How Much Did Anakin REALLY Love Padmé? (2024)

Given his trajectory, it's easy to question whether Anakin Skywalker’s love for Padmé Amidala in Star Wars were ever truly genuine. Anakin and Padmé met when Anakin was still just a young boy in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Though he was already infatuated with her then, it was a boyish crush — one that Padmé could not reciprocate at the time. However, when they next met in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Anakin and Padmé’s feelings for one another grew into something resembling love, and their wedding at the end of the film solidified their relationship as one of the most important romances in Star Wars history.

One criticism often lobbed at Attack of the Clones is the rushing of Anakin and Padmé’s relationship, and the suspension of disbelief necessary to understand why Padmé would agree to marry Anakin. She knew he was volatile and even murderous after he slaughtered the Tusken Raiders. As such, the only reasonable explanation for her marrying Anakin is that she was truly in love with him. Since Anakin has never been anything but infatuated with Padmé, however, the question remains whether his feelings for her were a genuine and all-forgiving love as Padmé felt for him, or whether his tendency for darkness clouded his judgment and thus his feelings for her at every turn.

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Anakin's Love For Padmé Was Deeply Flawed

In truth, Anakin’s love for Padmé was deeply flawed, and these flaws were only exacerbated by their secret marriage. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which includes a few episodes dedicated to exploring Anakin and Padmé’s relationship within the wider context of Star Wars' Clone Wars. These episodes prove that Anakin’s feelings for Padmé were overly possessive, jealous, and self-absorbed, especially when Anakin came face to face with Rush Clovis, an ex-senator and banker who harbored romantic feelings for Padmé. Anakin’s worst flaws surfaced when confronted with Clovis, beating him to a pulp and dismissing Padmé’s objections that she had no feelings for her disgraced colleague.

Anakin became so blinded by the mere idea that someone else might have an interest in Padmé that he couldn’t see right from wrong anymore. Even Padmé’s intervention barely stopped him from killing Clovis. He disregarded his wife’s feelings entirely, listening only to his rage-induced thoughts, losing all objectivity and allowing himself to be swayed by jealousy. Though other Star Wars projects, like the books by E. K. Johnston that focus on Padmé, showed a different side of her relationship with Anakin, one where their chemistry and loving nature was more apparent, these lesser-known projects aren't enough to counteract the evidence of Anakin’s greed from The Clone Wars and the rest of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Was Anakin's Love For Padmé Ever Genuine?

Given Anakin’s predisposition for possessiveness and jealousy, it’s hard to believe that his love for Padmé was pure and genuine. There are different types of love, certainly, but true love is selfless and filled with warmth and kindness. Those words cannot be used to describe Anakin’s feelings toward Padmé. He never fully trusted her, which caused him to act out selfishly and utterly disregard her feelings. His sheer panic at the thought of living without her would suggest that he did truly love her, but this was once again marred by his selfishness and Anakin's conviction that Padmé needed to stay with him forever, even if their relationship would always be spoiled by the dark side.

Anakin’s unhealthy view of their relationship can likely be attributed to the fact that he never saw an example of a wholesome and loving relationship during his younger years. He never knew his father, and though his mother loved him, the brutality of her death allowed Anakin’s rage to eclipse whatever warmth he might have still carried with him from his childhood. Combine that with the Jedi’s strict rules on relationships, as well as the insistence that any type of deep personal connection would lead to the dark side, and it is no wonder that Anakin was never able to feel a healthy sort of love for his wife. He was never taught the difference.

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Why Anakin's Love For Luke Could Redeem Him

The reason why Anakin’s affection for Padmé couldn’t save him while his love for his son Luke Skywalker was able to redeem him is quite simple. There was no ulterior motive there. Once Anakin resurfaced from the depths of Darth Vader’s darkness, he knew that it was already too late for him, but he would be able to save his only son. That was a selfless deed, born out of pure affection and love, a love of the last remaining thing that linked Anakin to Padmé and the life he knew before Palpatine’s manipulations. A link to a time when he could still have become a force for good, as opposed to the living embodiment of darkness.

Selflessness is one of the cornerstones of the light side of the Force, the idea that one life cannot stand in the way of the greater good. Anakin saving Luke Skywalker embraced that ideal wholeheartedly. He knew that his son would be a force of good in the galaxy, opposing everything he had stood for all those years, and so sacrificed himself to Palpatine’s all-encompassing anger and hatred to ensure a new and hopeful future. Though Anakin’s affection for Padmé was always sullied by darkness, in the end, it led to one of the truest forms of love that Anakin had ever known and Star Wars has ever seen — that between a father and a son.

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