1. The social elite of Theed consider the Lake Country aristocracy to be simple country folk, and the Lake Country aristocracy find the social elite of Theed to be frivolous snobs and artificial to the last. This is the battle that Padmé Naberrie, daughter of a gentleman farmer and a socialite, is born to.

2. She's five the first time her father allows her to accompany him on a relief mission. It's a simple mission distributing donations of food and clothing to refugees on Chommell Minor, but Padmé has never been off-planet before and that's what has her excited. She's not too excited to ignore the sadness and small amount of fear around her, though.

Her dad will later joke that asking that little girl to play ball was the first step in her political career.

3. The Naberrie family moves to Theed when she's eight. Sola's studying Architecture and Mom wants her to go to Myoon like she did but Mom history's so boring. She wants to do Legislature. She wants to help people, like Daddy does, and she's been able to put together a convincing argument since she was six years old.

None of them really like to argue with Padmé, anyway. She's too adorable and they never win.

4. Padmé briefly entertains the notion of not taking the pass to skip her Superior. Sabé was the only other person in her class who got the pass, and she's not really sure she wants her best friend to become her fiercest political opponent. Even at age eleven she understands the inevitability of this.

5. It's almost a relief when Sabé decides not to take it instead. But she's not going back to school so Padmé asks her to stay – it's never too early to start building an administration.

6. The first time she ever sees Anakin Skywalker, she doesn't really see him. Just another presence in the already-shabby mechanic store. Then everyone else has left and he's talking to her and he's actually sort of adorable under all that filth. It doesn't occur to her to ask what a kid as young as him is doing working in a place like this, not until she already has the answer.

7. After Ani has gone to bed, she stays up late into the night drinking tea with his mother. Shmi Skywalker is an amazing woman, Padmé decides as she tells her about her childhood on the nomadic routes and her own mother and the Tal people she comes from but has never known. When Padmé tells her she is a child of two worlds, too, Shmi smiles and takes her hand knowingly, and suddenly she is very gratefully she didn't go into the specifics. It would have ruined everything.

8. When she hears that the Jedi Council isn't going to train Anakin, her first thought is that maybe her parents could adopt him instead.

9. She'd never given much thought to the Gungans her people share their planet with, and she's wholly embarrassed that it is only now that they could be useful that she extends a hand of friendship. This is a time of need for them both, she tells herself, but she still feels the weight of judgment bearing down on her.

10. Padmé never wanted to be in a battle. She hates violence and has done everything she could up until now to prevent so much as a single blaster over this whole ordeal. But the Senate and it's ineffectual leader were her last hope for a peaceful solution, and this is her palace, her people, her home. There's no hatred here, no corruption, no slavery. She's going to keep it that way, not just because it's what she was elected to do.