ruby city + application

[thunderousapplause]

PLAYER
Name: Caitlin
Age: 23
Personal Journal: stupidjudy
E-mail: pontmercying@gmail.com
AIM/MSN/etc: plurk is beautifultomorrow!

CHARACTER
Name: Senator Padme Amidala.
Canon: Star Wars
Age: 24 years old.
Timeline: Post-Episode II: Attack of the Clones, early The Clone Wars animated series.
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: n/a

Personality:

'She was very beautiful...kind, but sad.'
- Leia Organa, Return of the Jedi

These are the first words we hear, in release order, describing Padme Amidala. All in all, it's a pretty apt description. However, there's so much more to Padme than just being the mother of Anakin Skywalker's children. She is a young queen, a skilled diplomat, an adept fighter and a loving mother.

When we first meet Padme, we find out that she is adept at playing multiple of these roles in her daily life. We see her as the recently-elected Queen Amidala of Naboo. At just 14, she handles her royal duties with poise and grace as well as a keen sense of negotiations, even when her planet is threatened with attacks. As the queen she speaks calmly and firmly and shows a strong sense of conviction and duty to Naboo, something she keeps with her later on in life as a Senator. She takes great pride in where she comes from, but still, she is curious. As the Queen, she is constantly accompanied by a group of handmaidens who also act as decoys - and on occasion, she disguises herself as the handmaiden Padme to learn more about other worlds. In her guise as a handmaiden, she is relaxed and calm in a different sense - more peaceful, smiling and interested rather than stern. Padme is well-educated and always does her best to work alongside ways of life she agrees with but may not understand - for example, her work with her Jedi bodyguards in Episodes I-II or her diplomatic relationship with the Gungan race of Naboo when she was queen, as humans and Gungans did not always get along. She gains compassion for people she has just met, and this is clear when she visits Tatooine with her Jedi companions and meets the young slave Anakin Skywalker, who she would later grow to love, marry, and give birth to twins with. When she allows someone behind her diplomatic, professional air, she trusts them deeply and cares for them with her whole being - exemplified when one of her handmaidens acting as a decoy dies in an assassination attempt early on in episode II.

Due to her work with the public as well as her kind and trusting nature, Padme depends on people like her handmaidens, some fellow Senators, Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and C-3PO. She values having a strong support system. A sense of belonging or 'home' is also very important to her. Even though as a senator she spends most of her time on Coruscant, it's very clear she thinks of Naboo as her true home. It's clear in her eyes when she brings Anakin back to her family home on Naboo that she is most comfortable and relaxed there. However, she also relishes in other people considering a place she is comfortable 'home' - in an early episode of the Clone Wars, Anakin calls her senatorial apartment 'home' and she is clearly touched.

Padme is very focused on justice and liberty and despite being a very logical person, would rather focus on helping the multitudes rather than the few. She's quite unselfish and has a strong sense of what's right and wrong - she puts great trust in regimes that seem to be working and has difficulty breaking a rule unless it would help a large group of people. This is exemplified both in her work life - her objection to the formation of the Galactic Empire and distrust of Palpatine in Episode III - as well as her personal life - due to the strict rules on attachment the Jedi have placed on Anakin as well as the difficulties a relationship would cause her as a Senator, this is why she rejects Anakin's romantic advances so many times in Episode II. This strong sense of morals is what causes her to be so distraught in Episode III when she finds out about Order 66, the order placed by Palpatine causing many of the Jedi, including very small children, to be slaughtered.

Padme often thinks logically and responds well to unfamiliar situations - this is exemplified in Episode II during the fight on Geonosis, where she manages to pick locks to escape from being chained to a pillar and devoured by monsters. She fought alongside many Jedi in a battle there, holding her own with a blaster. This instance is also notable because it shows that she has a flair for practicality despite the fact that she often wears wild, outlandish outfits. Padme has a clear sense for aesthetics and beauty, shown by the fact that in almost every scene we see her in she wears a different outfit, but in battle she prefers to wear clothing that allows her to move quickly and easily, while still stylish. This sense of adaptation shows up again in Episode III when she took her ship to Mustafar to beg Anakin to stop his killing and return to her and to the Light Side - her brown costume is still stylish, but in her pregnancy she wears straps around her body that support her stomach and allow her to move without injuring herself or her children. This brings up another point - her compassion for people she has not even met yet. Time and time again in episode III, she speaks with the utmost love for her unborn children and the life she plans to have with them, despite the difficulties her secret marriage may bring her. Even towards the end of her life as life is sapped out of her by manipulation of the Dark Side of the Force to rebuild Anakin as Darth Vader, she manages to stay alive long enough to give birth to her two children, Luke and Leia.

Even with her dying breath, Padme believes the best in her now-evil husband - a trait that holds true with most people she meets, one of her biggest flaws. Padme trusts people and believes the best in them to a fault - when she finds out that they are not who they say they are, she is stubborn at first, refusing to believe it, but eventually it breaks her down and causes her great anguish. This happens time and time again, most notably in Episode III after she finds out Anakin has turned to the dark side because he believed he could save her from death - she felt she was not in any danger and was horrified by the things he had done in the name of attaining that power. This is another flaw of hers - she can be a bit dismissive of things that aren't quite logical, like when she insists to Anakin that her life is not in any danger when he dreams of her death. She's also dismissive of his feelings for her in early episode II - she still sees him as a child for a while after the timeskip of ten years. Her stubbornness also brings a fierce independence to her - she absolutely hates being told that she cannot do something or is incapable of doing something for whatever reason. She has a lot of drive and if it is for the good of many, Padme will bull-headedly take on whatever task she must if she feels it is in the sense of justice and the greater good.

Background: Here are two links to Padme's background and history, one from Wookiepedia and one from Wikipedia. I'll be going almost entirely with the information and portrayal of her presented in the prequel trilogy films and the two Clone Wars animated series, though if ever asked about her life pre-Episode I there's some Expanded Universe things to support that in the Wookiepedia article.

Abilities: Though posessing no Force-sensitivity, Padme is still a force to be reckoned with in a battle. She learned hand to hand combat during her time as Queen and still keeps herself sharp in it. She is great with a blaster and possesses one of her own. Padme is quite nimble and agile with the ability to have a calm mind and think quickly in a dire situation. She also, as a political figure who studied and trained from a young age, posesses great skills of diplomacy and poise as well as being talented at negotiating.

Network/Actionspam Sample: Here are a few links from the RC test drive meme.

Prose Log Sample: They were married at Varykino. It was the most secluded place Padme knew, in all the worlds she knew, and in a way it still felt like her home - her Naboo. She in her elaborate white dress and lace veil, Anakin in robes, with just the two droids and the minister present. They'd used pseudonyms, to keep their identities all the more secret; the names of two lovers from an old Naboo legend. It was the most alone Padme had been in what seemed like ages - no handmaidens, no Senators or advisors. And yet, despite being so alone, she wasn't lonely at all; in fact, far from it.

She helds the memory safe in her heart as she sat at the steps of the unfamiliar train station, thinking. If she tried, Padme could still feel the cool metal of Anakin's prosthetic hand placed into hers, the smell of the Lake Country air wafting around them. It was risky, for both of them, and they knew it, but Padme couldn't bear it any longer - she wanted to be with Anakin, no matter the costs, the rules. It was a bit selfish, and she wrestled with it almost the whole time while he was assigned to guard her on Coruscant - the needs of two, in this case, outweighing the needs of so many, of her people and constituents, of the galaxy. After the battle on Geonosis, though, it was clear. Her love for the one Jedi, her desire to smooth away his hurts and celebrate his joys alongside him - in that moment, outshined everything.

Still, being swept away to an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar sector - that took more a stress on her mind than anything else at that moment, and memories of happier times didn't do much to help alleviate them. The Separatists were still a looming threat, not to mention the raging war happening across the galaxy to try to restore the Republic and put them at bay. The Clone Army could only do so much, and while she put great faith and trust the Jedi who helped lead them, she still had a duty of her own - to Naboo, to be in the Senate, helping to make decisions that might affect the turning points of the war. Here, swept away, with no ship to sail through space home and no way of contact out of the city, anything she could possibly think to do to help restore peace was futile.

That thought made her fear most.