Anghraine

Oh, I like the Leia/NJO OTP!! For some reason, though, I have a harder time imagining her getting that... into being a Force-user; it always feels to me like it would be more of a sideline for her--- maybe I imprinted on that whole "you have powers I don't understand and could never have" thing, whereas it feels like Luke connects more naturally to the idea of himself as a Jedi (though of course Kenobi fed it to him in the context of the idealized father-figure he'd identified with all his life, so perhaps that's not a fair comparison, i.e. Luke had reasons other than a true Jedi vocation to connect to the idea of himself as being one). But I like your Jedi-queen Leia; the idea that she'd learn the powers as the means to a broader and more temporal end is just very YES for me. (And Luke's total comfort with Leia learning the skills in whatever philosophical orientation she chooses is also a big YES. Can you tell I love Revenge more every time I read it? :) )

Oooh, I'm glad you like Force-prodigy!Anakin! Really, the Podrace scene is just So Much Awesome for me, because Anakin's a kid but he's not twee or cutesy there, he's serious and hardcore and competent and awesome while still being completely a kid. And then we get to the big battle, and he already knows that what he's doing is Jedi-stuff, but he... regresses, almost, and I'm like "Give me back my child prodigy best starpilot in the galaxy cunning warrior NAO" because
for me, best-starpilot-cunning-warrior!Anakin only becomes cooler when you throw in "child prodigy". Except, you know, we didn't actually see that onscreen. *shakes fist*

Yes, the Padme-Palpatine dynamic just gets so... erased. And it would have been so interesting if he'd been grooming both halves of the couple, Anakin as his Sith apprentice and Padme as his political one, and then only Anakin stayed true. Or, you know, just about anything where Padme actually got independent character development, lol.

YES! Totally with you that being Palpatine's enforcer ran a poor second in Anakin's mind to being Padme's enforcer. Palpatine is just... all he's got left, and the poor boy clings. (I think that's a piece of what happened between ESB and RotJ when he goes from "rule the galaxy with me, my son" to "I must obey my master"--- Luke rejected him, he basically went crawling back to Palpatine, and, IDK, I think Palpatine probably messed with his head using that?)

OMG, Luke and Leia getting The Offer from Vader! I love this so much! Yes! Extremely interesting! And not one I'd ever really considered, but now... well, see above on my whole "Anakin was Palpatine's Sith apprentice, Padme was his political one", and this is the second generation. (Yeah, I really can't, at least not yet, get my head around Leia ever fully embracing an identity of "Force-user". Especially because in this scenario, she'd be rationalizing her decision as "Must restrain my father's sentients'-rights violations" and also with Vader having, as you say perfectly, negative infinity patience with politics, there'd be a power vacuum there for her to step neatly into. So it's the perfect meld of "ideologically a Rebel, temperamentally an Empress"--- I love that description, btw!--- because she's got the moral justification of fixing the broken parts of the Empire, but there's also all this lovely power lying around to be picked up and her father is more than happy for her to do it, because Force knows he doesn't want it. And I could see Luke and Vader just really bonding over the Force-training in that scenario, and Leia is kind of left out but she's also the Empress. And doesn't have quite the same daddy-issues Luke does, because she had parents, as opposed to an aunt and uncle. And was apparently close enough to Bail at least that he entrusted her with missions and so forth, and I think being Empress with a goal of making the Empire a better place would make her feel like she was... balancing... her two fathers?)

All of which are pieces of "Empress Leia is at least a little bit better than Empress Padme".

Ooh, really good point about Anakin's relative high moral ground--- and especially the part about the Empire's tolerance for slavery. (It is totally my headcanon that somewhere in his early years as Vader, he asked Palpatine for permission to go eradicate the slave trade. And Palpatine let him, because he knows his Anakin, and his Anakin's propensity for epic violence, and having Anakin go massacre slavers where the Holonet can see it would get it into the heads of most "right-thinking" beings, or at least those who want to be seen as right-thinking, that the Empire is more effective at eliminating sentients'-rights violations than the Republic was, and that Darth Vader's more brutal tendencies are only being enacted against Really Bad People, so when Palpatine starts pointing him at other people, the general consensus will be, "Oh, they're Bad, Darth Vader only hunts, and hurts, Bad People." I.e., they'll assume he's justified.) And, so much yes on "Just not, ah, in general" about Anakin's claims to high moral ground. (This is so much why I see him and Han as getting each other, because Han is a kinder person but not necessarily a more moral one--- as witness his willingness to work for Jabba--- and they sort of get each other's grey areas, in ways that Luke and Leia really can't. And they can also call each other on their morally problematic places, because those are similar but not identical.)

Even in a less dysfunctional setting, I suspect they just need to scream at one another every once in awhile.

Yes, this! They are all high-intensity people who thrive on stimulation, and they'd just express themselves at full-throttle top volume, without it necessarily being a Bad Thing, as opposed to an intense one. And Han is definitely more chill, and could just cut through the stimulus-needs to the underlying issues, when left to themselves, the Family Skywalker would probably just keep screeching because it feels good. And I think Han would definitely ego-puncture, but he'd also be the one to get the places where the screaming is at once a way to show you care and something that's covering it up and just be able to find the places where they all need to meet in the middle. And LOL at "pass the popcorn" because THIS.

Ahaha, yes, Padme's reaction = "oh, dear." :)