The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

ESSAYS & DISCUSSION

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Always Three There Are

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Few myths have as strong a visible influence on the Star Wars saga as that of the one surrounding King Arthur Pendragon and his fabled kingdom of Camelot. The comparisons between the two sagas could span a series of essays. Both are tales of a war-ravaged world populated with knightly and magical figures, of a young man with an epic lineage and a fallen father, whisked away at birth from any knowledge of that lineage or the destiny it entails, and who is one day swept up by a wise mentor and set on the journey to fulfill that destiny. Each is also the tale of the downfall of a man and a world, a downfall that at its heart involves the betrayal of a son and the doomed affair of two forbidden lovers.

It is little wonder, then, that the most famous element of Arthurian myth should be a critical story element of the Star Wars saga as well. For years the idea of a love triangle in the prequels between Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and Obi-Wan Kenobi was a common and hotly debated fan speculation. Like the epic triangle of Arthur, his queen Guinevere, and his knight Sir Lancelot du Lac which had brought down Camelot, the theory's proponents argued, this triangle would be the downfall of all three people involved -- particularly Anakin -- and also herald the fall of the Republic.

These fans would be right, though not in the way most of them imagined.

Many variations on the Arthur myth -- the triangle included -- exist, but the basic story remains the same. Arthur arranges to marry the beautiful Guinevere against warning from the wizard Merlin that she will love someone else. When Lancelot arrives at Camelot and becomes the greatest knight of the King's Order of the Round Table -- as well as Guinevere's sworn champion -- he and the queen do fall in love, embarking on a forbidden and secret affair. Out of love for Arthur and desire to uphold their responsibilities, neither lover is willing to run away together; nor does Arthur acknowledge the affair, knowing he would have to punish his beloved wife and his best friend. Arthur's bastard son Mordred forces the issue when he publicly reveals the affair out of spite; Guinevere is sentenced to death for treason and Lancelot is banished from Camelot. Lancelot rescues her and spirits her away, and the remaining knights of the Round Table push Arthur to make war against him, resulting in the Order's disintegration. During this battle Mordred attempts to seize control of Arthur's kingdom, after which Arthur meets him in a duel, where they kill one another. In grief over the fall of Camelot and her husband's death, and her guilt over the affair which was the catalyst for the fall, Guinevere spends the rest of her life in a nunnery in penitence, begging Lancelot to never see her again.₁

The reigning Star Wars triangle theory called for the prequel trio's relationship to be a carbon copy of the dynamics of the Camelot triangle: It was a practically foregone plot element that Padmé would be engaged/married to Anakin, which meant that for this trio to "truly" duplicate the Camelot triangle, Padmé and Obi-Wan had to be the tragic lovers. This theory died with the release of Episode II, the film in which the prequel triangle's true arrangement also came to the fore.

Without any injection of romance between Obi-Wan and Padmé, the love triangle in the prequel trilogy and triangle in Arthurian myth already share very strong likenesses in both the natures of the individual characters and their interactions with one another. Each trio consists of an older and good-hearted but somewhat naive hero figure, a passionate and gifted young knight, and a beautiful noble lady. Each has the knight and lady playing tragic lovers caught between love and their sworn duties to the outside world -- duties represented by the third person in the triangle -- in a battle that will be at the heart of their downfall.

Aside from fitting into similar archetypes, each character even shares a comparable fate to that of their other-triangle counterpart. Anakin and Lancelot both have mystical backgrounds, are raised by solitary female figures (Anakin his mother and Lancelot a sorceress.₂) and grow up with the potential to be the greatest Knights either of their realms ever knew. Each will truly love only one woman his entire life, a love that will be forbidden and cause his downfall as well as hers. Both fail in their ultimate quests (Anakin becoming a true Jedi, Lancelot achieving the Holy Grail) because of attachment to those women, but father pure and chaste sons who do succeed in those quests.₃ Padmé, like Guinevere, is a beautiful noble lady who spends most of her life dedicated to serving a greater purpose₄, who finds passion with a young knight but because of it later loses both him and the world she dedicated herself to.₅ Obi-Wan, like Arthur, is the oldest, wisest, and least impetuous of the three, the embodiment of duty and responsibility, though each seems to have/turn a blind eye toward the forbidden love affair happening before him.₆ He is the one who, though of noble intent, still ends up with his life and the world he spent his own life upholding unraveling. Like Arthur, his greatest betrayal -- and eventual death -- comes at the hands of one he'd known as a brother/son.₇

Though the general structure of both triangles is the same, there are a couple of slight structural differences. One is that in the prequel version, the married couple and the forbidden love couple are one and the same. Padmé and Anakin are their saga's Guinevere and Lancelot, and Obi-Wan the symbolic Arthur not in any sort of marriage to Padmé, but as the embodiment of the obligations of the lovers that made a relationship between them impractical and forbidden. (As a Jedi in service of the Republic he represents both orders, whom Anakin -- whose oath expressly forbids an attachment to anyone outside the Jedi -- and Padmé both have previously sworn loyalties to. Guinevere swore an oath to Arthur by marrying him; Lancelot swore one to Arthur when Arthur knighted him.) Anakin and Padmé choose to pursue the relationship but keep it a secret, but, as with their Arthurian mirror, this decision will not lead to a happy ending for the lovers.

With Padmé and Anakin comprising both the married and the forbidden couple of the triangle, it also meant that she, the woman, was not the one at the main point of division between the three people -- the second major difference between the triangles. Their romance is, as in its counterpart, a crucial driving force of the triangle, but someone else is the focal point, wherein lies an arrangement that makes this triangle just as destructive -- perhaps even moreso -- than the Camelot one.

"He feels very passionately about becoming a great Jedi, but at the same time he feels so passionately for Padmé, and it's that confusion that really causes him all of his anxiety," says Anakin actor Hayden Christensen about his character in Episode II₈, laying out the true love triangle of the prequels: it is Anakin caught in the middle, torn between two separate but equally important lives. The prequel trilogy story is essentially how the Camelot triangle might have unfolded with Lancelot instead of Guinevere as its focal point.

Anakin's fall to the Dark Side comes not from the woman he loves loving someone else, but from himself being the one in the middle. With Padmé Anakin has the possibility of true love and a family; with Obi-Wan and the Jedi he has the ability to fulfill his dreams of power and adventure, to make a difference in the galaxy. By choosing to still remain in the Jedi Order but marry Padmé in secret, Anakin shows his great flaw in being unwilling/unable to part with either her or his life as a Jedi. The circumstances of his society do not allow him to remain on this fence, and by the time of the original trilogy of Episodes IV through VI he has lost both his love and his life as a Jedi, becoming a machine enslaved to a dark power. The irony is that had he chosen one relationship and given up the other, he would still have been incomplete, as -- like with Lancelot -- the other two in the triangle represent equally important needs of his character. Largely due to the circumstances of his time, however, true balance eludes him, and will elude him until his son Luke -- who does successfully manage to reconcile love and duty in his heart -- comes into his life.

Both triangles are a model of a sense of completeness that can only come about when their three parts are present and balanced, a balance which the laws of both triangles' societies greatly hinder any chance of. The Camelot triangle is also actually more equilateral than the Star Wars one in this regard: to take any one of the Camelot three away from the other two would leave those two equally incomplete, as displayed when Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot are each equally incapable of choosing between the two other sides and resolving the triangle. The Star Wars version maintains this only as far as Anakin is concerned: to take either Obi-Wan/the Jedi or Padmé away from him would leave him an incomplete individual, and to take Anakin away would -- and ultimately does -- leave Obi-Wan and Padmé incomplete as well. However, the loss of Obi-Wan would not -- at least as of the end of Episode II -- significantly diminish Padmé, nor vice versa. But both triangles still represent the inevitable collapse of those involved when nothing is successfully done to resolve an existing imbalance, instead making it worse.

The triangles in both epics are triangles of the most classic sort, pitting love and passion against duty and brutally highlighting the consequences that befall those who do not resolve the battle. The prequel triangle is a symbol of the conflict of the entire Star Wars saga, the conflict Anakin was prophesied to resolve: bringing balance to the imbalanced (in this case, the Force), a balance that is achieved only once Anakin is able to find the right balance within himself.

Notes/Sources:

1. Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur [The Death of Arthur], in Don Nardo, Heroes and Villains: King Arthur. (Lucent Books, 2003.) Pg. 80.
2. "Lancelot du Lac." Timeless Myths: Arthurian Legends.
3. "Lancelot does not achieve the Grail himself, because of his adulterous love, yet ironically the same sin has produced Galahad, the knight who does." Lacy, Norris J. and Geoffrey Ashe. The Arthurian Handbook. (Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1997.) Pg. 307.
4. Green, Thomas. "Arthurian Characters: Gwenhwyfar [Guinevere]." Arthurian Resources.
5. "I was a queen, and he who loved me best/Made me a woman for a night and day,/And now I go unqueened forevermore." Teasdale, Sara. "Guenevere." (poem)
6. The events on Geonosis near the ending of Episode II leave significant room for the possibility that Obi-Wan is aware of mutual feelings between Anakin and Padmé. Various pieces of film-supplementary literature taking place between Episodes II and III, such as issue #2 of the Dark Horse comic Obsession, follow the idea that Obi-Wan is indeed aware of a P/A relationship (though perhaps not of the true depth of it), even covering somewhat for it.
7. Wolfson, Evelyn. King Arthur and his Knights in Mythology. (Enslow Publishers, Inc., Berkeley Heights, NJ, 2002.) Pg. 112-116.
8. Hayden Christensen, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones "Love" DVD featurette. (Lucasfilm Ltd., 2002.)

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