When she looks back at their relationship, it’s a thousand different things that doomed it: how quickly they had decided to get married, having to lie to her family and friends, the frequent separations caused by their respective duties, how quick he was to violence (she remembered Rush, bloody and beaten), and a secret left buried in the sands of Tatooine that Padmé can hardly even let herself think about.

But it happened, and one day hearing Anakin was coming home early from the front brought dread to her heart instead of a smile to her face, when the force of his love for her feels suffocating instead of comforting.

A part of her will always love him—she can’t change that—but the next time she sees him, she forces herself to ignore his pleas and his tears and tells him that she wants a divorce.