Elective monarchies are still monarchies, the title being hereditary is not a requirement.
Question: Why did the separatists want to, well, separate?
- Thread starter Skipper
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Yeah, monarchy has nothing to do with how one gets the job, and everything to do with having supreme authority. Elected monarchs used to be semi-common. Of course the term "elected" is deceptive given that it belies how few people actually got to cast a vote, historically speaking.
Virtually all monarchies are heredity. The rare exception doesn't invalidate the definition of the term.
She's a head of state, democratically elected for a limited period of time. Nothing about that whatsoever suggests a monarchy. The fact that she's called a "queen" doesn't actually make her a monarch.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Naboo/Legends#Politics
In the EU it sounds like they're a monarch only in name, not in the level of power or control they have.
The new canon hasn't tackled how the government of Naboo works outside of what the movies have said, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just followed what the EU established once they do.
In the EU it sounds like they're a monarch only in name, not in the level of power or control they have.
The new canon hasn't tackled how the government of Naboo works outside of what the movies have said, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just followed what the EU established once they do.
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I had no idea Amidala wasn't Padmé's real name... 
Well, that's a wonderful counterargument. You're still wrong.
Wikipedia has a whole section on elective monarchies, with historical and contemporary examples, so the idea that monarchies must be hereditary is DOA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy#Elective_monarchies].
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re: the OP question
I believe the sentiment motivating succession was given in Ep1, when Padmé said that it is clear that the Republic no longer functions.
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re: the OP question
I believe the sentiment motivating succession was given in Ep1, when Padmé said that it is clear that the Republic no longer functions.
But the vast majority of monarchs in reality don't have any real power or control either, these days all remnants of power they have comes from their country's constitution.
I don't need a counter argument because I am stating facts. If the head of state is a king or queen that person is a monarch and the form of government is a monarchy. End of story.
Even the canon calls it an elective monarchy. So it is a monarchy.
I just meant that the position seems to be more similar to Prime Minister/President/Chancellor than your typical monarchy.
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Wrong. Just because you call yourself a queen doesn't make you a monarch. That's not remotely how it works. If you share no common characteristics with the definition of a monarch (which the Naboo kings and queens decidedly do not), then you're not a monarch.
Yeah, it was a strange concept, but one that certainly has precedence in Earth history.
But, I did enjoy Terry Brooks' novelization and explaining how Queen Amidala was elected at such a young age, and that was partially due to the past king's actions. A great instance of worldbuilding in the books thanks to Brooks. Excellent novel; highly recommend.
Even better; the 'Padmé Amidala' trilogy of books by E. K. Johnston which focuses solely on just this topic. The first one is easily the best as it deals with the end of her second term, and becoming a senator, which the second flicks back to her initial election and overlaps with the events of TPM. Granted they're as much about Sabé as Padmé, but there's no better source for how the Naboo system works.
But yeah, the Terry Brooks novelization is a solid source too since it's the only one of the prequel books that had direct input from Lucas, hence the surprisingly detailed lore dump about the history of the Sith that entirely ignored the EU version accepted at the time and just laid out what George intended.
But yeah, the Terry Brooks novelization is a solid source too since it's the only one of the prequel books that had direct input from Lucas, hence the surprisingly detailed lore dump about the history of the Sith that entirely ignored the EU version accepted at the time and just laid out what George intended.
Ok but if a world wanted to stop being part of the Republic, without much fanfare, what could the Republic itself have done, considering that it didn't even have an army before the Clone Wars? Send Jedi on Jedi to lightsaber convince the rulers to return to be part of the Republic?
It's not that when the UK decided to no longer be part of the European Union, the latter created an army out of nothing to force the British to stay!
Ps, I live a couple of kilometers from an elective monarchy, Vatican City!
It's not that when the UK decided to no longer be part of the European Union, the latter created an army out of nothing to force the British to stay!
Ps, I live a couple of kilometers from an elective monarchy, Vatican City!
The banks.
The Seperatists have thousands of trillions of Republic credits, in the bank, which is fare game to the Republic, if the Seperatist try to leave, just like any other criminal can have their accounts, frozen, leaned on, or confiscated.
Although I feel like the banking guild is a power unto itself, although they would be both beholden to their largest client as well as their largest debtor.
Padme got a bee in her bonnet about the Senate borrowing even more billions to pay for more clones, to fight the Droids which the Seperatists were paying for with their own loans from the banking guild.
OK, two things: 1) the Republic is nothing like the European Union. It's a Republic. (The clue is in the name!) And 2) this is not about "a" world wanting to leave, it's about *thousands of systems* wanting to leave. And not just leave, but set up a *huge* rival belligerent state smack in the middle of Republic territory. Taking with them countless amounts of resources & industrial capacity, drawing borders across every major trade route, and posing a serious existential threat to the Republic itself, along with the tens of thousands of systems that depended on it's existence to survive.
So an actually relevant analogy would be: "what if a third of US states up and decided to leave the Federal Union, make themselves into a whole new country, and back it up with an army?" If memory serves, the last time they tried that, more than a few shots were fired. No nation has within it a procedure or set of laws for a large chunk of said country to just fuck off and do their own thing. If there were, then there would be a hell of a lot less civil wars in history.
And again: the war (on paper) wasn't to stop the Seperatists leaving, it was to neutralise them as a threat. A threat that had been building through almost a decade of civil unrest, and culminated with an unprecedented *secret* military build-up. When someone builds or buys an army in secret, they generally intend to use it, which makes those without an army (basically the rest of the galaxy in this case) a bit nervous.
Of course the reason for that build up in the first place (again, on paper) was because the Republic were openly debating whether to create an army themselves.
Essentially a lack of trust and abundance of paranoia led to both sides ambushing the other in order to get their defensive retaliation in first.
Lucas wrote the first page of Shatterpoint and exercised veto power over lines in the ROTS novel manuscript. I think he also had some influence over Darth Plagueis, perhaps through an intermediary.
Did not know about those. Thank you.
Well, I would imagine they would negotiate a process and allow them to come to terms.
But, this isn't one world, as @Reverend notes. This is thousands of worlds, and Palpatine is probably not lying when he says that he will not allow the Republic to be "split in two." Because that's what was happening. And the whole political system was basically frozen because a full scale war had not happened since the founding of the Republic. People didn't know what to do. So, Palpatine preyed on those fears and used it to his own schemes, but the fact is the Separatists had their own grievances otherwise the plot would not have succeeded.
Right up there with those other well-known republics such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People's Republic of China, German Democratic Republic, etc...
The Wiki link does make it clear that these elective monarchies are not democratically elected by the people. "There is no popular vote involved in elective monarchies, as the elective body usually consists of a small number of eligible people."
Therefore, if the people of Naboo genuinely elected their monarch by means of legitimate free elections, Naboo does not fit this wiki definition of elective monarchy. It would be a genuine democracy.
I question the inclusion of the Pope as a monarch, but I don't have a better suggestion.
Im having difficulty distinguishing an elective monarchy from any other dictatorship. Even if those dictatorships claim to be federations, unions, or republics.
