This was inspired by re-listening to The Phantom Menace audiobook—the scene where Anakin and Padme meet is expanded to include the dialogue I reference here. Re-listening to it after a few years, I was surprised by how eerie and almost…sinister I found it. This was born from that scene.
"I'm going to marry you."
It had seemed at the time the childish and petulant proclamation of a boy—silly and innocent. She laughed, then, at his whimsy.
"You are an odd one—why do you say that?"
"I guess...because it's what I believe."
Ten years later, a man would stand before her—seemingly designed in form and nature for her. He was tall and handsome, of course—graceful in movement, but so impassioned and restless, brimming with such intense emotions that it bordered on reckless abandon.
For a woman who had lived in the complex world of subterfuge and subtlety that was professional politics from an extremely young age, the man who wore his heart on his sleeve was a salve for her weary soul. He was a godsend.
She wondered if he might not actually have some divine power—not figuratively, but truly.
I'm going to marry you.
Phrased as a fact. Not, "I want to marry you," or, "Will you marry me?"
Children do tend to take their own truths for granted. But still…
I'm going to marry you.
A declarative statement.
She now knows that he is destined for great things, far greater than anything she could ever hope to accomplish in her meager sphere of "senator" or "queen". His star burns brighter than any other she has ever known, perhaps more than any that has ever been—it is impossible not to feel, when she is near him, his aura has a near physical impact on her.
"From the day I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you."
His feelings for her are overwhelming…they overpower, they dominate. They make a rational woman, who has always considered service her calling and would not give it up for anything…the pinnacle of sane—risk throwing it all away.
For him.
She tells herself that it was fate that they meet, that their love was preordained.
Secretly she believes it more likely that he willed himself to be everything she knew and never knew she needed in a mate.
It thrills and terrifies her that life has spun so far out of her control so quickly.
"Well, I'm afraid I can't marry you…Anakin. You're just a little boy."
When she said that, it was as a patronizing adult to a child, attempting to humor him—kind but condescending. Hypocritical even, because despite her elevated status as Queen, she was barely out of childhood herself.
The joke had been on her.
At the time she believed she was speaking to someone who knew less of the world than she.
And the boy was simply telling her the truth. He had decided her fate the moment he saw her. She never had a choice.
Some might say it was "the will of the Force" that they form a union, but she knows better—it was his will, and she could no more fight the strength of his desire to have her than she could stop the tide from coming in and out.
It screams against everything she has ever been, but still she embraces his possession—his dominion.
"I'm going to marry you."
When Anakin says it, it is not just the declarative—it is the emphatic.