bother himself much with “Jedi stuff,” unless it crossed over into family stuff.)
In less than a day? That’s got to be a record, Bail had said. Uncle Luke just looked at her over the rim of his cup. She forced herself to met his gaze, her blue eyes steady.
“She wants to formally repudiate her place in the succession,” Padmé told him, twisting her fingers. “We all know the Order is her life; she’d never take the throne, even if she were eighty by the time Mother abdicates. Dad and Bail and I just can’t see why she has to make a point out of it.”
Uncle Luke opened his mouth, then shut it again. He settled for a cautious, “She’s mentioned it once or twice. Has something else happened?”
“You remember when she went on that mission to Tatooine? When she found the humanoid trafficking ring?”
“Of course,” said Uncle Luke. His even voice was edged with something that reminded Padmé a little of her mother and a great deal of her grandfather.
“She, well, she used a sort of pseudonym when she was there.”
The frozen blankness that had come over her uncle’s face shifted to bewilderment. “That’s common procedure, especially in a case like this. Leia knows that. Organa isn’t a name you use for undercover work in Mos Espa. I, myself, advised her to adopt a Tatooine surname while she was there.”
“She did,” Padmé said.
Uncle Luke stared at her. Then he paled, his eyes widening. “Not --”
“Mm-hmm. She used it a few other places, too -- off-duty. Often enough that it got back to Mother.”
Her uncle rubbed his forehead.
“We managed to calm things down, and Bail was just making conversation about the different things we’d been. That went well enough at first, even though she sounded -- I know she deals with terrible atrocities, and she’s had to develop a thick skin to even function. I couldn’t do what she does and it’s not my place to judge.”
“Mm,” said Uncle Luke.
“It’s just -- it’s not like she could do my job, either. If she wants to mind-control her way into tracking down criminals, fine. But I’m an ambassador, not a merciless crusader. I’m trying to help people, not hunt them down. I don’t want to be too compassionate, but -”
“It’s impossible to be too compassionate,” he said, a little didactically. Then he smiled. “It’s possible to be stupid about it, of course, but that’s true of anything.”
“Exactly! I tried to tell her that, but . . .” She shrugged.
“She doesn’t agree?”
“Lyra says compassion is for those who deserve it,” said Padmé.
His cup made a sharp clink as he set it down. The tea almost sloshed over the edges.
“She said what?”
His voice rang out -- not cold and hard, like her mother’s became when she got angry, but harsh, furious. His eyes were blazing, and for the first time, Padmé thought she understood why people stepped so carefully around her gentle, serene uncle.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Padmé said, a little alarmed. “It was just a petty argument, and she didn’t approve of how I dealt with Queen Aemila. I’m not sure she even understands what diplomacy means. But it’s not exactly like she spends a lot of time with the . . . the deserving.”
He looked at her for a moment, then walked to the window. “Compassion is not deserved,” he said, almost to himself, and absently rubbed his hand.
His right hand, she realized. The one he always covered in a glove, as if it were something shameful, rather than a perfectly functional cybernetic that could hardly be distinguished from flesh. Padmé swallowed.
She knew what had happened. Mother and Dad and Uncle Luke didn’t like to talk about it, of course. But she’d gotten the story out of Grandfather, who was, if not eager, always ready to own up to everything he’d done, and the best storyteller in the family besides.
“I . . . don’t know,” Padmé said, frowning. “I think anyone with the smallest shred of goodness in them deserves compassion.”
Uncle Luke was silent for a moment. Then he turned back, looking thankfully like himself again.
“Compassion,” he said, in the low, calm voice she remembered from countless lessons, “is not a reward for virtue. There is no exchange. It’s given by one person to another without reservation. It’s a kind of unconditional love. And without it, a Jedi is nothing more than a soldier or a vigilante.”
“Lyra’s not --” Padmé said, and stopped. How many times, lately, had she been disconcerted by her sister’s indifference to the Order’s protocols? Avoided Lyra’s accounts of her latest misadventures?
This was the real reason she’d rushed off to the Temple. Not to see the uncle who, beloved as he might be, would be at tomorrow’s private family dinner anyway. Not to gossip about a petty quarrel with her sister.
She looked up. “Uncle Luke, I’m worried about her. I think something’s wrong. Not the Dark Side, exactly, but . . . something. I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t listen to me -- she won’t even listen to Mother and Dad, any more. But I have to so something.” She gestured vaguely. “How can I . . . all these mercy missions and charitable interventions and I can’t help my own sister?”
Her uncle fell silent for a moment. His blue eyes were very distant. “She is a Jedi Knight,” he said finally. “She will account for her actions to the Council. Otherwise . . . I can only tell you what my sister once told me. Lyra has to find her own way. You can’t choose it for her.”
“Mother said that?” She considered her hands, then sighed, and rose. “You’re right. I just . . . I just worry.”
“Of course.” He walked around the desk and clasped her hand, smiling down at her. “The Force will be with you, Padmé.”
“Thanks, Uncle Luke,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “For listening. And the tea. And everything.”
She smoothed her robes and walked towards the door, a little distracted by something flickering on the edges of her awareness. Not her brother -- the presence was, at once, too remote and too intensely near for that. It felt more like --
“Oh, and Padmé?” her uncle called after her.
She paused on the threshold. “Yes?”
“When you see Lyra, can you ask her to come to the Temple as soon as it’s convenient? There’s someone who wants to speak to her.”
“All right,” she said, glancing back, and froze. In the last two minutes, Uncle Luke had -- improbably though certainly not impossibly -- been joined by another man. A tall, distinguished man of about seventy, with a head of silver curls, straight, somewhat harsh features, and a familiar pair of clear blue eyes. At the moment, those eyes blazed as hotly as her uncle’s had earlier.
“Grandfather,” Padmé said faintly. For once, she had no difficulty believing that he had once been Darth Vader.
“You can tell your sister,” said Anakin Skywalker, “that if she uses my name, she will answer to me for what she does with it.” He paused. “Also, you did excellent work on Naboo. Congratulations.”
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on 2011-10-09 11:02 pm (UTC)And I love Luke's freaking out over compassion! The phrase I want to feed him is "unconditional positive regard". Because, yeah.
The only thing I twitched about has to do with an Unpopular Fandom Opinion that I think I may have mentioned to you, which is that while I think the regular election of teenage monarchs on Naboo is over-the-top (because I can't imagine that they are turning out political prodigies by the gross in that genepool unless they're near-Human rather than human; Padme should have been a once-in-several-generations thing), I also think that... fandom goes kind of overboard the other way? As in, I feel like a lot of writers take for granted that the level of... frivolity... that we see in a lot of teenagers today is a natural part of being a teenager, rather than a consequence of how teenagers in America/the Western world generally are socialized? And that if they were actually being presented with the opportunity to think more deeply and to be responsible, they probably would, at least in a lot of cases. So, e.g., Padme Organa might not have been ready to be a monarch, but she probably would have been thinking seriously about her own place in the Force and wrangling with Jedi ethics and stuff, and that could be the place that her doubts comes from--- "I was still figuring out my own personal morals, how could I have served as a leader for more people than myself?" kind of thing. (Sorry, this is one of my head-explodey Unpopular Fandom Opinions that gets loose every so often.)
But OMG, the rest of this fic! The communion among Anakin, Leia, Luke, and Lyra! And Padme's sense of herself--- not the best Jedi evar but a great diplomat! And I have to say again how much I love ghost!Anakin! And also Luke coping with paperwork by playing around in the Force, and the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family dynamics and Leia becoming a Jedi because someone had to wrangle paperwork and Lyra being in a bad headspace and Anakin being about to talk her around and oh, just about all of it!!!! SQUEE!!!!
no subject
on 2011-10-10 11:40 pm (UTC)The seventy-something Vader is based on some headcanon I talked about -- let me see -- here. So I guess you could say he ages in the Force, but it's more that he ages with Luke.
I reallllly love ghost!Anakin and I've always adored the idea of him as a storyteller and as not being all zen and not wearing (...spectral) sackcloth and ashes either, just being sort of brutally honest. Though I imagine he had at least a vague sense of the appropriate when it came to his grandchildren.
Thanks about Luke! I really can't see him ever thinking he should decide who gets to receive it and who doesn't.
Re: teenagers -- hmm, I thought about it a little, but not that much. Mostly I was thinking about Luke, who at eighteen comes off as rather typically teenager-ish until Owen and Beru's deaths. I was imagining that the three of them had such hellish transitions to adulthood that they were determined to give their children proper childhoods and sheltered them from a lot, so maturity-wise they were more at Luke's level than Leia's or Han's (probably still younger, even). At fourteen, Padmé was just beginning to think about her place in the galaxy (esp as a Jedi apprentice overshadowed by her epic relatives vs Alderaanian princess).
I imagine that Naboo's child monarchs are reasonably competent? Intellectually, at any rate, they're far ahead of what an American high schooler would be, certainly. My issue is more that it's horrifically abusive than that their youth ensures bad government. (Now I'm vaguely wondering what Lyra was like at fourteen, because I can't see her ever being quite as youthful as Padmé.)
Oh, I'm glad you like Padmé -- I wasn't sure how she'd go over, so yay. And yeah, she's talented by any normal standard, but as a Skywalker grandchild who is not the best ever she's got some insecurity around that. But not around being a diplomat, since she knows how awesome she is there and she's willing to stick to her guns. (I suspect she has more in common with her namesake than she can see, but she's a lot more well-balanced and has a much better support system.)
LOL, Luke would never be much for paperwork. I suspect that when Leia comes by the next day, she just boxes his ears and carts it away and this is what always happens. And Anakin can't really say anything because he did that even as Vader.
Thank you! <3
no subject
on 2011-10-11 10:48 pm (UTC)Re: Anakin--- I remembered reading and loving that idea about Anakin aging along with Luke! That is just too... Anakin and so endearing to boot.
Re: teenagers: the sheltering thing makes sense. In fact in some ways it could account for Lyra, and Lyra's issues, because someone prodigiously talented who's maybe never been pressed beyond her own limits and to whom everything has come easily, who then goes into a line of work where she has to deal with other people in crisis, could easily end up with superiority issues, that idea that she gets to deal out justice and decide who's worthy of compassion. Because nothing has ever come hard to her and she can't imagine the pressures that could make someone, say, decide to smuggle spice for a crime lord.
And Luke... now that you make me think about it (I love all the thinking you're making me do!), I almost think he was... held back (shades of Anakin!) by his upbringing, because Owen was busy trying to make sure that he didn't turn out like Dear Ol' Dad, and probably did hold him back from developing his talents--- we definitely see that with the refusal to let him go to flight school and the keeping him on the farm when his gifts clearly lie elsewhere. And I think, as with Anakin, that that produced the whininess--- except that Anakin had had more of an experience of stretching to the limit of his abilities in a real-life, do-or-die setting (see: Podrace; see: droid control ship) before he started training with Obi-wan and so he knew what was wrong, even if he expressed it clumsily. But bless him, he had enough sense of himself to really want to move ahead and stretch his abilities to their limits, even if he maybe got an inflated sense of what those were, possibly because Obi-wan wouldn't let him test his limits and have the experience of genuine failure after trying his hardest. (Honestly, I think the smartest thing Obi-wan, or Qui-gon, or anyone could have done in training baby!Anakin was to say, "Okay, as soon as you're skilled enough to plan the mission from start to finish and take the lead in carrying it out, we'll go rescue your mom." Motivation right there. Kid probably would have been a Jedi before he needed to shave regularly at that rate.)
With the Naboo... hm. There is certainly a difference between being intellectually capable of wrangling political-science issues in the abstract and being emotionally ready to cope with being a life-or-death decision-maker. And also the Naboo as a pacifist society probably got away with it for a while precisely because their life-or-death decisions erred on the side of compassion, and because they appear to be a wealthy enough society that there are not have-nots to deal with. In fact they might have embraced the teen-monarch thing for reasons connected with wanting to harness that adolescent idealism in service to their culture, if that makes sense. Getting the "smart and passionate about social justice" influence maybe as a counterbalance to more mature but more self-interested influences (say, from the private sector). (Interestingly, Naboo politicians seem to come in two flavors: really young women, and really old guys. IDK what that actually means about the cultural/political structure.)
On the other hand, my gut instinct is that if you've got kids that age who are actually able to pull off being good rulers... then they definitely need to be in some kind of real-world leadership role, even if "ruler of a planet" is probably too much--- but, you know, being class president or whatever would probably be way too little! And, see above on limits and challenge and having the experience of doing something that's hard for you, it would actually be abusive to keep them from having those real-world experiences, much the same as it's abusive to make an 8-year-old lie in a crib all day long. So if they have enough of a gift for and love of politics to be good at it, they need to take that out for a spin in some real and meaningful way. And I also think that with politics it's somewhat harder to separate "intellectually competent to make the right decisions" and "psycho-emotionally capable of doing the work" just because it takes so much psychoemotional capacity to make the right decisions in the first place.
Where the abuse comes in for me in Naboo culture is if kids are getting pushed into it because they have the talent and not because they have the passion for the work at least at that point in their lives. (Given that they can serve a maximum of eight years, I'm less worried than some might be about the transience of adolescent areas of interest, because even if your passion changes radically as you get older, "Queen" still looks good on your resume, lol, and the skills learned would apply in almost any field, because you nearly always have to wrangle people, at least a little.)
Personally, I think the whole teenage-ruler-as-institution issue is a lot like Anakin's "oops, did I do that?" destruction of the droid control ship that we talked about elsewhere--- that it's a cheapening of each of their awesome. Instead of embracing the crazy awesome that Padme would have to have been to be elected queen at 14 in a system that didn't institutionalize teenage monarchy--- that she was actually Just That Good, and that she was someone so truly prodigious that it wasn't abusive, you get a system where it's normal (and which brings the abusiveness issues, as in, the fact that you're probably not going to have enough people that age who are actually capable of doing the work in a purely practical sense to make a system of it).
Oh, yes, I love Padme-the-younger! She's a lot like how I see Leia, in some ways--- not so strong in the Force, but a masterful people-wrangler and she knows it. Except Leia has more of Anakin's fire and Padme-the-younger is a kinder creature, innately--- which is also a part of Anakin, just not one that the Jedi Order really fostered. (Which says many things about how the OJO was screwed up.)
no subject
on 2011-10-13 05:56 pm (UTC)I definitely get the feeling that Luke was held back -- probably more than Anakin. Well, obviously more than Anakin, since Anakin was actually taught how to use his abilities, if not as much as he'd have liked, while Luke's have to come out in comparatively mundane things. And that's where a lot of his towering frustration comes from, he just can't articulate it. So I expect he'd have ~feelings~ about that.
I do agree about Anakin -- and yeah, that would have been the best thing. But oh noes, it might further entrench his attachment to his mother, so of course they wouldn't do that.
Re: Naboo -- yeah, I'm not sure how much being monarch would actually entail. I mean, it's a big thing regardless, but I don't think it's the responsibility that being a medieval ruler would be, say. Is it a constitutional monarchy? Was the position supposed to be more ceremonial than not? Or is it just like being the head of any other state?
Honestly, I'm not sure the fact that some kids can do something okayish means that it's good for them (or the state) to do it, even if they're passionately interested. Fifteen-year-old Anakin would have had no business being a Jedi Master, say, no matter how much he might have wanted to be one (and I don't imagine being a general was good for twenty-one-ish Anakin, either, however gifted he might have been).
I agree that someone like Padmé (and I don't imagine her predecessors/successors were really at her level -- she should be exceptional) needs more than class president, but ... I don't think it's abusive to have minimum age requirements. In my country, for instance, the head of state is required to be thirty-five or older, given the requirements of the position. But it's perfectly possible (and necessary) to get real world experience before then, if your inclinations run in that direction. But not as mayor or something like that, either.
Personally, I think -- even if kids are reasonably gifted and passionate about politics, pushing them into positions of immense responsibility, quite probable danger to their lives, and 24/7 work is still an abusive system. Hence wondering what child labour laws on Naboo even look like, and how Coruscanti politicians would even deal with that. (The handmaidens/decoys add to the creepiness for me, I have to say.)
I do agree about the cheapening of the awesome! I...honestly don't see why it couldn't have just been a hereditary monarchy. We know they exist in the GFFA (Leia!). Sometimes a ruler dies and the crown does fall to a young heir -- and in RL, most of the time the government is like "oh shit" but every once in awhile you get a great one. And Padmé could have been that, rather than part of a systematic thing.
Re: baby Padmé -- hmm, I didn't really see her like Leia. But then, I'm not sure how good Leia really is with people so much as systems. Padmé, I imagine, would struggle a lot more with direct leadership than with negotiating and diplomacy, where I suspect it was the other way around with Leia. Padmé definitely has a kindness and gentleness and just basic serenity that's not like either of her parents.
no subject
on 2011-10-15 01:57 am (UTC)Luke, Anakin, and ability development: not only was Anakin allowed (indeed required) to develop his Force-powers at a younger age, but... even when he was "only" using them for mundane things, there was a lot more of... on some levels freedom but on others responsibility; I get a sense that Anakin's skill at fixing things and flying would have made him valuable as a slave, and so in a sense he was supporting the family? At nine. Whereas Owen and Beru were very much the adults in the family, and Luke was expected to help out, but it was as a kid. In some ways, the second decade of Anakin's life is almost more restricting or "kiddified" than the first.
Oooh, I'm glad you like my "let's go rescue Shmi" approach to Anakin's training. And, exactly on why the Jedi (with the possible exception of Qui-gon) wouldn't have gone there. *facepalm*
Naboo: Yes, I want more on their political system, period. Queen is obviously not just a ceremonial position, a la the British monarchy, but they also have a constitution that gets mentioned and... oh, George Lucas, stop dangling these cool toys in front of us and them dropping them half-finished. LOL.
I have very strong feelings against age limits as opposed to maturity limits, not that this would be news by this point in time, lol. Or rather I have strong objections to the way the prodigiously talented outliers get erased, or worse, held back, by them. Because if you tell someone over and over and over that they aren't really that capable, that they're just a kid, they start believing you. And they certainly don't exercise their talents. And it's hard if not impossible to reclaim that ability all of a sudden when you finally hit the "acceptable" age to be doing whatever it is. (The US example is really interesting, because it comes from a paradigm where a) the Founding Fathers were really opposed to career politicians and I think the age limits may have been part of that--- they wanted to make sure the holders of high public office were doing something else with their lives, which, um, did not work out so much, and b) they were also assuming that the franchise, let alone the holding of office, would be restricted to white male property-owners, which is a much more homogeneous group, culturally speaking, and it becomes more valid to make generalizations about the probable chronology of the developmental curve of a population when you narrow it down to people with a more common set of experiences--- as opposed to the broad general population of 35-year-olds from different cultural/SES/etc. backgrounds who can vote, and hold office, in the US today.)
Granted, I'm saying all this in the context of thinking that the tradition of teenage elected monarchs is stupid (not least because it makes less of Padme's awesomeness as a unique outlier who is unusual in her ability to do this), and also that I think it would have been even cooler if she'd been Palpatine's badass Senate-page protegee (who maybe gets elected Senator on the strength of her actions in the Battle of Naboo plus being the Chancellor's protegee), so.
Padme-the-younger: that all makes sense. (And now I'm wondering about Leia's career as a Senator, which we never actually get to see, and also her relationship with "the top brass" in the Rebellion.) But, yeah, Padme is a kinder creature, in ways that maybe her parents' lives never really allowed them to be. (Though house-spouse!Han maybe has some of that caretaking capacity, it just wasn't fostered in his environment until that point in his life.)