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The Naboo royalty is one of the most fascinating bits of the worldbuilding the Prequel Trilogy gives us, because it's so weird. And people don't really ... grapple with that very much, even in fic, but tend to take it for granted. We have an elected monarch (and why give an elected official a hereditary title?!?) who wears elaborate ceremonial robes and elaborate ceremonial makeup that literally nobody else in their society wears. This person has a reign name that is not the name they grew up with, and which they will keep as their primary professional name even after they are no longer monarch. And even their personal name seems to have changed. (There are two choices--either all the handmaiden's names were changed to match Padmé, or all of them including Padmé changed their names.)
This elected monarch is surrounded by body doubles/bodyguards who are not only good at fighting and can pass for the monarch in a pinch but who can also be the one making decisions and treated as the monarch in important diplomatic situations. Yes, sure, the reveal of the Real Padmé when dealing with the Gungans is cool, but why the fuck is the decoy the one leading the negotiations. Like. If Sabé-wearing-Padmé's-clothes-and-makeup had negotiated a treaty and signed it, would that treaty still be legally binding even though Sabé isn't Padmé? It sure seems so! Why didn't they swap Padmé back into the lead for the negotiations, and then back out for safety when the negotiations conclude?
This group of body doubles/bodyguards have personal names that are changed to match the monarch's personal name (and there's a good chance that the monarch's personal name is also changed to match theirs--to the best of my knowledge, Padmé and her handmaidens are the only Nabooians we see with names that end in "é". This group continues on for the rest of the monarch's life, including recruiting new members who change their names to match when they join. This group is separate from the regular security.
All of this does not smell political to me, especially when you see the difference with every other Nabooian political role. It smells religious.
Which is why my headcanon is that until fairly recently the monarch of Naboo was not, actually, the political ruler ... but rather the religious ruler. Consider Japan, where the "emperors" have been mostly religious leaders (head of Shintoism, descendant of the god Amaterasu) and had very little political power for most of history.
Sometime in the not-too-distant-past, the monarchs of Naboo had a role that was mostly religious and ceremonial. It was probably at least sort of a group role--not just one person, but a cadre of a leader and their attendants, who all had ceremonial parts to play that were to some degree interchangeable. Being part of this cadre was prestigious, and probably meant agreeing/vowing to serve the priorities of the leader for life, so that it shouldn't matter which person is actually wearing the ceremonial makeup at any given time. There was no age limit on this role, but it does require giving up parts of your identity or subsuming them into the role; this is often easier for young people who are still forming their identity, so you get a stronger cadre if you elect them relatively young and then they grow up together.
What, exactly, the religious duties of this "monarch" are I haven't thought up, and depending on the needs of the story you could go a lot of different ways. Are they an arbiter of theology, in the Christian vein? Are they a representative of the god(s)? Do they give oracles? Is it mostly about seeing that the proper ceremonies and rites are observed, and running the priesthood?
At any rate, while this was going on, there was originally some other sort of political leadership on Naboo. There were religious leaders, and there were political leaders, and the monarch was the religious leader not the political. You could have the secular leaders be a sort of shogun, or a President, or something.
And then, somewhere along the line, the secular/political structure collapsed, and the only leadership still in place was the monarch, who sort of ... appropriated the powers of the political leadership and joined them into the existing role. (This is basically what happened in Europe with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, btw; in most places the local bishops and the local churches were the only bit of the Roman bureaucracy left standing, so they sort of found themselves holding the bag.)
By the time Padmé was elected, the political/secular aspects of the role were the primary ones; certainly, we never see any sign of any religious duties except possibly that white makeup that nobody else wears.
And that would explain just about all the weird stuff quite nicely.
Rebloggable on tumblr.
This elected monarch is surrounded by body doubles/bodyguards who are not only good at fighting and can pass for the monarch in a pinch but who can also be the one making decisions and treated as the monarch in important diplomatic situations. Yes, sure, the reveal of the Real Padmé when dealing with the Gungans is cool, but why the fuck is the decoy the one leading the negotiations. Like. If Sabé-wearing-Padmé's-clothes-and-makeup had negotiated a treaty and signed it, would that treaty still be legally binding even though Sabé isn't Padmé? It sure seems so! Why didn't they swap Padmé back into the lead for the negotiations, and then back out for safety when the negotiations conclude?
This group of body doubles/bodyguards have personal names that are changed to match the monarch's personal name (and there's a good chance that the monarch's personal name is also changed to match theirs--to the best of my knowledge, Padmé and her handmaidens are the only Nabooians we see with names that end in "é". This group continues on for the rest of the monarch's life, including recruiting new members who change their names to match when they join. This group is separate from the regular security.
All of this does not smell political to me, especially when you see the difference with every other Nabooian political role. It smells religious.
Which is why my headcanon is that until fairly recently the monarch of Naboo was not, actually, the political ruler ... but rather the religious ruler. Consider Japan, where the "emperors" have been mostly religious leaders (head of Shintoism, descendant of the god Amaterasu) and had very little political power for most of history.
Sometime in the not-too-distant-past, the monarchs of Naboo had a role that was mostly religious and ceremonial. It was probably at least sort of a group role--not just one person, but a cadre of a leader and their attendants, who all had ceremonial parts to play that were to some degree interchangeable. Being part of this cadre was prestigious, and probably meant agreeing/vowing to serve the priorities of the leader for life, so that it shouldn't matter which person is actually wearing the ceremonial makeup at any given time. There was no age limit on this role, but it does require giving up parts of your identity or subsuming them into the role; this is often easier for young people who are still forming their identity, so you get a stronger cadre if you elect them relatively young and then they grow up together.
What, exactly, the religious duties of this "monarch" are I haven't thought up, and depending on the needs of the story you could go a lot of different ways. Are they an arbiter of theology, in the Christian vein? Are they a representative of the god(s)? Do they give oracles? Is it mostly about seeing that the proper ceremonies and rites are observed, and running the priesthood?
At any rate, while this was going on, there was originally some other sort of political leadership on Naboo. There were religious leaders, and there were political leaders, and the monarch was the religious leader not the political. You could have the secular leaders be a sort of shogun, or a President, or something.
And then, somewhere along the line, the secular/political structure collapsed, and the only leadership still in place was the monarch, who sort of ... appropriated the powers of the political leadership and joined them into the existing role. (This is basically what happened in Europe with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, btw; in most places the local bishops and the local churches were the only bit of the Roman bureaucracy left standing, so they sort of found themselves holding the bag.)
By the time Padmé was elected, the political/secular aspects of the role were the primary ones; certainly, we never see any sign of any religious duties except possibly that white makeup that nobody else wears.
And that would explain just about all the weird stuff quite nicely.
Rebloggable on tumblr.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-19 11:55 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 01:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 12:04 am (UTC)From:The use of electrum on the ships and droids is another thing I saw reserved to public officials, designated Persons, etc as another honorific. And tend to roll with that one too.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 01:48 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 01:29 am (UTC)From:Now I want Padmé et al. and Millie from Chrestomanci to hang out.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 01:49 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 03:03 pm (UTC)From:We have an elected monarch (and why give an elected official a hereditary title?!?
Err... Germans? Through centuries? In the HRE? In which the Emperors got first elected as "Kings of the Romans" (i.e. de facto Kings of the Germans), and then in many though not all cases became Emperor? Before the Habsburgs put an exclusive lock on the job post Charles V., it was by no means guaranteed that the son of a King/Emperor succeeded him. And even if it did happen, there had to be a lot of campaigning (and vote-buying) before hand. Hence various Emperors attempting to secure their succession by having their sons elected as King of the Romans in their own life time, but even that didn't always work as intended with the son later on becomoing Emperor. Now democratic, obviously these elections weren't, but they were genuine elections, with for a few centuries most of the German princes being able to cast their vote before it was narrowed down to what became the seven Princes Elector in the late middle ages.
It's not relevant to Naboo, of course, since Naboo royalty holds the monarchical title not for a life time and presumably got voted for by more of the general populion than just the proverbial 1%. But the idea of a monarch getting there by vote and not because they were the closest blood relation of the previous monarch did not, per se, bewilder me for this reason.
But back to your theory - I can't remember, but did we get the name of the Queen who rules during "Revenge of the Sith"? (I.e. in the movie, I think she got named in the novelization.) There's also the one ruling in the Clone Wars tv series, who may or may not be the same young woman as in "Revenge of the Sith", and who does get a few on screen scenes and interactions with our heroes, including being addressed by name, but without looking it up, I couldn't tell you what it was, and whether it was one name or two, a personal and an official name.
I like your comparison to the bishops post fall of the Western Roman Empire, and would point out it also worked in reverse there, because until the Investiture Crisis (i.e. Henry IV HRE versus Pope Gregory), it was absolutely taken for granted that the Emperor was not just a temporal but also a spiritual ruler who could appoint bishops, because the Church had been going through the horrendous crisis called the Pornocracy at times, until Henry IV's father, the Emperor Henry III, deposed not one, not two but three Popes and appointed his own candidate (who happened to be the Bishop of my hometown), who as Pope started the overdue reform process which a few Popes later had been so successful that a reformed church could stake out spiritual territory again and insist that no temporal ruler should get to appoint bishops. And within a few generations after that, it was taken for granted until the Reformation with a capital R that the Pope and only the Pope had that right.
Thinking of your model, I could well imagine a struggle between secular and religious leaders through several generations as well, with only one remaining standing...
no subject
Date: 2026-06-20 03:36 pm (UTC)From:But yeah, I don't think it would be a simple process going from one type of leadership to the other. It would probably have gone back and forth a couple of times, because leadership crises/vacuums often work like that.