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The first thing anyone noticed about Padmé Amidala was always the outfit. Crimson flowing robes underpinned saffron headdresses, emerald and sapphire baubles ornamented regalia of the highest quality in every possible hue under the Naboo sun. And the shoes! Elaborate platforms and tiered sandals, ornate soles and expertly woven straps.
Anyone may see that the effect was intentional: it required too much buttressing, too many hours of careful face painting to be in error. Astute observers may even have noted that the elaborate costumes offer a degree of security--any handmaiden might take the Queen's place in a time of need.
Yet what they did not see--what Padmé never allowed anyone to see--is that it is, at its core, a shell. The Queen was never seen in public without layer after layer of the finest fabrics, heavy jewels, and elaborate makeup, after all, and thus the Queenhood and all its trappings was something Padmé may remove at will.
Before public service, Padmé had never really felt like a human with a body. Most of the time, they felt a little like a faulty droid, one with a wire just a half a degree out of alignment. Sometimes they felt like an marooned creature who couldn't quite understand the language everyone else knew by heart. And sometimes they felt like a vast and unknowable expanse of the night sky.
Once, when they were a child of five or six, their mother took them to see a whalecloud from the Kaliida Nebula. It was a massive thing, a morass of particles floating in its translucent enclosure, a starlit swirl of galaxy dust coalescing from time to time into a massive blob, graceless and hungry and pressing against the walls of its cage. Padmé put their face up as close as they could and stared until their mother begged them to come away.
They had been sneaking out at night for as long as they could remember, stuffing their hair under a small cap (it was truly amazing how much volume the royal hairdressers could get out of so little). They would bind their chest and don plain linen trousers and a dark cotton shirt. They'd programmed the security droids to ignore their slight figure as they fled into the night. It was the only time they felt like a person--not a queen or a wonky droid or a blob too big for its enclosure, but a person with a little galaxy inside their chest.
Love can be the best thing that ever happens to a body.
When Padmé met him again, they thought they could be a person, or at least a caged tangle of guts that could pretend hard enough until it turned into one.
For a little while, it felt like he could reach in and realign the misfiring wires of their heart and make them into the girl she could never quite be.
It felt good. Until it didn't.
Love can be the worst thing that ever happens to a body.
The strange, cooing droids swept over Padmé's swollen form, their body distorted with the wonderful/terrible condemnation of love. They wanted to be rid of all of this, rid of it, they had tried, they tried and they couldn't do it, not now, not ever.
The droids, reading their spiking heart rate and budding panic attack in the midst of labor, pumped their veins full of sedation, and everything went fuzzy for a time.
When Padmé awoke, they had nothing. No clothes, save for the rough fabric of the hospital garments. No makeup. No servants, no other lives. They looked down at their chest and were surprised to see a flat expanse lightly bandaged with small, newly-healed incisions.
An incision along their belly still pulled with new scar tissue as well. Padmé padded across the hospital room to the droid in the corner.
"Excuse me," they said. "What happened?"
"You were in distress," the droid sang back in soothing tones. "We took necessary medical steps to alleviate it."
"Oh. Um. Thank you," Padmé said, cheeks burning. "May I have my shoes?"
"No," the droid answered.
"Why not?"
"It is our expert medical opinion they would cause you distress." The droid gestured toward the door. "Please use those."
Padmé looked at the shoes, simple sandals made of woven cord, and nodded to the droid.
"I'm leaving now," they said. "Don't tell anyone."
The droid cooed in assent, and Padmé left, feeling more like a person than they had in a long, long time.