Padme Amidala died with the Republic.
There was something symbolic about it, if one had the kind of mind that sought such connections. The fierce young woman, so bold, so bright, snuffed out as freedom died.
But Yoda was old. Too old to only see a symbol.
"There is still still good in him," were her last words.
Perhaps one might see them as the sign that she still had hope, but Yoda knew otherwise. He was old. So very old, and had heard those words too many times not to know what they truly were. The desperate plea of a woman with bruises on her throat that matched the hand of the one she loved.
Love had always been a double-edged sword. It could be the light that guided you, let you grow past your weakness—but that was not the kind of love Anakin and Padme had for one another. It had been a thing that had grown in the dark, strangling and suffocating, a thing that ate the warmth and the strength, and whispered that the other would leave, or slip away.
That love had destroyed Anakin.
Padme died out of love. Not just for the lost young man, whose despair was palpable even so far away from Mustafar. She had loved the Republic—what it stood for, what it should be. That was taken from her too, two blows one after another.
And so, she had died.
Perhaps, it was for the best.
Her children—already bright in the Force—would grow up without the burden of a mother's broken hopes and a desperate love for a man who had never existed.
Perhaps, it was a loss too terrible to measure.
Perhaps, Padme could have been the one who'd force the Republic to be reborn from its ashes.
In the end, whatever the answer to those questions would be did not matter.
Padme Amidala died with the Republic, like so many others. Clones, the younglings, Jedi, soldiers and civilians alike. Their hopes forever lost.
Her children were born with the Empire, like so many others. And with them, new hopes.
The Galaxy was growing darker.
But the stars always shone brightest during the darkest nights.
Some would burn out, but not all of them. Never all of them.