Jared Ray Webb 🎈

Anakin did not kill Padmé. The medical droid even said she was physically healthy, but she had simply lost the will to live. She chose to die. Her love for Anakin was never unconditional. It was conditional on him remaining loyal to a Republic that was already rotten, run by a corrupt Senate, manipulated by a Sith, and happy to send clones and Jedi to die in an endless war it refused to end. The moment Anakin rejected that system, she could no longer reconcile the man she claimed to love with the idealized version of him she had built in her head: the good Jedi, the loyal servant of the Republic. The fantasy she created mattered more to her than the actual person in front of her, and it even mattered more than the two children she was about to bring into the world. She had the strength to fight the Trade Federation, to challenge the Senate, to stand up to Anakin when it suited her principles, but she could not find the will to live for Luke and Leia once Anakin stopped performing the role she needed him to play? She did not die because of the Force choke, but because she would rather abandon her children than accept a reality in which Anakin had chosen her (and their children) over a failing, corrupt Republic. The writers made that clear.