When Anakin and Padmé first met, Anakin was still a child—although she was already well on her way to being adult royalty. However, Anakin apparently rapidly aged between films, because by the time the two of them met again, they were both fully-grown adults, ready to fall in love.
Their road to romance was somewhat rocky, and the two of them had far more bad experiences together than good ones. By the end of Padmé’s life, Anakin had spent most of their time being downright terrible to his wife for no discernible reason. It’s obvious that Padmé deserved better, but Anakin rarely treated her as such.
10 Anakin Creeped Padmé Out Very Early On
After Padmé and Anakin were reintroduced, she had no idea what to make of the young man that Anakin had become. He was assigned to Padmé as her bodyguard, and she made it very clear that she was already uncomfortable with him in that position. He stares at her in an unsettling way, which prompts her to ask him, “Please don't look at me like that.”
Rather than respecting her wishes and attempting to smooth things over, Anakin asks, “Why not?” and she tells him, “It makes me feel uncomfortable.” He still doesn’t try to fix things, and actually looks at her in an even creepier way before she flees his presence.
9 Anakin Disrespected Padmé For No Good Reason In Front Of The Royal Advisory Council Of Naboo
Before Anakin was even cognizant of the world around him, Padmé was already being trained in the ways of the political universe in preparation for her future as a politician. Despite this, Anakin constantly thinks he knows better than Padmé. When he disagrees with Padmé, he always does it in an explosive manner—even in front of the Royal Council of Naboo.
Anakin is incredibly sensitive about his status as a “Jedi” and where his place is amongst everyone else. This oversensitivity and the way he blows up at Padmé were indicative of just how Anakin would always treat Padmé—unjustly and terribly.
8 Anakin Lost Padmé — And Would Have Permanently Lost Her If Not For R2-D2
It is, for a while, Anakin’s one job to keep Padmé safe and alive, and he frequently nearly fails at this. There are countless near-misses in which Anakin nearly saw Padmé killed or maimed in some way simply because he’s not that good at his job.
He even loses Padmé in a Geonosian factory for droids and other tech while the two of them were trying to save Obi-Wan Kenobi. If it hadn’t been for R2-D2, Padmé would have died in that factory; Anakin was constantly remiss as a bodyguard and as a partner to Padmé.
7 Anakin Forced Padmé To Live A Life She Told Him She Didn’t Want
When Anakin and Padmé were first starting to truly fall in love—or whatever one would want to call their relationship—Padmé made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she would want from a relationship. She told Anakin that she never wanted to be in a relationship with him.
In fact, Padmé made it incredibly clear that she saw having a secret relationship with Anakin as living a lie, and this was something she would never, ever do. Not long after, of course, the two have a secret relationship that even results in a secret marriage and two secret children.
6 Anakin Told Padmé That What He Saw Would Happen To Her
A torment that Anakin must continuously put up with was having visions of the future. He saw terrible things before they would even happen, and felt the need to unburden this knowledge onto others, as well. Anakin not only tells Padmé that he saw her die in one of his dream premonitions, but he details how it happened for her.
As always, Anakin was more concerned with his own well-being than anybody else’s around him, and Padmé had to figure out how to process and deal with it for him. She was even the one who tried to help, only to have Anakin blow her off. This is darkly humorous in its own way, as Anakin will end up self-fulfilling this prophecy.
5 Anakin Constantly Displayed Possessive Behavior Over Padmé
Over and over again, Anakin displayed incredibly possessive and jealous behavior towards Padmé and any man who ever interacted with her. When he found out that Padmé had had any sort of relationship with a man in the past, he acts like a scorned lover rather than somebody who has a partner with a romantic past, as all people do.
He acts like he owns Padmé, and is constantly angered when he feels threatened in any way that she may leave him or prefer somebody else over him. This insistent and unending paranoia bothered Padmé, but Anakin was simply incapable of letting it go.
4 Anakin Told Padmé Exactly How Dangerous He Was And Expected Sympathy For It
There were many things that Anakin told Padmé that he would have been better off simply keeping to himself. The man showed early on that he was an incredibly dangerous and threatening person, and still, people were surprised when he turned into Darth Vader. At one point, he even confessed to Padmé that he killed all the Sand People in revenge.
He detailed for Padmé what he did, and made sure to mention that he murdered everyone, “including the women and children.” Worse even than this is that Anakin kind of expects sympathy from Padmé for what he did to the Tusken Raiders, even the innocents, when what he truly admitted to was a genocidal massacre.
3 Anakin Rejected Padmé’s Attempts To Help Him Pull Back From The Dark Side
As Anakin grew more and more corrupted by the Dark Side, Padmé could see what was happening and wanted more than anything to pull Anakin back from the brink. She even went to Anakin and told him that they could leave everything behind and start a new life.
Anakin got angry at her for being a Separatist, but, honestly, Padmé was looking out for everybody else when she said this. She could see that the Republic was collapsing and that Anakin was close to snapping, and yet he still lashed out at her for trying to help him in the death throes of their story.
2 Anakin Force Choked Padmé Before He Completely Succumbed
Once Anakin started fully backsliding to the Dark Side, nothing and nobody could stop him from transforming into the monster he was becoming. After he killed the younglings, it was clear that the man who was Anakin Skywalker was long gone. However, things got even worse when Padmé tried one last time to pull Anakin back from the brink.
She approached him and attempted to save him, and yet he Force-choked her, strangling her until her body began to collapse. Obi-Wan and Padmé were supposed to be the two people Anakin loved and trusted above all others, and, in this sequence, he violently attacked them both, proving that he was too far gone at that point to ever come back all the way.
1 Anakin Murdered Padmé In His Turn To The Dark Side
For no apparent reason, Padmé died during Anakin’s transition to the Dark Side. He Force-choked her, apparently sending her body into meltdown mode, and she only lived just long enough to deliver their twins, Luke and Leia, before she apparently lost the will to live and simply died.
Anakin destroyed his life for nothing and destroyed Padmé for nothing. In the end, Anakin treated Padmé horribly quite often and was terrible to her for no reason even through her death.