I have a theory, and it is tenuous at best, but I believe it with all my heart and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I think Padmé Amidala faked her death in Revenge of the Sith.
“What?! But we were literally at her funeral!”
Yeah, okay but hear me out.
My strongest argument is that Leia remembers her mother, her real mother.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Ride or Die Crew were the only ones with Padmé when she “died.” Yoda and Bail Organa are the only witnesses besides medical droids, which can have their memories wiped. All three are more than capable of keeping secrets, and Obi-Wan is a freaking liar. He tells Luke that Vader killed Anakin. He probably thinks the easiest way for Padmé to disappear is to die. And it works; Vader doesn’t go looking for Padmé, even though he tells the Emperor that she’s still alive, “I felt it.” And Padmé did promise Anakin that she wasn’t going to die in childbirth. So if we take her at her word….
We know Lucas is influenced by Campbell’s hero cycle, and a main theme in that is the Rule of Three. Padmé has used a decoy twice before; almost the entirety of The Phantom Menace and the beginning of Attack of the Clones. It’s not hard to believe that some trusted handmaidens dressed a …dummy? wax model? to look like the Senator. Thus completing a cycle of three decoys.
Am I stretching? Yeah, maybe. But Leia remembers her mother.
Leia (well, and Luke) would have needed to have some kind of wet-nurse situation. It’s not a stretch to think Bail would have hidden Padmé in Leia’s nursery. They were friends and allies in the Senate. And she is then present for the inception of the Rebellion with Bail and Mon Mothma.
I love Leia, but I do not think she can have memories of her mother from when she was in utero. I can’t believe she could have gotten “beautiful, kind, but sad” from two seconds after birth. She’s Force Sensitive like whoa, and she gets stronger in the force by her closeness to Luke (as he trains, her instincts get stronger and louder), but as Luke doesn’t have any memories of Padmé, I think Leia had something her brother didn’t in the first few years of her life.
There’s one more clue, in my head at least. Leia’s hair. We only spend about 5 seconds on Alderaan, and Breha’s hair is covered for that, so I’m relying on instinct here. Padmé usually has her hair in very elaborate hairstyles, and in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, she wears it in two buns on either side of her head. Her handmaidens have simpler styles, but not less controlled. In the celebration on Naboo after The Phantom Menace, there’s another little girl in the crowd with the side buns.
It’s not impossible what I’m suggesting. If Jar-Jar Binks can be a Sith Lord, Padmé can survive her husband’s force choke her “official” cause of death. OH WAIT, SHE DID. She was only rendered unconscious. She was awake and alive for the birth of the Space Twins. It’s not beyond reason that Sabé, and maybe Dormé, followed her to Alderaan, only to help raise Leia to be a leader in the Rebellion, to control her emotions in a way her father (and her brother) cannot, to help spread the Rebellion across the galaxy. A new phantom menace, at least to the Sith with the galaxy in his pocket.
It’s a way better ending than one’s cause of death being a Broken Heart.
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