Okay on the one hand OW that got painful real fast, but on the other hand that is exactly what I was hoping to get out of that question.  This AU is just so fucking fantastic, I love it.

Look, I’ve been very cracky and fluffy and fun around here lately, I know, but if I go a month without someone being at least mildly traumatized by something I wrote then I will lose all my writerly powers and turn into a pillar of salt and blow away, okay, that’s just how it is. Therefore, Darth Vader is gonna have to learn real quick that every time his Master tells him to lay back and close his eyes, he better start answering to “Anakin” again ASAP or he’s not gonna get hurt the way he likes at ALL. 

*coils protectively around this EXTREMELY EXCELLENT thing*

Cracky fluffy Mace Windu taking Anakin out for truckloads of glowing space ice cream and making morbid jokes is great, but for real I just want to talk about Empress Amidala and Vader and their twins who are probably really strange in this world and how the galaxy reacts when Queen Padme of Naboo is suddenly (and aggressively) promoted and the intricate details of how the Jedi flip their collective shit.

@words-writ-in-starlight: i continue to be trash this au matters to me so much i would murder someone for a movie trilogy set in this au my priorities probably need rejiggering ehhhhhh who gives a fuck not me and not padme because she’s busy trying not to let the galaxy go to shit now that she’s been involuntarily promoted to empress and sith master and person-holding-vader’s-chain (and the whole thing with her ordering him to answer to anakin is SO EXCELLENT) (this is exactly the kind of pain i feed on)

I think she ordered him to answer to “Anakin” exactly once and after that he just kind of had to learn the tells of when she wanted “Anakin” behavior out of him–the difference is so subtle for BOTH of them that it’s sort of a nightmare to get it just right, especially since “Anakin” is not exactly who Anakin actually WAS, just certain parts of Padmé’s perception of him that she knows damn well she’s exaggerating but wants anyway–especially because Padmé does NOT respond well when she does/doesn’t get him when she doesn’t/does want him. 

Vader has an excellent sense of balance, at least. 

It might be funny, if there was anyone left he could make the joke to. Definitely not any of the surviving Jedi. >>;; 

MAN you are right, though, Luke and Leia are probably gonna grow up VERY UNUSUAL children, especially because Padmé will occasionally say things like “here is the list of things you need to lie to your father about no matter what” and VADER will occasionally say things like “eventually you’ll probably want to destroy each other and that’s a very natural feeling but I would recommend not following through on it because ruling the galaxy with a partner to do the parts you don’t like is just SO MUCH better”. 

And meanwhile Luke is such a fucking sunshine bomb and Leia is so very fiercely JUST and KIND, no one is ever gonna believe they’re the Empress and Vader’s. Did–did Obi-Wan Kenobi maybe get Mustafar-ed for causing these two? Are these two HIS fault? 

Okay, no, never mind: they’ll believe it the first time someone lets Princess Amidala anywhere near a lightsaber. They will believe it and FEAR IT. 

@words-writ-in-starlight: WOOOO weird fucked up force twins who are on orders to lie to their father and who are a mystery to the galaxy luke who is just like a fucking space labrador retriever and his sister who is here to kick ass in the name of JUSTICE (maybe they don’t have labs in space because luke is taking up all of the sunshine cuddliness?) and their mother is like on the verge of a breakdown every time leia is talking to vader because it is VERY IMPORTANT that leia and vader have a very particular relationship in which leia doesn’t come down like a hammer on the whole ‘empire vs democracy’ thing (it’s KILLING padme that she can’t publicly train her daughter as a democratic politician) and in which leia learns the force from vader but doesn’t learn…his kind of thinking because padme is sitting there looking at these two kids who are just spilling power left and right like a goblet overfull of wine and she’s just thinking 'if i let him vader would raise these two as the next part of our dynasty’ vader ADORES his kids he would give them the galaxy in a heartbeat laid out all starlight and fire on a silver platter and he has that option like that option is AVAILABLE to him and padme is TERRIFIED and padme does what needs to be done to save her children

No, no, not here. Padmé does what needs to be done to save the GALAXY. Padmé would die right now if she thought it would leave the galaxy a free Republic again; Padmé would’ve died in the delivery room, would’ve taken the twins with her into the Force, would’ve given up ANYTHING to avoid so much death and darkness. Anakin could never do the math, but Padmé knows that one or two or three versus three THOUSAND is not even a real sacrifice. 

It is a sacrifice, of course. But there’s giving up your own neck for a greater purpose and there’s slitting three thousand unwilling throats on someone else’s altar. 

And Vader really was right when he handed her the Empire. Padmé Naberrie can be Empress Amidala and still be Padmé Naberrie, and she can do the math, and she can hold him back when he’d tear the galaxy past the blood and to the bone and never, ever stop. She knows the difference between making a sacrifice and TAKING one. 

She knows what a Queen must do for her people and really–is an Empress all that different from a Queen, when all is said and done? It’s just another name for something very similar. A sacrifice, and a sacrifice. 

So yes. An Empress is very, very different from a Queen. 

“Let me tell you about how to make a sacrifice,” Padmé Naberrie says with Empress Amidala’s mouth one day when Vader is far away cutting the galaxy to the blood, and the twins look up at her curiously. “Let me tell you what a dynasty is and should never be.”