Anakin Skywalker’s love for Padmé Amidala is one of the few constants left in his life. Yet even that love has a limit, and there is one side of Padmé that Anakin openly hates.
Why Anakin Hated Padmé’s Politician Persona
The moment happens in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin arrives to see Padmé and finds her already immersed in her role as a senator. She isn’t relaxed or affectionate. She’s composed, distant, and carefully controlled, the public face she presents to the Republic rather than the private person Anakin expects to see.
The novel describes her standing before him in full senatorial attire, her expression restrained and unreadable. Instead of warmth, her face is described as “nearly expressionless: attentively blank.” To Anakin, that restraint feels cold. It reminds him of the Senate, endless debate, and a system he already believes is incapable of fixing anything.
What triggers that reaction isn’t simply the clothes, but the transformation that comes with them. When Padmé adopts that look, she becomes distant, restrained, and guarded, a public figure rather than a person. In Anakin’s eyes, it strips away warmth and replaces it with protocol, turning a private moment into something formal and impersonal.
The book leaves no ambiguity about how Anakin reacts. Stover states it directly: “Anakin called it her Politician Look, and he hated it.”
The novel reinforces that this reaction isn’t isolated. Later, when Anakin watches Padmé operate openly as a senator, speaking in debates and negotiations, the narration again frames her in explicitly political terms. She is described as speaking in her “Politician Voice” and wearing her “Politician Look,” fully immersed in her public role while Anakin observes from the side.
What Anakin is responding to is not simply appearance, but behavior. In these moments, Padmé leads with diplomacy, patience, and procedure. She argues for petitions, peace talks, and constitutional limits, all of which place her firmly within the political system Anakin already distrusts. As the novel later makes clear, that distrust is not subtle: “The Senate. He hated the Senate. Hated everything about it.”
When Padmé fully embodies her role as a senator, she becomes inseparable from that system in Anakin’s mind. The careful tone, the restraint, and the emphasis on process all collide with his growing impatience and resentment. The hatred he feels toward the Senate bleeds directly into how he reacts to Padmé when she speaks and acts as Senator Amidala.