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When Eirtaé hears the name of the girl running against her in the election to become the next ruler of Naboo, a prickling starts up between her shoulder blades. By the time she can get somewhere alone to scratch, it’s a burning itch. She knows it’s just in her head; soulmarks don’t react just because someone says the name out loud, and plenty of people say they don’t even burn when your soulmate introduces themself. But here she is, hiding in a bathroom at her campaign launch party and looking around for something she can use to scratch the annoying part of her back that she can’t quite reach in the stiff formal dress she’s wearing.
Ever since she was old enough to know what a soulmate was, Eirtaé has always wondered how she’d meet Padmé Naberrie. She knows who Padmé is, of course. Most anyone with holonet access can track their soulmate down without too much trouble, these days, but it’s still considered traditional on Naboo to wait until destiny brings you together rather than force it too soon. In the last few years, she’d thought they might cross paths in the Legislative Youth Program, or at one of the massive parties thrown by the aristocracy of Theed. But somehow they’ve managed to go nearly thirteen years without ever meeting each other, and now they’re running against each other for Queen.
She wonders if Padmé knows. Does she have Eirtaé’s name etched somewhere on her body, or is Eirtaé the only one currently freaking out over the fact that she’s going to meet her soulmate, and her soulmate is her rival? There are stories about soulmates who turn out to be enemies, just as there are tales of destined lovers and strong bonds of friendship. The difference is that the ones about rivals almost never end happily.
Eirtaé doesn’t want this election to turn into a tragedy for her. She doesn’t want her life to be a tragedy. She isn’t sure she has a choice.
She’s probably overthinking this. She’s seen enough of those holos to know that trying to avert a tragedy can be the reason it happens in the first place. So she’ll carry on with her election campaign, and she won’t think about what it means for her chances that her life is destined to revolve around one of her opponents. Splashing water on her face, she tugs the collar of her dress back into place and steps out to rejoin the party.
~
As the campaign progresses, Eirtaé starts to think that the itch she couldn’t quite scratch might have been meant as some kind of warning. Everything Padmé Naberrie does seems calculated to frustrate her. Everywhere she turns, Padmé is already there, one step ahead of her and leagues above. Eirtaé was hoping her family’s connections among the aristocracy of Theed might make her stand out from the other candidates in that arena, but of course Padmé has spent the past year and a half as Governor of Theed—her two-year term is up for reelection at the same time as the monarchy—and had the ear of the nobles who matter before her campaign even officially began. Eirtaé’s press team releases a professionally filmed and edited holovid, clips from her campaign tour edited together with snippets of her speaking to the camera. The same week, Padmé releases a holo filmed by her older sister, in which she very seriously explains her foreign policy to her two-year-old niece while they draw a picture together. The press loves it, and Eirtaé’s is all but forgotten.
The highlight is when Eirtaé visits the Theed Royal Orphanage on her campaign tour and finds all the orphans, and most of the staff, in ecstasies over Padmé’s visit the previous day. Her press team have a hard time piecing together enough clips in which the kids are talking about something, anything, else. Now, even though this visit has been planned for weeks, Eirtaé will look like she was trying to copy her opponent. The fact that Padmé looks far more natural and at ease than Eirtaé in their respective promotional holos playing with the kids is just insult to injury.
Whether she’s talking to interviewers about her plans to boost Naboo’s economy and close the wealth gap, handing out care packages at a soup kitchen, or stacking blocks on the floor with toddlers, Padmé makes it look easy. More than that, she seems genuine, like she’s putting her whole heart into whatever she happens to be doing. Eirtaé’s studied charm, the product of years of training meant to prepare her for this exact task, looks fake in comparison. It’s infuriating, especially since Padmé isn’t even doing anything wrong. It’s not exactly a crime for a politician to believe what she’s saying. She’s just...better than Eirtaé, at the game Eirtaé has spent her whole life training to play, without even seeming to try.
Worse, although she obsesses over every second of footage from Padmé’s public appearances, Eirtaé can’t find a single hint that Padmé is paying her any more attention than she gives to any other candidate. She talks about the other candidates in interviews, of course, but inevitably spends most of that time talking about Sanandrassa, the other frontrunner. At least Eirtaé doesn’t stand out for spending so much time talking about Padmé.
In any other election season, Eirtaé could be one of the frontrunners. She tries not to let it get to her, that she isn’t. She can still win this. (But if she can’t win, some part of her mind whispers, wouldn’t it make a better story if she was her soulmate’s only opponent in the battle for the crown? If they were rivals and equals, not Padmé soaring above while Eirtaé struggles to stay afloat?)
~
They finally meet face-to-face a few days ahead of the election. All the candidates gather on a stage in front of crowds of people, cameras broadcasting the carefully choreographed event to the rest of the planet. Eirtaé is far too nervous about messing up to even think about soulmates, which is probably for the best. She’s never felt so stiff and awkward in her life.
Then, for a moment, their eyes meet.
Eirtaé’s breath catches.
Somehow, now that she’s seeing her in person, she finds that the holos she pored over with such dedication entirely failed to do Padmé justice. Beautiful is too mundane a term for her soulmate: Padmé is glorious, incandescent with the passion and energy that spills out like the rays of the sun from her tiny frame. She knows Padmé is shorter than her, but it’s easy for that to slip out of her mind when she seems so much larger than life.
There’s no glimmer of recognition in Padmé’s eyes, no look of Oh, at last, it’s you, to match Eirtaé’s own, and the smile she gives Eirtaé is no different to the one she gave Sanandrassa just moments before. They curtsey to each other, exchange the traditional well-wishes—which Eirtaé has a sinking feeling Padmé actually means—and then it’s over.
~
Eirtaé’s parents fret about the election as the fatal day draws closer. Her mother wrings her hands until they’re sore, her father paces, and both of them fuss and nag at Eirtaé, whose own nerves are worn to breaking point. She ends up screaming at both of them, in an uncharacteristic loss of control, before running off to hide in her room. Afterwards, she doesn’t even remember the words she was yelling, but she apologises in floods of tears and lets herself be comforted and fussed over in return.
Election day is a blur. She votes, of course. Cameras follow her to the doors of the polling station as she waves to the voters lined up outside, campaigning to the last. She hesitates far too long, looking at Padmé’s name on the docket, before voting for herself as she intended. Fate can do what it likes, but let nobody say she didn’t try.
~
Padmé wins. It’s as inevitable, and crushing, as a landslide descending on a mountain village. Eirtaé doesn’t leave her room for three days.
~
When an invitation to the palace arrives in her inbox a week after the election, the unexpectedness of its contents jolts her from her pity party. She’s met the new Queen-elect on a grand total of one occasion and never had a conversation with her that wasn’t scripted. So why does Padmé—soon to be Amidala—want Eirtaé to be one of her new royal handmaidens?
Maybe, whispers a treacherous part of her mind, she knows she’s your soulmate. Maybe she has your name too, after all. Maybe this is why, and the election was only a way for the two of you to meet. The more practical side of her sits on that part and tells it to shut up. Padmé might be her soulmate, but it’s been clear since their first meeting, if not sooner, that she isn’t Padmé’s. Whatever this is, it isn’t that.
Eirtaé’s parents, of course, are delighted.
“Of course you must accept, darling!” her mother says when Eirtaé shows her the invitation. “If you can’t be Queen, well, being a handmaiden is the next best thing. Think of how close you’ll be to the crown!”
“They say,” her father tells her, “that the Queen’s handmaidens are trusted with all her secrets, all her thoughts and fears—all her decisions. It’s a position of great influence.” And a great opportunity for inside knowledge, he doesn’t add, but Eirtaé hears it anyway.
With so many things pushing her in the same direction, she almost wants to refuse out of spite. What stops her is the knowledge that if she doesn’t go, she might never see her soulmate again except at the same formal distance as the rest of Naboo. However pathetic it might be to spend the next four years trailing after the Queen like a duckling, it would be even worse to be the sort of person whose entire life revolves around someone she met once when they were both thirteen. Eirtaé doesn’t want to be that sort of person.
So she can’t walk away from her soulmate, not to spite her parents and not to spite fate. Maybe she can’t evade her destiny, but she can choose how she fulfils it.
~
She presents herself to the palace as requested, precisely on time and impeccably dressed. Both her parents offer to come with her; she turns them down. They wouldn’t be going for her sake, anyway. They just want a chance to get inside the palace, to see the places only the monarch and their staff get to see. The opportunity of a lifetime, Eirtaé thinks to herself with vicious irony.
It isn’t the Queen who meets her, and she’s not sure if that’s a disappointment or a relief. Instead, she’s faced with a man who introduces himself as Captain Panaka, the new Queen’s head of security.
The Captain frowns disapprovingly at Eirtaé when she enters his office. He scrawls a note on the datapad before him, muttering, “Blonde,” under his breath in a tone that suggests her hair colour has personally offended him.
“...you wanted to see me?” Eirtaé says tentatively.
Captain Panaka gives her an assessing look, long enough that only years of posture training prevent her from fidgeting under his scrutiny. “No.”
It takes her a moment to remember the question, and succeeding does nothing to lessen her confusion.
“Then why am I here?” she asks, giving in to the urge to fold her arms and glare right back at him. It’s blunter and more confrontational than she’d usually be, but he was blunt first, and he strikes Eirtaé as the kind of man who appreciates directness.
“Honestly?” Panaka sits back a little in his chair, relaxing from the closed-off posture he was displaying before. “You’re here because the Queen asked for you.”
And what the Queen asks for, of course, she gets. Hope bubbles up in Eirtaé’s chest again before she can push it down. Padmé is just being kind, she reasons. It would fit with the way she behaved during the campaign—and even a more calculating politician might notice the benefits of hiring their former opponent. It’s a perfect way to signal both generosity and absolute confidence in the security of one’s position.
“Am I to be a handmaiden, then?” she asks, trying to keep her voice calm and level.
“Maybe.”
She waits, shifting back out of habit to a more correct posture with her hands folded neatly in front of her.
Eventually, when she doesn’t say anything in response, Panaka elaborates. “This is a preliminary assessment. As the Queen’s head of security, I have the final say in hiring the rest of her staff. You wouldn’t be my first pick,” he admits freely. “I’m looking for girls with training in combat and espionage, with the same build and colouration as her Highness.” That makes sense—it’s an open secret on Naboo that the royal handmaidens or pageboys act as bodyguards and body doubles for the monarch at need. “As far as I can see,” Panaka finishes, “you don’t fit any of those.”
If Eirtaé were choosing handmaidens based on those criteria, she has to admit that she wouldn’t pick herself either. She’s blonde where Padmé is brunette, half a foot taller than the new Queen, and has only the bare minimum of self-defence training that’s considered essential for the child of a prominent House: in other words, no more than Amidala herself will have. Panaka probably has better candidates coming out of his ears.
“Then—”
“There’s one more quality I’m looking for,” Panaka says, looking her right in the eyes. “And if you have it, you’re on my shortlist. The training, I can give you. The hair, we can cover up. But this is something that can’t be made. It’s found; it’s born.”
Queen’s request or not, Eirtaé suddenly feels certain that this is the decider. If she has whatever trait Panaka prizes so highly, she’s in. If not, there go her chances of spending the next four years with Padmé Naberrie.
“What I need,” he says, “is loyalty. People who will put the Queen first and their own concerns—their own lives—second. Do you think you can do that?”
She feels the name on her back burn like a brand, and there’s only one answer she can give.
“I can.”
He holds her gaze for a few seconds longer, staring as though he can look right through her skull to see the truth written on her brain. She stares him down, resolve stiffening her spine and lifting her chin. She cannot, she will not let her life be defined by one lost election in her teens. She has to make this into something more.
And if that means becoming a royal handmaiden, protecting her soulmate with her life...well, as soulmate relationships go, that doesn’t sound too bad.