Your Headcanons?

[Dînadan]

And, you want to complain about Naboo having a Queen when Alderaan was supposed to have a Princess?

I think the problem most have with Amidala being a Queen is that she was a fourteen year old elected Queen, whereas Leia was an hereditary princess. The Naboo setup would make sense if she was just a puppet being used by the actual polititicians, but what is presented in TPM and the supplementary materials is that she got it by her statesmanship and politicking skills; in the real world there have been elected monarchs (e.g. the Anglo-Saxons elected kings at the Wittanmoot when the previous one died), but I'm fairly sure none were kids elected on their own merits and any kids who were elected were being used by their 'advisors' for the advisors' own ends.

[Rocketboy1313]

I think the problem most have with Amidala being a Queen is that she was a fourteen year old elected Queen, whereas Leia was an hereditary princess. The Naboo setup would make sense if she was just a puppet being used by the actual politicians, but what is presented in TPM and the supplementary materials is that she got it by her statesmanship and politicking skills; in the real world there have been elected monarchs (e.g. the Anglo-Saxons elected kings at the Wittanmoot when the previous one died), but I'm fairly sure none were kids elected on their own merits and any kids who were elected were being used by their 'advisors' for the advisors' own ends.

There is certainly a better story that could have been told there.
Imagine if Padme was a young princess and her mother was the queen who was killed in the takeover of her planet. That Naboo (or we could just be sane and make it Alderaan) had been under an occupation for years with Padme as a puppet ruler. She then enlists the help of two Jedi knights to help her free her people. In my continuity the Jedi work better as knight errant adventurers going around the galaxy fighting for freedom and justice. You could even have Padme step down to let new rulers come to power... The Organas for instance.

Years later when she is killed by her power mad black knight husband her daughter is given to Organa in secret. While her son is spirited away by Kenobi and (in my prefered continuity) two adventurers named Owen and Beru who were friends of the Jedi and knew of a remote and unheard of planet on the rim that Vader had never been too, where they can safely raise the one child Vader knew about (the fact there had been twins was not known to him).

[GandALF]

I like a lot of the ideas presented in the prequels they just are not used to great effect like in the original. The Trade Federation is a neat idea because it is commerce, the third tier of power. It's not a corrupt politician like Palpatine or a warlord like Tarkin, this is a business man, a David Xanatos or even a Gordon Gecko. Separatists could have been a neat counter point to the Republic. I only saw a couple episodes of Clone Wars but if i wrote it it would be the Separatists continue to fight by honorable means while the Republic uses means which are less and less ethical, like bombing civilian targets and framing the CIS for the murder of important leaders.

Something sort of like that happens. The civilian Separatist senate is kept in the dark about the military's war crimes by Dooku. Meanwhile Tarkin complains that the Jedi code prevents them from using tactics that would end the war sooner and that peacekeepers should not be leading a war. While on the flip side civilians protesting outside the Jedi temple view the Jedi as having failed or abandoned their role as peacekeepers by fighting the war.

[Dînadan]

While her son is spirited away by Kenobi and (in my prefered continuity) two adventurers named Owen and Beru who were friends of the Jedi and knew of a remote and unheard of planet on the rim that Vader had never been too, where they can safely raise the one child Vader knew about (the fact there had been twins was not known to him).

If you're going down that route, then it might be worth bringing back the old canon of Owen being Obi-Wan's brother. That would also colour Obi-Wan's talk in ANH about Owen's objections to Anakin going off to war actually being about Owen objecting to Obi-Wan going to war (and possibly dragging Owen and Beru with him against his better judgement).

[bronnt]

And, you want to complain about Naboo having a Queen when Alderaan was supposed to have a Princess?

I think the problem most have with Amidala being a Queen is that she was a fourteen year old elected Queen, whereas Leia was an hereditary princess. The Naboo setup would make sense if she was just a puppet being used by the actual polititicians, but what is presented in TPM and the supplementary materials is that she got it by her statesmanship and politicking skills; in the real world there have been elected monarchs (e.g. the Anglo-Saxons elected kings at the Wittanmoot when the previous one died), but I'm fairly sure none were kids elected on their own merits and any kids who were elected were being used by their 'advisors' for the advisors' own ends.

My first issue with Naboo having a Queen is that everything about Naboo was so poorly thought out that I don't want that planet to exist.

But it comes to this: If Naboo has elections for their rulers and these rulers serve set terms, then they really aren't monarchs by any definition. They may just call them "Queen" and "King" out of habit, like Romans continuing to use titles like "Imperator" and "Caesar" even when they ceased to be accurate-honestly, I'd be fine with that. But that means that titles aren't inherited on this planet, so there's no reason for Princess Leia to be a Princess of Naboo. Which was always the case, honestly: her existence was a well-kept secret and her parentage unknown, so the title had to have come from her adoptive family. There's no point in giving her a title that reveals her real parentage when her real parentage is secret, right?

So it's just awfully, annoyingly convenient that Princess Leia's birth mother also happened to be a queen, which has no relation to Princess Leia being a Princess. It's weirdly clunky and emblematic of how poorly thought out these ideas were. There was that one moment in the theater where I was like, "Oh, she's a Queen and she's Leia's mother! That makes sense!" Then followed 15 seconds later by, "Wait, this doesn't actually make sense since her, and her mother's, identities were kept secret!"

I actually have much more I could say about the lack of imagination and the lack of a proper story editor, but I think I've highjacked the thread far enough.

[GandALF]

So it's just awfully, annoyingly convenient that Princess Leia's birth mother also happened to be a queen, which has no relation to Princess Leia being a Princess. It's weirdly clunky and emblematic of how poorly thought out these ideas were. There was that one moment in the theater where I was like, "Oh, she's a Queen and she's Leia's mother! That makes sense!" Then followed 15 seconds later by, "Wait, this doesn't actually make sense since her, and her mother's, identities were kept secret!"

My pedantry demands the thread remains hijacked. Naboo is an elective monarchy while Alderaan is a hereditary monarchy. Bail Organa is Queen Breha of Alderaan's consort. Leia being a Princess has nothing to do with Naboo.

[bronnt]

My pedantry demands the thread remains hijacked. Naboo is an elective monarchy while Alderaan is a hereditary monarchy. Bail Organa is Queen Breha of Alderaan's consort. Leia being a Princess has nothing to do with Naboo.

Exactly. It's just narratively clunky to introduce her mom, as Queen. Why did her mom have to be a Queen? No reason at all. And yet there it is, and it just feels pointless. Especially since their definition of Queen includes democratic popular elections and set terms, so there's no reason in the story for her to be called Queen when you could use 50 other terms like President, Chancellor, Minister, Secretary-General, etc.

[Dînadan]

My pedantry demands the thread remains hijacked. Naboo is an elective monarchy while Alderaan is a hereditary monarchy. Bail Organa is Queen Breha of Alderaan's consort. Leia being a Princess has nothing to do with Naboo.

Exactly. It's just narratively clunky to introduce her mom, as Queen. Why did her mom have to be a Queen? No reason at all. And yet there it is, and it just feels pointless. Especially since their definition of Queen includes democratic popular elections and set terms, so there's no reason in the story for her to be called Queen when you could use 50 other terms like President, Chancellor, Minister, Secretary-General, etc.

Presumably the reason is for her to have a position of authority at such an early age as it's possible for adolescents to be monarchs. But that then hits the pitfall of those only being monarch via hereditary rulership rather than election, let alone with fixed terms.

Of course that then hits the pitfall of why she had to be so young, which is probably answered with so there wasn't a huge age gap between her and Anakin. Of course that just begs the question of why he has to be so young in Episode 1 (or even why having a age gap between them is a bad thing, so long as their romance doesn't begin until they're both adults).

[GandALF]

My pedantry demands the thread remains hijacked. Naboo is an elective monarchy while Alderaan is a hereditary monarchy. Bail Organa is Queen Breha of Alderaan's consort. Leia being a Princess has nothing to do with Naboo.

Exactly. It's just narratively clunky to introduce her mom, as Queen. Why did her mom have to be a Queen? No reason at all. And yet there it is, and it just feels pointless. Especially since their definition of Queen includes democratic popular elections and set terms, so there's no reason in the story for her to be called Queen when you could use 50 other terms like President, Chancellor, Minister, Secretary-General, etc.

Maybe its an extremely powerful executive branch, like a formalised version of an imperial presidency. It's probably also a nod to how every race or nation in Flash Gordon had a king or a queen. Every other planet in TCW also has some sort of monarch.

[Admiral X]

I'm guessing they called her a queen because they called Leia a princess in the first movie. But then claimed that it was an elected position because "democracy means good guys" or something like that. Of course that completely undermines the point of calling her a queen, since it not being a hereditary monarchy means that Leia wouldn't be a princess. Of course, since she was adopted, wouldn't her title be related to her position on Alderaan anyway?

As for why Amadala was so young, it really makes no sense at all to have a teenager lead your planet. My feeling is that she and Anikan were so young because Lucas was wrapped up in the idea of Star Wards being for kids (yet ended up getting really heavy into space politics for some reason, which most people, kids and adults, would probably find boring), and like a lot of people, for some reason, thought that kids would need to have a kid as a lead character in the movie to be interested in it. Forgetting, of course, that kids liked the first movies plenty without that.