Queen’s Peril by E.K. Johnston. Disney Lucasfilm Press, 2020. Star Wars / Disney Canon / Queen Trilogy 2.
This essay is part of Star Wars: A Reading Series.
“We are brave, your highness.”
With these words, Padmé instructs her closest friend, handmaiden, bodyguard, and body double, Sabé, to accept Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin’s plan to escape Naboo during the Trade Federation occupation in order to plead for her planet, in person, before the Galactic Senate. It’s a small moment, a missable moment, perhaps, in The Phantom Menace—unless, of course, you know that it’s Sabé dressed as Queen Amidala of Naboo, and not the queen, Padmé, herself. It’s also an odd line, a bit awkward in the moment, spoken with obvious emphasis, as if suggesting to the audience that the words mean more than they say. And, of course, they do.
E.K. Johnston’s Queen’s Peril—the middle volume in a trilogy, following Queen’s Shadow (2019) and preceding Queen’s Hope (2022)—is a novel about these small, sometimes odd, and easily missable moments in The Phantom Menace. It’s a novel that imbues new meaning to the film in an effort to tell Padmé’s story and those of her handmaidens: Sabé, Rabé, Saché, Yané, and Eirtaé. If Queen’s Shadow was about how Padmé found meaning and motive, after her queenship ended, by taking on the new role of senator of Naboo, navigating the Senate’s internecine conflicts, managing her public image, and standing for a different kind of galactic politics—one of solidarity and comradeship that connects planets in service of the great ideals for which the Republic stands, that puts people before policies—then Queen’s Peril is a quieter book, taking us back to Padmé’s beginning, to the day she wins the first (of two) elections to be queen of Naboo.
It is, perhaps, an odd choice to tell the story of Padmé’s origins in the middle, since the novels of Johnston’s trilogy each map to one of the films of the prequel trilogy in terms of what “gaps” in the narrative they seek to fill (with Queen’s Hope giving further context to the events leading into Revenge of the Sith). That said, I don’t believe the initial plan was for a trilogy of novels, but for Queen’s Shadow alone, since up to this point the Disney Star Wars YA novels had all been one-offs, not series: Claudia Gray’s Lost Stars (2015) and Leia, Princess of Alderaan (2017), Beth Revis’s Rebel Rising (2017), and Johnston’s earlier novel, Ahsoka (2016). Although Queen’s Shadow was announced as a standalone in the vein of the Leia, Erso, and Ahsoka novels, it must have proved popular enough to ask Johnston for another Padmé book—and no doubt everyone saying “finally, something that isn’t Lucas’s character assassination of Padmé!” helped convince Disney Lucasfilm Press that a few more novels might be worthwhile. One choice might have been to simply move on (after all, there are ten years between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones), but I imagine Disney wanted a book for each film. So Queen’s Peril was published a year after Queen’s Shadow, and it feels like a novel written quickly. Not only is it sixty pages shorter, with the greater burden to show how Padmé became the Padmé we met in The Phantom Menace, but it is also a much more narrow and narratively constrained novel.
While the step back in time is a bit strange, though, the throughline between the novels is clear. In Queen’s Peril, Johnston shows us a younger Padmé whose sole, vague, and admittedly naive motivation is to “do good” for the people of Naboo. And her experiences in planetary politics, then interplanetary conflict, then in a rebellion against an illegal occupation sharpen her skills, her determination, and her friendships, revealing the fierce and determined Padmé we know and love in The Phantom Menace and on whom Johnston so wonderfully builds in Queen’s Shadow. Queen’s Peril also spends more time with the handmaidens, develops their personalities and backgrounds, and gives readers a sense of them beyond the names and duties they perform, so that, by the end, we understand the tragic sacrifice Saché made, the hesitations Yané had about giving up her identity, and the struggles Sabé went through to understand her relationship with Padmé. I say this without being facetious in the least, and with high praise: the novel is ultimately about why teenage girls rock and are the future of politics. In this way, while a much less impressive book than its predecessor, Queen’s Peril continues the important work of feminist recovery begun in Queen’s Shadow.
Queen’s Peril begins the day of Padmé’s election to the queenship of Naboo. As in Queen’s Shadow, Johnston doesn’t really have anything to say about why Naboo elects, preferably, teenage girls—only that they do, that Padmé at 14 is considered young (15–16 is more common), and that Padmé was always considered the frontrunner who would reinvigorate the planet after the isolationist reign of Queen Sanandrassa. But this whole thing about Naboo electing teenagers for queens is actually a bit controversial within the many Star Wars novels, comics, and sourcebooks that comment on Naboo royalty, since the earliest texts, like Star Wars Journal: Queen Amidala (1999), refer to Padmé’s predecessor as King Veruna and later comics and sourcebooks would note that Veruna was corrupt, ruled for more than a decade, was assassinated, etc. Even Disney’s own, supposedly singular and holistic canon kept this interpretation (which would seem to go against Lucas’s films) by including Veruna in the Star Wars Character Encyclopedia (2016).
Johnston, then, restores the original idea that Naboo is this strange, but perhaps wise, place for putting its political fortunes in the hands of teenage girls. Only… Johnston doesn’t really have an explanation for why the Naboo do this, whether it’s tradition, how such a tradition came about, why the terms are only for two years, why queens can only hold office twice, why the position is a queen to begin with, especially since Johnston notes that the planetary governor (also an elected position) ranks higher than Padmé does (what that means, we never find out). Indeed, many of Padmé’s early experiences of queenship are of being something of a nominal figurehead who can and does set policy, but only by convincing other, staid political actors like governor Sio Bibble that her policies are the right way forward for Naboo. Whether Padmé as queen has the unilateral authority to do so is entirely unclear, though everyone is sure that the queen, and only the queen, can legally sign treaties with extraplanetary parties, hence why the Trade Federation needs to capture Amidala, why they blockade the planet, and why Darth Sidious eventually sends Darth Maul after her when she escapes.
All of this is to say that Johnston inherits something of a mess with regard to how Naboo and the queenship operates, but she also makes decisions in the narrative of Queen’s Peril that ultimately are meant to resolve some of these questions, while leaving others just as murky and unclear as before. The latter is particularly unfortunate, given that Padmé is the political character in the prequel trilogy and throughout the Clone Wars era of the Star Wars storyworld. The episodes she appears in in The Clone Wars, for example, typically forward our understanding of the Republic’s political efforts during the war with the Separatists and Johnston’s Queen’s Shadow is committed to portraying the internecine conflicts of the Galactic Senate that hamper the government. Queen’s Peril, though, is given an unprecedented opportunity to invent and describe how an elected monarchy might, in practice, work, but the novel has frustratingly little to say about it! Perhaps she was hamstrung by the Lucasfilm Story Group, who wanted to leave the details unclear, lest further contradictions with the vaunted canon arise, or perhaps everyone involved thought no one would want to know why Naboo elects teenage girls to rule their planet. If the latter, they sorely misjudged who might be reading these books because I have a feeling that anyone who knows Padmé is 14 when she’s the queen probably wants to know more about the culture, society, and political system that landed on teenage queens.
All of this has been a long aside to say that where Johnston’s interests really lie in Queen’s Peril is in the emotional journey of Padmé and her handmaidens. In fact, Queen’s Peril is as much about Padmé as about the handmaidens, to the extent that most of the plot of the novel is not easily recountable because the majority of it is vignettes that take readers into the growing friendships between the handmaidens and Padmé, but also among the handmaidens themselves, who have to navigate what being a handmaiden means in the course of their lives, what they are giving up to be here, and why they would want to serve Padmé. And here, Johnston really shines, because we get a strong sense of most of the handmaidens, especially Sabé and Rabé, and to a lesser extent Saché.
Sabé is cast as the girl who is always second best, the constant striver and overachiever, but never the one on top—and it is this quality that makes her perfect to be Padmé’s leading handmaiden (honestly, that’s kind of harsh, but I sort of understand the narrative trajectory here, wherein Sabé has to come to terms with being second-best, and it works in large part because we know, from The Phantom Menace and Queen’s Shadow that Sabé plays such a critical role in Padmé’s story). Rabé, by contrast, is the Han Solo scoundrel type: rascally, criminally inclined, and always ready with a quip. Saché is the youngest, at 12, and her personality is mostly “she’s the youngest” but Johnston includes her in large part to show how a younger girl looks up to and admires the teenagers around her, how the tensions of a crush on another of the girls (Yané) leads to poor behavior she has to overcome, how she experiences her first period (Padmé’s period also becomes a minor plot point), and how ultimately she proves to be the most resilient of the girls because she endures three hours of torture at the hands of the droid occupation forces, without ever betraying her friends. The other two girls, Eirtaé and Yané, are mostly overlooked.
The handmaidens are so important to Queen’s Peril that the structure of the novel is organized around them, with the novel divided into five narrative sections—“Strength,” “Cunning,” “Distraction,” “Bravery,” and “Determination”—whose titles map to the major theme of the events as we follow Padmé’s increasing political savviness in the role of queen and then her response to the invasion of Naboo. Each section begins with a brief scene showing how and why Panaka, captain of Padmé’s royal security service, recruited a handmaiden. We meet Tsabin in “Strength,” the musician who becomes Sabé; Rabene in “Cunning,” the art forger who becomes Rabé; Eirtama in “Distraction,” the engineer who becomes Eirtaé; Suyan in “Bravery,” the weaver who becomes Yané; and Sashah, the girl in the background who manipulates Panaka into the role she wants, and so becomes Saché. Each of these girls, we learn, is an absolute master at what they do. And each figures out who Panaka is and what he wants of her. They become, individually and collectively, Padmé’s strength, cunning, bravery, and determination—as well as prove the occasional distraction. And they gladly take the chance to be part of something bigger, to do the “good” Padmé wants to accomplish with her reign. In honor of Padmé giving up her name to wear the mantle of the queen’s anonymity, they each take on a name ending with é.
All of this is, basically, “teen girls rock!” stuff, and it’s great. Johnston embraces the idea that a story about a 14-year-old queen and her teenage handmaidens is necessarily going to have them behaving like teenage girls, and she uses that simple fact to her advantage by diving into teenage girl stuff—crushes, periods, jealousies, hobbies, music fandoms, differences in maturity between girls just a few years apart in age, the burden of responsibility placed on each, concerns for the future, and more—without doing what so much of the prequel trilogy did by dismissing Padmé as “the girl character.” In other words, it’s hard not to take immense joy in the girliness of Queen’s Peril as it slows down to give us a glimpse into the lives of these incredibly skillful, accomplished teenagers who rise, quite suddenly, to the heights of power and political intrigue on their planet and in the galaxy. To that end, though, I do wish Johnston had spent any time at all talking about why Padmé is queen: what did she campaign on, why do these girls believe in her specifically, what does she want to accomplish on behalf of Naboo? We get some glimpse at the latter question, but it’s slim pickings.
I’ve said little about the plot of Queen’s Peril up to this point because, really, there’s very little plot here. Broadly, yes, it’s the story of how Padmé comes into her own as the queen, how her handmaidens take to their new identities and roles, how they in the process essentially reinvent the role of the handmaiden, and how, toward the end, Padmé handles the invasion of her planet. Most of this is told through vignettes in which Johnston brings the characters and their skills to the point that everything they are able to pull off in The Phantom Menace, namely by use of body doubles, is possible. This is done a bit awkwardly, though, since Johnston makes clear that it’s not exactly normal for Naboo royalty to be concerned with getting killed, not since a distant historical war with the Gungans, and so everyone—Padmé included—thinks of Panaka as unnecessarily paranoid and his desire to train the handmaidens as bodyguards is equally new to the institution of Naboo’s royalty. Johnston suggests, though, that Panaka is unusually aware of the instabilities in the galaxy, especially in the Mid Rim, through his close friendship with Senator Palpatine. Similar brief vignettes featuring Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan affirm the idea that anyone paying attention would be wary about the brewing dangers in the galaxy caused by the conflicts over trade routes spearheaded by the Trade Federation, so much so that Obi-Wan is forced to study politics and history to keep up on current events.
In these context, where the idea of the handmaidens as bodyguards is wholly new to the moment, the handmaidens themselves invent the idea of acting as body doubles for Padmé, at first seemingly for the fun of it and, later, to complement Panaka’s measures and ensure that Padmé could disguise herself as a handmaiden to gain information she might not otherwise be privy to as queen. Of course, I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense, in the storyworld, for what the handmaidens do to be a new thing, since in doing so it underscores just how perfectly timed they are to expertly handle the events of The Phantom Menace—and that makes them seem a bit too good to be true. But, setting aside the logic of making what Padmé’s handmaidens do a new development in Naboo royal policy, Johnston deftly shows how the handmaidens devise their strategies, especially the body doubling, for example in a brief scene where Padmé tricks some guards, and then Panaka, and walks out of the queen’s chambers to grab a book from the library. Moments like these abound and serve for more than half of the novel’s plot. But there are two major events that Johnston focuses on in Queen’s Peril, one her own invention and the other, as to be expected, is a retelling of the events of The Phantom Menace from Padmé and the handmaidens’ perspectives.
If Padmé has a political direction in which she wants to take Naboo, and which perhaps she campaigned on (though that’s never specified), it’s anti-isolationism and intra-sector cooperation. She deeply criticizes Sanandrassa’s isolationist policies that cut Naboo off from the rest of the Chommell sector, which consists of “more than thirty planets and several thousand settled dependencies” (all of which are represented in the Galactic Senate by a single senator, chosen by the queen of Naboo, thereby stressing again my comments in my essay on Queen’s Shadow that the extent of the Republic’s purported representative democracy is highly suspect!) (122). Already, as Padmé assumes the thrones, the problems caused by Sanandrassa’s isolationism are being felt: no planet in the sector will trade with Naboo for the food they need to make up the year’s agriculture shortage (a shortage caused by the agriculture ministry’s overreliance on out-of-sector trading partners). So Padmé hosts a Chommell sector summit to increase cooperation between the planets, air grievances, hear the poorer planets’ concerns, and seek mutually beneficial solutions for all.
Padmé’s summit reveals tensions, of course, between what few attendees deign attend and shows that even a small sector like Chommell is home to multiple species, has a history fraught with layers of colonialism, and represents different government structures: the Jafan, for example, are hairless blue humanoids living on a 300- year-old colony ruled over by the family who settled their world, while the Kreeling are humans who run a strictly ordered mining world that ensures profitable production by “less than democratic” means (124). The success of the summit gives Padmé the chance to show the kind of leader she wants to be: one who seeks the common good by offering what compromises are possible, winning the confidence of her detractors through her charisma, will, and tenacity of her efforts. She is able, for example, to ensure the delivery of foodstuffs for Naboo in exchange for changes to Naboo’s cultural policies. At present, Jafan is losing its artists to Naboo, with more than three thousand Jafani artists in residence on Naboo, where their work is more lucrative, leading to stagnant cultural production on Jafan. Padmé suggests a cultural exchange program, not a perfect solution, the Jafan delegation leader Harli notes, but Padmé’s efforts to address an evident source of intra-sector tension is greatly appreciated.
While much of what Johnston says about Naboo in Queen’s Peril is quite thin stuff, what I do appreciate is that it complicates the utopian vision of Naboo in The Phantom Menace. Johnston shows that Naboo’s relative wealth (it’s unclear where it gets that wealth) and its consequent emphasis on art and culture is contrasted to inequalities elsewhere in the sector, where planets feel the cultural “brain drain” to the richer Naboo. At the same time, Naboo’s elite fail to understand their role in the perpetuation of such inequalities or to think of their planet as a vital part of sector commerce. And Naboo clearly has institutional failures at home, with an agriculture sector that, at times, cannot produce enough food to support its population and so must rely on intra- and inter-sector trade. All of this is quite smart on Johnston’s part and I appreciate the details and her elaboration of Naboo’s place in the sector, but I lament that the details tend to be surface level, vague, and ultimately unsatisfying. They merely gesture at the ideas without spending time on them: interruptions occur, meetings are glossed over, most social and economic discussions take place between scenes, only to be referenced afterward, and so on. I would have liked Johnston to trust the reader to find the details of the storyworld as fascinating as everything else.
The summit also introduces some needed conflict in Padmé’s personal life when Sabé gets a crush on the Jafani delegate Harli. This leads to a fun bit where the handmaidens and Padmé sneak out to go to Neurotransmitter Affection’s rave-like concert, a glitter glowstick bursts all over Padmé, and they get caught by Panaka, who chides them like children before Padmé asserts herself as the queen, dammit, even if she’s 14. But the point of all of this is that Sabé’s mutual affection for Harli—which results in Padmé almost getting kissed by the blue girl because her handmaiden disguise is so convincing—makes Padmé jealous, and Johnston is forever coy about whether Sabé and Padmé share their own mutual attraction. Through this interpersonal conflict, Sabé comes to learn the pressures that face Padmé, who has to perform the identity-less role of Queen Amidala, representative of her people, embodiment of the state, charged with a greater purpose beyond her own wants and needs, while also trying to main something approximating real friendship with Sabé and the other handmaidens. And Padmé learns that the affections of those she cares for cannot belong to her alone, especially when she cannot offer Sabé more than friendship. The bisexual tensions are strong, unspoken, and wonderfully frustrating.
The Chommell sector summit is in many ways the centrepiece of Queen’s Peril. And, like Queen’s Shadow, it evidences Johnston’s point that Padmé’s driving political impulse is to try things out politically, even if what gets tried isn’t a perfect solution. The sector summit is also, essentially, a mirror of the groundbreaking Mid Rim Cooperation Motion Padmé later co-develops, introduces, and helps pass in the Senate in Queen’s Shadow. Both are efforts at creating cooperation and mutual solidarity across political, cultural, and economic divides, seeking a situation that is more just for all. And both throw wrenches in Darth Sidious’s plans to further divide the galaxy, making Padmé an increasing problem for his plans for galactic domination. Indeed, in Queen’s Peril Johnston (retroactively) reveals that the success of the Chommell sector summit leads directly to Sidious directing Nute Gunray to launch the Trade Federation occupation of Naboo in order to force a treaty that will give the Federation total control over taxation of the Chommell sector’s trade routes, and give Palpatine the lever he needs to foist Vallorum out of the seat of Supreme Chancellor and himself into it. But as we know from The Phantom Menace, Padmé ends up being a better trigger to Palpatine’s plot than he could have suspected.
The final third or so of Queen’s Peril is a retelling of the Trade Federation invasion—which begins, quite literally, right as the sector summit ends—from Padmé and the handmaidens’ perspectives. It is, for the most part, a pretty unimpressive retelling that mostly serves to capture, again, the small moments in the story, the gaps where things might not wholly make sense from Padmé’s perspective, where Padmé or the handmaidens might come off as otherwise naive or inexperienced. For example, Saché (who is captured, tortured, and imprisoned on Naboo) suggests that governor Bibble report to Queen Amidala that the “death toll is catastrophic,” despite the fact that it is not, since “toll” is a secret keyword among the handmaidens to indicate that a statement is a lie. This means that, when Obi-Wan tells the “queen” (i.e. Sabé in disguise) that the message is a trick, do not respond, they exclaim (after he leaves): “Well, of course it’s a trick[. …] Does he think we’re idiots?” (213). This reframes a scene in which, in the film, Sabé-as-Queen-Amidala does in fact look passive, weak, and helpless.
The impulse behind these moments of recontextualization in Queen’s Peril is a good one, a just one, hell it’s the impulse behind the whole Queen trilogy as a feminist recovery project! But the execution here is often lackluster and the portion retelling The Phantom Menace is awkwardly paced, with the focus at times seemingly a bit random. For example, despite Queen’s Shadow making clear that Padmé’s discovery that slavery still exists in the galaxy deeply disturbs her and leads to her desire for political action toward emancipation, Queen’s Peril gives us almost nothing of Padmé’s experience on Naboo (except for a brief scene where she sits silently in the kitchen with Shmi the night before the podrace). Another missed opportunity is Padmé deciding to approach the Gungans, which she clearly sees as an important way of integrating the people of her own planet, just as she does the planets within her sector, and redressing some of the grievances built up after centuries of conflict caused by Naboo humans’ colonization of the planet who knows when. But Padmé’s thoughts about this decision are glossed over. Padmé and Sabé talk about asking Jar Jar to teach them about Gungan culture, but those moments are never shown. The result is an underwhelming finish to a book that is, in the end, narratively quite wonky and unbalanced, a collection of vignettes preceding the sector summit and followed by a disjointed reexamination of The Phantom Menace’s plot.
Queen’s Peril ends where it begins, with an epilogue that mirrors and partially quotes back the prologue:
The girl in the white dress had her mother’s brain and her father’s heart, and a spark that was entirely her own. Brilliance and direction and compassion as bright as the stars. But now she was alone, and no one could help her. Whatever happened next, however it was recorded and remembered, she was entirely on her own.
From the time she was small, she had wanted to help. (1 and 275)
In the prologue, the girl is Padmé, awaiting confirmation that she has won the election: “The girl in the white dress was going to be Queen, and she was ready” (2). In the epilogue, though, the girl is Princess Leia, her planet destroyed, her mother, the queen of Alderaan, is dead, and she waits for the Heroes of the Rebellion—Luke, Han, Chewbaccaa—to enter the hall on Yavin 4 and receive their accommodations for destroying the Death Star. As Leia, “The girl in the white dress was never going to be Queen, but she was ready (276). This is a fascinating moment paralleling the stories of mother and daughter, the woman elected queen by her own merits, and the girl who would never be queen, heir to an obliterated throne, hers by right of adoption, but a leader all the same.
It’s also an awkward parallel to end a novel about Padmé coming into her role as queen and I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand, it’s a great way to demonstrate the legacy of these two leaders, the women Disney Star Wars has leaned into (along with Rey) as girl power figures, the Disney Princesses of Star Wars. This is both a marketing move—insofar as they are readily marketed as the badass queen and princess, who also happen to be mother and daughter (though neither knew the other), who kick ass and take names and sometimes wield a lightsaber or a blaster pistol, and always survive against the bad guys (whether droids or the Empire or the First Order)—and a genuine effort to make connections between two obvious feminist icons of the franchise. And on the other hand, by turning to Leia in the end, by making this parallel and showing that what Padmé does is ultimately to give us Leia, the epilogue risks once again sidelining Padmé as background to other characters’ stories. Moreover, though each “a spark that was entirely her own,” that spark is rendered in the same language. I think the most generous reading, though, sees the epilogue as making gendered connections of solidarity amongst Star Wars’s two most iconic characters, even if the epilogue also casts Leia as an adjunct to others’ stories. After all, she’s not one of the Heroes of the Rebellion, here, just the one rewarding them.
Queen’s Peril is a less impressive novel than Queen’s Shadow, which itself was quite thin but markedly more ambitious. Johnston’s novel is interested in the formation of a young leader’s political identity, the idea(l) of duty to the system, and the necessary and painful recognition of the system’s failures. And as in Queen’s Shadow, the Padmé of Queen’s Peril believes deeply in the fundamental rightness of the system, for better and worse. In this way, the novel forwards Padmé’s optimism in a Galactic Republic that can be good, but rarely is, since it regularly fails its people and leaves them to the predations of those with greater power and more guns (and droids). Queen’s Shadow shows how Padmé’s optimism begins first on Naboo, with a teenage girl who becomes queen and immediately sets to making her world better and more just, who ends up fighting against a larger threat that pulls her world into intergalactic turmoil and leads to the downfall of one Supreme Chancellor and the rise of another—and all the disastrous consequences that follow. Queen’s Peril shows us that it is not just things at home that need bettering, but that the problems of home are deeply integrated into and contingent upon the social, political, and economic system of the Republic.
If the Republic begins failing its worlds, then the Republic needs to change. And change it does, for better and worse. Johnston continues the story of Padmé’s attempts to forge that change and to create a more just galaxy in the final novel of the Queen trilogy: Queen’s Hope (2022).
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