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“Ellessé Veganis, Third Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
0 reviewsThis is fifteen random but chronological moments from the life of Ellessé Veganis, who is, quite literally, the third handmaiden in the third training class of potential handmaidens chosen from am...
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“Ellessé Veganis, Third Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
01.) Remember: She can vaguely remember her mother as a warm, bright, lovely, and yet also very sad presence, if she concentrates very hard and casts her thoughts back just as far as her memories extend, but she cannot remember her father or her older sister at all, and most of her early childhood memories are of her grandparents and the (paternal) aunt who took her in after her grandparents died, and even those are a bit fuzzy, considering she was four when that happened and barely five when Auntie Myria died, so it’s not so surprising that she considers her foster family her true family, though occasionally she misses her grandparents and her aunt.
02.) Girl: Her foster brothers (Taymore, Reis, Emonn, and Mitcha Larminta) have never treated her like a girl, and so it is a bit of a shock when, halfway through her seventh year, her foster mother, Nyda, suddenly seems to remember that she is a girl and to decide that it’s time to make her over into a little woman and that she can therefore no longer be allowed to essentially run wild with her older brothers.
03.) Frivolous: She loves her foster mother, truly, she does, but she is just not cut out for the life of a frivolous little girl who can be shown off at parties: she likes to hunt, and to fence, and to go hiking and rock climbing, and to swim, and to shimmy her way up trees so she can look out over the land and pretend she is an explorer or the lone survivor of some ship that’s crash landed on an unchartered world, not to simper and smile and make empty, polite, nonsensical conversation about the weather and dresses and baked goods and who is seeing whom or who would make a good match for whom, and loving to dance just isn’t quite enough of a reason to make her behave well enough at parties to seem something she’s not.
04.) Drastic: She’s about ready to do something drastic, like just pack up her bags and run, by her ninth birthday, and it’s her youngest foster brother who actually gives her an honorable way out of all this girlish madness without her having to break ties with the family, by (somewhat impatiently) pointing out that she can always avoid the silly parties if she has a better excuse for skipping out on them than simply not wanting to attend, like serious schoolwork . . . especially if said schoolwork requires her to move part time or at least travel back and forth between home and school, like their eldest brothers do.
05.) School: She’s always had an excellent memory but never particularly been too terribly fond of reading or of schoolwork (not when she could be out in the woods, /living/, instead of holed up in the house with some deadly dull text), and so she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes this new educational regime (with its focus on drama, rhetoric, composition, and debate) and even more surprised to discover that she’s actually quite good at it, too.
06.) Appeal: The more theatrical aspects of politics appeal to her – the bombast of speeches and the posturing, the way that certain combinations of stance and tone and charisma and appeal and word choice and gesture can sway the minds and hearts of a people and turn an otherwise perfectly sensible group of individuals into a thinly veiled mob – and so she decides, by the age of ten, that she’s found her true calling in life, as a speech writer.
07.) Charisma: She likes this girl who’s been nominated for the position of Princess of Theed – she has charisma in buckets and is smart and savvy as well as passionate about her beliefs – and she can so easily imagine this passionate young girl going on to get old King Veruna removed from office and becoming Queen of Naboo that she is more than a little bit surprised at how shocked so many people seem to be by the very same idea and, understandably, smug enough about her prediction, when Padmé is elected Queen and becomes Padmé Amidala, that she smiles gloatingly about it for at least a week.
08.) Legal: She is technically old enough to be considered a legal adult and so should be able to apply for one of the handmaiden positions whether her foster parents really approve of the idea or not, but unfortunately the committee that receives and judges applications has made it fairly clear that they prefer to have either applicants without family or else with the express written consent of a family that will not be harmed by the loss of one of its members, and so she launches a campaign designed to win her foster mother (and father, too, though she’s primarily worried about Nyda, not Argise) over to the idea, taking care to stress the opportunities inherent for advancement (and, technically, even for eventual marriage alliance) for one working in the royal court and her desire to help write speeches and design new laws rather than to act as a sort of soldier-guardian and living shield between the new Queen and any threatening dangers, so it won’t be assumed that this is just some other dangerous scheme she’s dreamed up to try to give her poor foster mother more grey hairs.
09.) Good: She looks rather like a skinnier, slightly more tanned, somewhat sharper featured version of the Queen, her scores are good, her foster parents have finally both consented to the idea of her applying to the handmaiden training program, and she is already becoming known, in political circles, for her ability to craft memorable, powerful speeches, so she considers her chances of acceptance good enough that she’s already mostly finished packing her things, by the time the comm call comes with an actual offer.
10.) Confidence: With some more confidence, Dormé could easily become a Queen herself (just as Sabé, the Queen’s first and primary decoy, could have been and could still become a Queen, if she but loved Amidala a little less and had a bit more personal ambition), and it’s fairly obvious to Ellessé that Dormé is the most correct choice, for a Queen’s decoy from their class, and so she decides to make it her mission, to craft Dormé into a more confident and capable young woman, to see if it might eventually be possible to convince her to run for office herself, after Amidala’s time in office is over with.
11.) Careful: She’s not really prepared for there to be any truly bad individuals among the handmaiden trainees, so she’s not as careful as she should be, with Rosé, and it’s only after she’s been suckered into helping her with her work and given not friendship or a close and loving relationship but instead an oddly rough and hurried one-time tumble after a picnic involving too much wine that it occurs to her that she’s been used.
12.) Complication: The Trade Federation’s droid armies is a complication that she neither wants nor needs, but she’s convinced that their occupation will only be a brief one, so she sets herself to the task of surviving them and seeing to it that Dormé does, too, so she can pick up the pieces of her plans where she left off and start working on her goal again, when they’re finally gone.
13.) Better: She is extremely vexed with the Queen and with Sabé both, for essentially ruining her plans for Dormé by making the girl the primary decoy for the Queen in Sabé’s stead, now that Sabé is going to be sent off to Coruscant to act as their interim Senator (since Palpatine of course cannot be Supreme Chancellor and Senator both at the same time and the people of Naboo have refused to allow that ridiculous “anti-alien” bigot, Janus Greejatus, to succeed Palpatine in the Galactic Senate), as Dormé deserves far better than this, in her not so very humble opinion, and so it takes all of the not inconsiderable wiles of Anadé (an extremely lovely, brave young girl from her training class with whom she became extremely close, when they were on the run from the Trade Federation and trying to erode the efforts of its Viceroy to consolidate a true base of governing power over their planet and people by organizing the people in a quiet but deadly serious rebellion against the invading interlopers, and with whom she often thinks she may actually be in love, though they have not ever spoken of the prospect, /per se/) to keep Ellessé from venting her displeasure on both of them in no uncertain terms.
14.) Guard: A little over three years and a month after the ousting of the Trade Federation, Anadé is slain by a sniper while she is standing perimeter guard over Dormé in her guise as the Queen, and the heart and joy all go out of Ellessé and her life so completely that she finally knows (too late to do anything about it, alas!) that, yes, indeed, she had in fact been quite deeply in love with Anadé Boranys.
15.) Hand: She only rarely performs guard duties for the Queen (being considered too important, for her writing abilities, to risk unnecessarily, in such a fashion), but the handmaidens are all on hand, when the Queen makes her speech accepting a nomination for a second term as monarch of Naboo, so she is there, too, when the shooting starts, and she is enough of a handmaiden (and, to be perfectly honest, tired enough of her life, with Anadé there to share it with her) that she throws herself in between the rapidly firing blasters and their far too vulnerable Queen without even so much as a second’s thought or hesitation.
01.) Remember: She can vaguely remember her mother as a warm, bright, lovely, and yet also very sad presence, if she concentrates very hard and casts her thoughts back just as far as her memories extend, but she cannot remember her father or her older sister at all, and most of her early childhood memories are of her grandparents and the (paternal) aunt who took her in after her grandparents died, and even those are a bit fuzzy, considering she was four when that happened and barely five when Auntie Myria died, so it’s not so surprising that she considers her foster family her true family, though occasionally she misses her grandparents and her aunt.
02.) Girl: Her foster brothers (Taymore, Reis, Emonn, and Mitcha Larminta) have never treated her like a girl, and so it is a bit of a shock when, halfway through her seventh year, her foster mother, Nyda, suddenly seems to remember that she is a girl and to decide that it’s time to make her over into a little woman and that she can therefore no longer be allowed to essentially run wild with her older brothers.
03.) Frivolous: She loves her foster mother, truly, she does, but she is just not cut out for the life of a frivolous little girl who can be shown off at parties: she likes to hunt, and to fence, and to go hiking and rock climbing, and to swim, and to shimmy her way up trees so she can look out over the land and pretend she is an explorer or the lone survivor of some ship that’s crash landed on an unchartered world, not to simper and smile and make empty, polite, nonsensical conversation about the weather and dresses and baked goods and who is seeing whom or who would make a good match for whom, and loving to dance just isn’t quite enough of a reason to make her behave well enough at parties to seem something she’s not.
04.) Drastic: She’s about ready to do something drastic, like just pack up her bags and run, by her ninth birthday, and it’s her youngest foster brother who actually gives her an honorable way out of all this girlish madness without her having to break ties with the family, by (somewhat impatiently) pointing out that she can always avoid the silly parties if she has a better excuse for skipping out on them than simply not wanting to attend, like serious schoolwork . . . especially if said schoolwork requires her to move part time or at least travel back and forth between home and school, like their eldest brothers do.
05.) School: She’s always had an excellent memory but never particularly been too terribly fond of reading or of schoolwork (not when she could be out in the woods, /living/, instead of holed up in the house with some deadly dull text), and so she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes this new educational regime (with its focus on drama, rhetoric, composition, and debate) and even more surprised to discover that she’s actually quite good at it, too.
06.) Appeal: The more theatrical aspects of politics appeal to her – the bombast of speeches and the posturing, the way that certain combinations of stance and tone and charisma and appeal and word choice and gesture can sway the minds and hearts of a people and turn an otherwise perfectly sensible group of individuals into a thinly veiled mob – and so she decides, by the age of ten, that she’s found her true calling in life, as a speech writer.
07.) Charisma: She likes this girl who’s been nominated for the position of Princess of Theed – she has charisma in buckets and is smart and savvy as well as passionate about her beliefs – and she can so easily imagine this passionate young girl going on to get old King Veruna removed from office and becoming Queen of Naboo that she is more than a little bit surprised at how shocked so many people seem to be by the very same idea and, understandably, smug enough about her prediction, when Padmé is elected Queen and becomes Padmé Amidala, that she smiles gloatingly about it for at least a week.
08.) Legal: She is technically old enough to be considered a legal adult and so should be able to apply for one of the handmaiden positions whether her foster parents really approve of the idea or not, but unfortunately the committee that receives and judges applications has made it fairly clear that they prefer to have either applicants without family or else with the express written consent of a family that will not be harmed by the loss of one of its members, and so she launches a campaign designed to win her foster mother (and father, too, though she’s primarily worried about Nyda, not Argise) over to the idea, taking care to stress the opportunities inherent for advancement (and, technically, even for eventual marriage alliance) for one working in the royal court and her desire to help write speeches and design new laws rather than to act as a sort of soldier-guardian and living shield between the new Queen and any threatening dangers, so it won’t be assumed that this is just some other dangerous scheme she’s dreamed up to try to give her poor foster mother more grey hairs.
09.) Good: She looks rather like a skinnier, slightly more tanned, somewhat sharper featured version of the Queen, her scores are good, her foster parents have finally both consented to the idea of her applying to the handmaiden training program, and she is already becoming known, in political circles, for her ability to craft memorable, powerful speeches, so she considers her chances of acceptance good enough that she’s already mostly finished packing her things, by the time the comm call comes with an actual offer.
10.) Confidence: With some more confidence, Dormé could easily become a Queen herself (just as Sabé, the Queen’s first and primary decoy, could have been and could still become a Queen, if she but loved Amidala a little less and had a bit more personal ambition), and it’s fairly obvious to Ellessé that Dormé is the most correct choice, for a Queen’s decoy from their class, and so she decides to make it her mission, to craft Dormé into a more confident and capable young woman, to see if it might eventually be possible to convince her to run for office herself, after Amidala’s time in office is over with.
11.) Careful: She’s not really prepared for there to be any truly bad individuals among the handmaiden trainees, so she’s not as careful as she should be, with Rosé, and it’s only after she’s been suckered into helping her with her work and given not friendship or a close and loving relationship but instead an oddly rough and hurried one-time tumble after a picnic involving too much wine that it occurs to her that she’s been used.
12.) Complication: The Trade Federation’s droid armies is a complication that she neither wants nor needs, but she’s convinced that their occupation will only be a brief one, so she sets herself to the task of surviving them and seeing to it that Dormé does, too, so she can pick up the pieces of her plans where she left off and start working on her goal again, when they’re finally gone.
13.) Better: She is extremely vexed with the Queen and with Sabé both, for essentially ruining her plans for Dormé by making the girl the primary decoy for the Queen in Sabé’s stead, now that Sabé is going to be sent off to Coruscant to act as their interim Senator (since Palpatine of course cannot be Supreme Chancellor and Senator both at the same time and the people of Naboo have refused to allow that ridiculous “anti-alien” bigot, Janus Greejatus, to succeed Palpatine in the Galactic Senate), as Dormé deserves far better than this, in her not so very humble opinion, and so it takes all of the not inconsiderable wiles of Anadé (an extremely lovely, brave young girl from her training class with whom she became extremely close, when they were on the run from the Trade Federation and trying to erode the efforts of its Viceroy to consolidate a true base of governing power over their planet and people by organizing the people in a quiet but deadly serious rebellion against the invading interlopers, and with whom she often thinks she may actually be in love, though they have not ever spoken of the prospect, /per se/) to keep Ellessé from venting her displeasure on both of them in no uncertain terms.
14.) Guard: A little over three years and a month after the ousting of the Trade Federation, Anadé is slain by a sniper while she is standing perimeter guard over Dormé in her guise as the Queen, and the heart and joy all go out of Ellessé and her life so completely that she finally knows (too late to do anything about it, alas!) that, yes, indeed, she had in fact been quite deeply in love with Anadé Boranys.
15.) Hand: She only rarely performs guard duties for the Queen (being considered too important, for her writing abilities, to risk unnecessarily, in such a fashion), but the handmaidens are all on hand, when the Queen makes her speech accepting a nomination for a second term as monarch of Naboo, so she is there, too, when the shooting starts, and she is enough of a handmaiden (and, to be perfectly honest, tired enough of her life, with Anadé there to share it with her) that she throws herself in between the rapidly firing blasters and their far too vulnerable Queen without even so much as a second’s thought or hesitation.
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