Star Wars and History

by Nancy Reagin

  Consider the Russian Empire, where a series of women ruled for most of the eighteenth century. Anna was a Romanov tsarina who ruled the vast country from 1730 to 1740, but there were many who felt she was too much under the direction of her advisers. Her cousin Elizabeth seized the throne in 1742 and ruled for a further twenty years. Like England’s Elizabeth, she never married and so could provide no legitimate heir to the throne. Tsarina Elizabeth worked hard to secure the royal succession. She adopted her nephew Peter as her heir, raised him, and arranged his marriage to a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. The young bride was rebaptized in the Orthodox Church as Catherine: later she was known as Catherine the Great.

  Catherine the Great seized power from her husband in 1762 and ruled Russia until her death in 1796.

  Catherine’s transformation from young German princess to autocratic Russian ruler is a tribute to her political skills. Although her husband was heir to the throne, when his aunt died in 1762, the state was divided. Peter was impulsive and impractical, wildly unpopular at his own court. Catherine gathered support from the Russian army with the help of her lover, Grigory Orlov, and his brother, both officers, who drove Peter out of office. At thirty-three years of age, Catherine was proclaimed empress and ruled Russia until her death in 1796.

  Rather than ruling in her son Paul’s name, Catherine governed Russia without any male figurehead. She seemed quite comfortable with wielding power in her own right. Well-read, Catherine reformed laws and the educational system, while also leading Russia in successful wars against Poland and the Ottoman Empire. As empress, she promoted religious toleration, going so far as to endow two mosques for the Muslim minorities in her state. Catherine wrote that “one should do good and avoid doing evil as much as one reasonably can, out of love of humanity.”15

  Catherine loved humanity and not only in the abstract. Twelve men were openly recognized as her lovers during her sixty-seven years of life. She had at least two illegitimate children from her relationship with Count Orlov. In her memoir, Catherine indicated that an earlier lover was the father of her official son and heir, Paul. To be so open about her sexuality made Catherine a figure of scandal. Rumors about her sexual habits circulated after her death, suggesting all sorts of depravity.16

  Here is another way in which the Star Wars galaxy’s culture differs dramatically from those in Earth’s history. Padmé’s relationship with Anakin is forbidden only because he, as a Jedi Knight, is expected to avoid personal attachment. For a Jedi to profess romantic love or to seek to be in a relationship is shocking. During the Clone Wars, Mandalorian duchess Satine Kryze uses this knowledge about the Order’s traditions and her friendship with Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to her advantage. When Senator Tal Merrik holds the duchess hostage, she distracts her captor by professing her love for Obi-Wan, who gamely plays along when he understands her objective. Merrik is surprised enough by their words of love to allow Duchess Satine to disarm him and break free.

  “I Was Not Elected to Watch My People Suffer and Die”

  A good queen had to be brave. Queen Amidala defies Chancellor Valorum and the bureaucratic mind-set of the Senate when Naboo is besieged by the forces of the Trade Federation. She then returns to Naboo to fight for freedom alongside her people. Princess Leia smuggles the schematics of the Death Star out from under Imperial control and faces down stormtroopers many times as she seeks to take down the Empire. Royal women in the Star Wars galaxy play key roles in stirring resistance to invasion and tyranny.

  So, too, did many women in our history. From Cleopatra to her near contemporary Zenobia of Palmyra, who launched a brief but shocking rebellion against the Roman Empire, queens in antiquity didn’t shy away from war. This link between women and war sharpens in the story of Boudicca, a queen of the Iceni tribe, allied with the Roman conquerors of Britain, who rebelled and led a devastating campaign against the might of Rome about a century after Cleopatra’s reign.

  According to the classical historians Tacitus and Dio, women often ruled in ancient Britain. Even more interesting, some were elected by leading members of the tribe.17 In this way, the Celtic tribes of pre-Roman Britain were more in tune with the populist ideals of Naboo and other planets in the Star Wars galaxy, choosing leaders through election and even opening that option to women. Yet it appears that Boudicca didn’t inherit power on her own: she took over rule of the Iceni after her husband, Prasutagus, died. According to the chronicles, the Romans were dissatisfied with receiving half of the king’s goods on his death. They took their anger out on the Iceni, beating the queen and raping her daughters. Demanding vengeance, Boudicca rallied a force of almost a quarter of a million Britons, women and men, against their Roman overlords. Her army sacked London and other great Roman settlements before the Britons were defeated and the queen ended her own life.18

  Princess Leia is a hands-on leader in the Rebellion. (The Empire Strikes Back)

  About a thousand years later, a resolute Italian noblewoman roused her subjects to war against the might of Emperor Henry IV. Countess Matilda of Tuscany defended the church’s independence against the empire during the Investiture Controversy of the eleventh century. She left her husband and cut off his access to her land and power, in order to provide support to the church leader. Her support was so successful that she was ultimately able to broker a reconciliation between the emperor and the pope at her stronghold of Canossa. Sadly, that peace lasted for only a short time, but Matilda continued to defend the church against the imperial army. As one of her chroniclers wrote, “Truly she acted nobly and magnificently, in a manner to which women are not accustomed; more I say, than manfully, she feared almost no danger. For whoever led her powerful army as she did?”19

  Although Matilda may have provided the troops to defend the church, she never took up arms herself. Her military contributions were more akin to those of Mon Mothma, a politically skillful leader organizing the Rebellion against a powerful and entrenched force. The same could be said of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem. This twelfth-century queen battled indirectly against her husband and coruler, Fulk. The king attempted to rule without her and smeared her reputation by suggesting she had an affair with her cousin, the noble leader Hugh of Le Puiset. Melisende reportedly made life in the palace so dangerous for Fulk that he was forced to retract the charges and concede her right to rule in 1134.20

  Royal women often rallied their supporters when danger threatened, as did Elizabeth I during the Armada crisis of 1588. She addressed the troops at Tilbury wearing a warrior’s breastplate and vowed that she had the “heart and stomach of a king” to lead them against the enemy.21 Sometimes such service was less public and more practical, as when the future Elizabeth II served as 2nd Lieutenant Elizabeth Windsor, a driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II.22 Princess Leia’s hands-on role in the evacuation of Hoth or the assault on the Imperial bunker on Endor would have been entirely in character for any of these royal women, who were used to taking charge in times of war or crisis.

  Queen Elizabeth’s greatest achievement was defending England against a planned Spanish invasion in 1588.

  “Are You an Angel?”

  A queen had an image to maintain, though perhaps not as high a standard of beauty as the angels of Iego, whom Anakin mentions to Padmé. Yet the image of a queen is bound up with the ceremony and the regalia of rule. Queen Amidala, burdened with heavy robes of state and pale under formal court makeup, appears a very different person from Padmé Naberrie, the royal attendant who escapes Naboo with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. In truth, the two women are the same person. Stories abound of kings and princes escaping notice and palace life, dressed as ordinary subjects. Sometimes these disguises failed utterly, as in the case of King Louis XVI of France, fleeing the French Revolution. His profile’s clear resemblance to that stamped on his coins gave the fugitive king away.23 How much easier would it have been for a queen whose rare public appearances were so marked by ceremony and heavy, formal styles to adopt a di
fferent identity away from hers at court?

  In the fifteenth century, European queens and noblewomen wore torturous court fashions: headdresses of wire mesh molded into unnatural shapes and stiffened gowns lined with fur made them seem almost inhuman. Under that formal finery, a very different person could be found. Just as Padmé makes her escape from the Trade Federation’s confinement in the guise of an ordinary handmaiden, Jacqueline or Jacoba, Duchess of Bavaria and Countess of Holland, literally threw off formal fashion to win her freedom during the Netherlands’ Hook and Cod War. Jacqueline was only a teenager in 1418 when her uncle forced her to marry a spoiled and boorish younger cousin, John of Brabant. Jacqueline fled to England, where she repudiated the marriage. At only a little more than twenty years of age, the young duchess married King Henry V’s younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who briefly championed Jacqueline’s cause. Tiring of the campaign against John of Brabant and his ally, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, Humphrey abandoned Jacqueline and renounced their marriage.

  Padmé Amidala escapes the Trade Federation’s blockade only after abandoning her formal court dress and makeup.

  Countess Jacqueline of Hainault disguised herself as a man and escaped imprisonment in 1426 with the help of two brave knights.

  Jacqueline refused to despair, even when Philip captured her and put her under house arrest in the castle of Ghent. Rather like Padmé fleeing Naboo in disguise, Jacqueline made her second escape in 1426 with the help of two loyal knights, as daring as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. The nobles smuggled men’s clothing in for their duchess to wear, in order to slip past her unsuspecting guards. Unfortunately for Jacqueline, her good fortune ended two years later, and she was forced to sign an agreement granting the Duke of Burgundy all power over her territories.24

  For all that most of these historical cultures agreed that women didn’t truly belong in the public world of politics, royal women were expected to be part of the public ceremonies of monarchy. In the sixteenth century, Hapsburg empresses and princesses in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire lived lives defined by public ceremonies. They accompanied their fathers, husbands, and brothers in grand processions and sometimes carried out these public events on their own. Most common and significant were weddings, but queens were also celebrated with grand entry pageants and parades when they visited subject cities or on occasions when their great service to the church resulted in an award of the Golden Rose from a grateful pope.25

  Ceremony and grandeur may have been useful for political power plays, but ceremonies also helped people cope with loss. Royal women were often given elaborate funerals that were as much a comfort to their subjects as to their immediate family. Consider the death of the seventeenth-century Thai princess Krom Luang Yothathep, who was seized by one of her father’s rivals and taken as a wife, in hopes of providing legitimacy to his rule. After her husband’s death, Yothathep retired to a monastery, where she stayed until her death in the eighteenth century.

  Even though she no longer held power, Yothathep was widely mourned. Her passing was marked by “a dramatic display of what a study of Renaissance England calls the ‘theater of death.’ Borne in a gold palanquin, the urn containing her ashes was carried up a gold tower built in the shape of the sacred Mount Meru. As many as ten thousand monks officiated in the rituals, which lasted for three days.”26 Many other royal women’s deaths were marked with great public mourning. Liliuokalani was the last queen of Hawaii, who fought helplessly against powerful settlers in the late nineteenth century. Deposed in 1893, she was tried for treason by the new government in 1895 and spent much of the rest of her life under watchful guard, for fear other Hawaiians would rise up in her cause.27 When she died in 1917, a state funeral featuring endless processions and stately Hawaiian decorations made a grand, if belated, tribute to the former queen. Padmé Amidala’s magnificent state funeral on her home world of Naboo also involves thousands of mourners who knew her as queen, Senator, and fellow-citizen, including her successor, Queen Apailana. Although Padmé is no longer there to inspire her people, her image continues to exert a powerful influence on those in the galaxy who believe in the ideals of the Republic, just as Liliuokalani’s memory was celebrated, particularly through the popular song that she composed: “Aloha ‘Oe” (Farewell to Thee).

  When former queen Liliuokalani died in 1917, Hawaiians mourned her death with a grand funeral.

  When Padmé Amidala dies of a broken heart, her former subjects on Naboo mark her passing with a solemn ceremony. (Revenge of the Sith)

  “Look, I Ain’t in This for Your Revolution, and I’m Not in It for You, Princess.”

  Although history is filled with stories of men as rulers and leaders, occasionally women filled these roles. Many women fought for power as fiercely as any men: Cleopatra used her troops and treasury, as much as her feminine allure and her wits, to seize and hold power in the ancient world. While law and custom severely limited women’s right to rule in many countries, even when an heiress such as Marie Theresa couldn’t hold the imperial power in her own name, she still ruled effectively. Catherine the Great’s life demonstrates that even when a woman wasn’t born into a ruling family, if she was ambitious and driven, she could rise to great heights and rule a great nation. Others, such as Boudicca, driven by the desire for vengeance, rallied their people into war against great empires and their armies.

  The royal women of the Star Wars universe aren’t in it for the power, let alone the money that Han Solo suggests is his motivation in A New Hope. He correctly identifies Leia’s interests as revolutionary. Padmé Amidala and her daughter are both driven by dreams of improving their people’s lives and saving the galaxy from tyranny. Queens in our history may not have faced the challenge of a Sith Lord, but they battled formidable opponents in war and diplomacy, often against overwhelming odds, much in the same way that their counterparts did, long ago in that far-away galaxy.

  Notes

  1. Great Britain abolished the law of primogeniture only when it came to the royal succession in 2011. Now, if a daughter is the firstborn, she will inherit before a younger brother. See Christa Case Bryant, “Kate Middleton: New Succession Rules Could Make Her Mother of Britain’s Next Queen,” Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 2011.

  2. Daniel Wallace with Kevin J. Anderson, Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology (New York: Del Rey, 2005), 9.

  3. Joyce Tyldesley, Cleopatra: Last Daughter of Egypt (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 28–40.

  4. Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 58–64.

  5. Tyldesley, Cleopatra, 142–191.

  6. Roller, Cleopatra, 153–154.

  7. Ibid., 80–82.

  8. Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 223–224.

  9. See the entries for Amidala, Padmé, and Naberrie, Padmé, in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia (New York: Del Rey, 2009), vol. 1, 27–28, and vol. 2, 352.

  10. Éva Deák, “‘Princeps non Principissa’: Catherine of Brandenburg, Elected Prince of Transylvania (1629–1630),” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anna J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 80–88.

  11. Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years’ War: Trial by Battle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 102–107.

  12. P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresia, 1740–1780, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 3.

  13. Derek Beales, Joseph II: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780, vol. 1(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 24–26.

  14. Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2010), 327–328.

  15. Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 4.

  16. Hunt, 329–330.

  17. Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin, Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen (London:
Hambledon, 2005), 8.

  18. Hingley and Unwin, 56–69. Also Natalie B. Kampen, “Boudicca,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), http://www.oxford-womenworldhistory.com/entry?entry=t248.e124.

  19. David J. Hay, The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 1046–1115 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2008), 70–90.

  20. Bernard Hamilton, “Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem (1100–1190),” in Medieval Women, edited by Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 149–156.

  21. Maria Perry, The Word of a Prince: A Life of Elizabeth I (London: Boydell, 1990), 286.

  22. Robert Lacey, Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 141–142.

  23. David P. Jordan, The King’s Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26.

  24. Martyn Atkins, “Jacqueline, suo jure countess of Hainault, suo jure countess of Holland, and suo jure countess of Zeeland (1401–1436),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/58930. Also Véronique Flammang, “Partis en Hainaut? La place de la noblesse hainuyère dans la lutte entre Jacqueline de Bavière et Jean IV de Brabant (1424–1428),” Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 123, no. 4 (2008): 546–549.