Kristin Baver, at the Official Site, talks to E.K. Johnston about the third and final Padme novel, Queen’s Hope, in which we see he grapple with The Clone Wars and her marriage to Anakin Skywalker.
StarWars.com: This is your third time revisiting Padmé! How has your process evolved as you prepare to sit down and write this character again?
E.K. Johnston: Coming back to Padmé for a third time was like three more times than I ever thought I was going to get. Every time I come in to write a Padmé novel it’s exciting, it’s a little bit terrifying, and this one was the most daunting because it’s the war book. It’s the book where things start to fall apart. Up until this point it’s been kind of the upswing of her story, but as soon as Attack of the Clones happens, as soon as Attack of the Clones ends, you start to get into the actual tragedy part and I…I didn’t know how I was going to feel about that. Like, am I still allowed to make jokes if it’s going to be horribly sad? This is the start of the downward arc and I was a little bit nervous approaching it. But there’s still a lot of really good things to get into in this part of Padmé’s story. She’s kind of established herself as her own powerful senator… as someone who has power and someone who is good at it. And then, of course, in her personal life things are getting rather complicated.
StarWars.com: Right! Now she’s married to Anakin Skywalker, of course. Can you give us any hints about what new Anidala secrets and romance we have in store?
E.K. Johnston: I’m going to be real with you: Anakin Skywalker is a bit of a downer for me in terms of writing because everything he touches ends badly. Qui-Gon dies, his mom dies, Padmé dies. The galaxy falls apart. It does not go well for people involved in Anakin Skywalker’s story when he’s the main character. However, he’s not the main character of Queen’s Hope. He is the romantic interest. He’s the love interest. And because of that I was freed up to write him a little bit more fun, I guess. He’s kind of….not happy go-lucky because Jedi don’t really do that. But like his life has literally never been better than it is right now. He’s really good at fighting. He really likes clear-cut “these people are good, these people are bad” conflicts. And he’s married to the love of his life so, ya know, everything’s coming up Anakin at this point, which does make him very interesting to write because, of course, we all know what’s coming. But you get these sort of moments with them where they do have a genuine love. They like each other so much, they just never have any time and that’s their tragedy. They never have any time to talk, they never have any time to work things out, and I got to write a very, very small sliver of that time, which is something I think people have been looking forward to seeing for a while now.
Read more here; Queen’s Hope will be released on November 2nd, 2021. Be sure to follow E.K. Johnston on Twitter for all the latest updates and news.
