My daughter is six and she is a huge starwars fan, most specifically a Princess Leia fan.

 

She had the complete visual starwars guide and has seen some of the clonewars episodes

 

She of course has seen all six films and the ewok ones

 

Ok, now the other day she asked how Padme died, I had a real hard time explaining it or making it make sense and I finally settled on anakin killed her and that is why he is so angry. She was still confused by this explanation because she was alive

 

If anyone has a more defined answered than she just dies, that would be good

 

On a side note:

Never had to explain the yoda death, she told her sister that yoda died from "testicular cancer", that came out of no where one day though . That was pretty hilarious and still have no idea where she heard of testicular cancer

Edited June 23, 2013 by kirorx

Ummm lets see she died because she didn't want to live in a world where Anakin was evil ...... she died of a broken heart I guess would be the most accurate explination I could give or you could say "it was the will of the force" or something but honestly I think just dead of broken heart is the most accurate your going to get.

She died of a broken heart. Lost the will to live. That's about it.

She lost the will to live because the man, her husband, that was hailed as a galactic hero had become the image of what she fought against. At the same time, the democracy that she worked so hard to preserve had been broken down, a side-effect of her husband's actions as well.

 

Everything she loved and fought for had been destroyed before her eyes.

Edited June 23, 2013 by Aurbere

She lost the will to live because the man, her husband, that was hailed as a galactic hero had become the image of what she fought against. At the same time, the democracy that she worked so hard to preserve had been broken down, a side-effect of her husband's actions as well.

 

Everything she loved and fought for had been destroyed before her eyes.

 

OK? How about love for the newly born children? I always found the "died of a broken heart" theory to be a little shallow. Yea, her world as she built it fell apart, but she was elected queen at age 13. We all know she had been through hell and back. Yet, we are meant to understand that this woman of strength and conviction no longer wanted to live, after giving birth to twins, because her husband (who was always a baby) turned bad? If anything this is reason for the woman to live. Someone had to protect the kids from the monster her husband became. Instead, she gave up and died. Not the way I excpected her to die, but that is the story. The droid even said that she was in good health and he couldn't figure out why she died. Personally, I would tell me daughter that the force choke did it. I wouldn't want my daughter thinking that some baby (annakin) could have that much power over a strong woman like Padme.

Edited June 23, 2013 by Freedannad

She died because GL didn't want any EU stories written about her 'adventures' between the trilogies. The plot of the movie didn't make any sense, but then again nothing in the prequels did, they are best forgotten.

 

Yoda was over 900 years old...might be hard to imagine...but he died of old age.

According to Wookieepedia:

 

What puzzled people most though is how exactly she could have been strangled even though there were no external signs of strangulation. There were no bruises (nor signs of bruises) on her neck, there were no scratches of any kind nor signs of congestion; there were no signs of exterior trauma at all.

 

It's pretty clear from the movie, as well, that there are no exterior signs of trauma. The novelization heavily implies that primitive medical technology failed to detect this damage caused by Vader's force choke. She also, of course, suffered psychological trauma.

 

Between being force-choked and giving birth in poor conditions, she was seriously hurt, and it's no big medical secret that depression of the sort she was going through can have serious effects on a person's ability to handle that kind of trauma.

 

Also, for all we know Palpatine may have even had a hand in it. If he learned anything from observing his Sith master's experiments with midichlorians, he'd have known Plagueis could literally will beings to die. He may have done that and then pinned the blame on Anakin as a sort of final insult.

This has always bothered me as well. We're supposed to accept that she died of a broken heart and felt like she had lost everything so she basically just gave up wanting to live....except she had two newborn children depending on her. As a husband I can understand how someone could be so depressed losing a spouse who essentially became a monster, but as a father I can't imagine giving up the will to live when your children are depending on you.

 

Unless, of course, she had testicular cancer and they just didn't know it at the time.

Women die from the stress and trauma of childbirth all the time.

 

I think the "broken heart theorem" is just a way to sort of romanticize it and make her out to be a martyr.

I'm gonna go a little Meta on this one. It's pretty clear as Padme cries out for Anakin and he for her that they are sharing a Bond. He Lived when he should by all rights have died and she died when she should have lived. The Dark side saved him. It would appear by siphoning Padme's Life Force. The Dark Side can save you, but it will exact a a terrible price.

She died because Lucas is a terrible writer. That's pretty much the jist.

Looked like death by child birth to me...