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“Anadé Boranys, Fifth Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
0 reviewsThis is fifteen random but chronological moments from the life of Anadé Boranys, who is, quite literally, the fifth handmaiden in the third training class of potential handmaidens chosen from amon...
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“Anadé Boranys, Fifth Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
01.) Deceased: Her parents supposedly went in to the city of New Centrif one day to go shopping and simply never returned: no skimmer, no packages, no records of purchases, no trace of them were ever found, and, after two years in which she and her older sister stayed with their maternal grandparents (their paternal grandparents having been killed in a boating accident about a year and a half previously), her parents were declared officially deceased, and she and her sister were legally deeded their parents’ estate and accounts, and, though it was of course all entrusted to their grandmother, in their name, she was still basically only three and a half when she essentially inherited a rather goodly-sized, entirely paid for estate along with a what amounted to a small fortune in stocks and another not so very small fortune in creds and jewels in the bank.
02.) Pack: Her grandparents die when she’s six and seven (Grandmother passing first) and so guardianship for her and her sister is passed on to a cousin of their father’s who basically moves in to their grandparents’ old home only long enough to pack up what he wants to keep and sell the rest before moving them all out to their parents’ larger estate, on the outskirts of Keren.
03.) Raise: Cousin Camryn isn’t exactly a bad man, but he’s barely twenty and he really has no idea how to raise a pair of seven- and nine-year-old girls, and she and Lahura run positively wild until the day he finally marries and his previously quite sweet-tempered girlfriend transforms into a shrill, scheming shrew who seems determined to get rid of them by either driving them off or else marrying them off as soon as possible to matches good enough to justify her and her husband keeping their parents’ estate as well as everything they inherited from their grandparents.
04.) Fatal: Ellindra gets mad at her sister, Lahura, one day, and Lahura ends up taking a fatal tumble down the elaborate spiral staircase that serves as the main stairwell for their manor home: Anadé is ten and a half when she loses her sister, and not quite eleven when her cousin kills himself and his murderous wife, rather than have to face a trial for Lahura’s death, leaving her behind to legally take charge of the family estate herself.
05.) Honey: Like her sister, as a child she had fairly light, honey-colored hair and hazel-green eyes (though her eyes were closer to being wholly green than Lahura’s), and, even though her hair darkens more as she grows older, the top layer of her thick, wavy hair remains a dark amber that glints golden in direct light, even after she’s hit her teenaged years, reminding her of her sister’s tawny honey-blonde mane and helping her to feel not quite so very all alone in this huge old house she’s been left alone in.
06.) Truth: In truth, she wants neither house nor land nor holdings nor fortunes, and could care even less about the continuation of her family line: all she wants is her sister back . . . or (barring that) at least a good reason to get out of this damned place and never have to return.
07.) Blessing: Amidala’s election to the throne of Naboo and the subsequent decision to reinstate the traditional position of handmaiden to the Queen is a blessing that she seizes with both hands, selling her family estate and moving to an apartment in Theed in anticipation of being accepted into the handmaiden program, quietly arranging things (while she waits to hear back about her application) so that, if she is killed while performing her duty as a handmaiden, her considerable assets will be divided equally between a program meant to help other orphans (like herself, but without the riches her families have left behind to call upon) afford educations that will allow them to take the same road to freedom that she is taking now, by entering politics, and a program meant to help honor those who fall in service to the Queen with a line of commemorative funeral portraits, to be painted by some of the most talented and creative of Naboo’s artists.
08.) Heart: She would not have ever thought that hear heart would be capable of loving again, but she adores her Queen with the same kind of uncomplicated, fiercely single-minded focus of affection a young child might direct towards a beloved mother or a splendid older sister, and she even finds herself loving most of her fellow handmaidens and handmaidens in training, too, as if they were all sisters.
09.) Happy: Ellessé completes her, and she’s quite sure that she’s never been as happy in her life as she is on the day they both realize that they are in love with each other, even though the planet is occupied by the Trade Federation and droid armies and it seems impossible that they could ever be dislodged without a war involving massive casualties.
10.) Problem: She knew from the first moment that Rosé was going to be a problem because she felt so very much like Ellindra did, whenever she would try to get any kind of real sense of her, as a person, and she’s also fairly good at identifying others who are going to be problems, later on, by relying on that same sense of impression, but usually most of the bad seeds are either weeded out during the screening process for applicants or else during training at Varykino, so she doesn’t have to issue any more than a few warnings to the other handmaidens, based on her feelings, and most of her warnings end up either having been preceded by or else being seconded by similar warnings from other handmaidens who’re disquieted by a similar sense of wrongness or danger.
11.) Forgiving: She’s incredibly tired of bad, selfish beings who somehow always seem to find a way to get away with mistreating and trammeling upon the rights and needs of others, and, if she had her way, the entire Trade Federation collective would simply be taken out and strung up and left to strangle slowly and painfully in a shameful public death, but then, she never has claimed to be a particularly forgiving kind of person, and, to be perfectly honest, she’s not really all that sure her opinion is all that different from the one held by most Nabooians or indeed even most of her colleagues, among the Queen’s handmaidens, so she really doesn’t see any kind of need to feel bad about her lack of forgiveness for those jumped-up corporate criminals.
12.) Sorry: The Queen obviously misses her friend, Sabé, and she pines for that handsome young Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi (who apparently also became a close friend and confidant on the perilous, somewhat circuitous journey from Naboo to Coruscant and then back to Naboo again), too, and Anadé cannot help but feel sorry for her and wish that there was something more she could do, to help ease Amidala’s loneliness and pain.
13.) Retire: They’re technically supposed to be able to retire from service, if they want to and the Queen gives them leave to do so, but no one who actually makes it through the training seems to have any intention of ever doing anything other than either dying in service to the Queen or else pledging to serve someone else, like Amidala, if she ever happens to retire so completely from political life that she no longer has need of a household that includes a coterie of handmaidens, and, in any case, she and Ellessé are fairly certain that they’re going to die in service, based on the dreams they’ve had, so they’re not too worried about it (believing, as the other handmaidens do, that, so long as they make good ends and perform their duties to the absolute best of their abilities, that they will have led full, rich lives of purpose and meaning, and that the Great Lady will welcome them gladly home to her bosom, when they have left their mortal lives behind).
14.) Natural: She’s one of the few handmaidens who’s (eventually) gradually regressed to her natural appearance, to help maintain the illusion of sufficient variety amongst the handmaidens to keep it from being quite so glaringly obvious that the handmaidens are chosen for their ability to be able to hide the Queen safely amongst their numbers, and it’s actually become a bit jarring, to look in the mirror and see bright green eyes (with a very few random amber flecks and a thin ring of oddly bluish-brown around the outer rim of the irises) and thick, wildly wavy amber colored hair instead of a brunette with dark eyes who could be any number of her handmaiden sisters staring serenely back out at her.
15.) End: She usually spends most of her days closeted with the Queen and her principal handmaidens, working over figures and helping to juggle the allocation of moneys for public works as well as for projects closer to home (regarding, for example, the weapons and training and materials provided for the handmaidens or for the Royal Guard), but she keeps in practice (in case another crisis like the Trade Federation’s invasion should ever strike again) by occasionally joining the handmaidens who are performing guard duty on either the Queen or her decoy, and it is thus that she eventually meets her end, helping to stand watch over Dormé during a diplomatic function at the city of Selton and instinctively throwing herself between the young decoy and a sniper’s shot, managing to hold on just long enough to tell Ellessé goodbye before succumbing to a grievous wound that has badly damaged her brave and loyal generous heart.
01.) Deceased: Her parents supposedly went in to the city of New Centrif one day to go shopping and simply never returned: no skimmer, no packages, no records of purchases, no trace of them were ever found, and, after two years in which she and her older sister stayed with their maternal grandparents (their paternal grandparents having been killed in a boating accident about a year and a half previously), her parents were declared officially deceased, and she and her sister were legally deeded their parents’ estate and accounts, and, though it was of course all entrusted to their grandmother, in their name, she was still basically only three and a half when she essentially inherited a rather goodly-sized, entirely paid for estate along with a what amounted to a small fortune in stocks and another not so very small fortune in creds and jewels in the bank.
02.) Pack: Her grandparents die when she’s six and seven (Grandmother passing first) and so guardianship for her and her sister is passed on to a cousin of their father’s who basically moves in to their grandparents’ old home only long enough to pack up what he wants to keep and sell the rest before moving them all out to their parents’ larger estate, on the outskirts of Keren.
03.) Raise: Cousin Camryn isn’t exactly a bad man, but he’s barely twenty and he really has no idea how to raise a pair of seven- and nine-year-old girls, and she and Lahura run positively wild until the day he finally marries and his previously quite sweet-tempered girlfriend transforms into a shrill, scheming shrew who seems determined to get rid of them by either driving them off or else marrying them off as soon as possible to matches good enough to justify her and her husband keeping their parents’ estate as well as everything they inherited from their grandparents.
04.) Fatal: Ellindra gets mad at her sister, Lahura, one day, and Lahura ends up taking a fatal tumble down the elaborate spiral staircase that serves as the main stairwell for their manor home: Anadé is ten and a half when she loses her sister, and not quite eleven when her cousin kills himself and his murderous wife, rather than have to face a trial for Lahura’s death, leaving her behind to legally take charge of the family estate herself.
05.) Honey: Like her sister, as a child she had fairly light, honey-colored hair and hazel-green eyes (though her eyes were closer to being wholly green than Lahura’s), and, even though her hair darkens more as she grows older, the top layer of her thick, wavy hair remains a dark amber that glints golden in direct light, even after she’s hit her teenaged years, reminding her of her sister’s tawny honey-blonde mane and helping her to feel not quite so very all alone in this huge old house she’s been left alone in.
06.) Truth: In truth, she wants neither house nor land nor holdings nor fortunes, and could care even less about the continuation of her family line: all she wants is her sister back . . . or (barring that) at least a good reason to get out of this damned place and never have to return.
07.) Blessing: Amidala’s election to the throne of Naboo and the subsequent decision to reinstate the traditional position of handmaiden to the Queen is a blessing that she seizes with both hands, selling her family estate and moving to an apartment in Theed in anticipation of being accepted into the handmaiden program, quietly arranging things (while she waits to hear back about her application) so that, if she is killed while performing her duty as a handmaiden, her considerable assets will be divided equally between a program meant to help other orphans (like herself, but without the riches her families have left behind to call upon) afford educations that will allow them to take the same road to freedom that she is taking now, by entering politics, and a program meant to help honor those who fall in service to the Queen with a line of commemorative funeral portraits, to be painted by some of the most talented and creative of Naboo’s artists.
08.) Heart: She would not have ever thought that hear heart would be capable of loving again, but she adores her Queen with the same kind of uncomplicated, fiercely single-minded focus of affection a young child might direct towards a beloved mother or a splendid older sister, and she even finds herself loving most of her fellow handmaidens and handmaidens in training, too, as if they were all sisters.
09.) Happy: Ellessé completes her, and she’s quite sure that she’s never been as happy in her life as she is on the day they both realize that they are in love with each other, even though the planet is occupied by the Trade Federation and droid armies and it seems impossible that they could ever be dislodged without a war involving massive casualties.
10.) Problem: She knew from the first moment that Rosé was going to be a problem because she felt so very much like Ellindra did, whenever she would try to get any kind of real sense of her, as a person, and she’s also fairly good at identifying others who are going to be problems, later on, by relying on that same sense of impression, but usually most of the bad seeds are either weeded out during the screening process for applicants or else during training at Varykino, so she doesn’t have to issue any more than a few warnings to the other handmaidens, based on her feelings, and most of her warnings end up either having been preceded by or else being seconded by similar warnings from other handmaidens who’re disquieted by a similar sense of wrongness or danger.
11.) Forgiving: She’s incredibly tired of bad, selfish beings who somehow always seem to find a way to get away with mistreating and trammeling upon the rights and needs of others, and, if she had her way, the entire Trade Federation collective would simply be taken out and strung up and left to strangle slowly and painfully in a shameful public death, but then, she never has claimed to be a particularly forgiving kind of person, and, to be perfectly honest, she’s not really all that sure her opinion is all that different from the one held by most Nabooians or indeed even most of her colleagues, among the Queen’s handmaidens, so she really doesn’t see any kind of need to feel bad about her lack of forgiveness for those jumped-up corporate criminals.
12.) Sorry: The Queen obviously misses her friend, Sabé, and she pines for that handsome young Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi (who apparently also became a close friend and confidant on the perilous, somewhat circuitous journey from Naboo to Coruscant and then back to Naboo again), too, and Anadé cannot help but feel sorry for her and wish that there was something more she could do, to help ease Amidala’s loneliness and pain.
13.) Retire: They’re technically supposed to be able to retire from service, if they want to and the Queen gives them leave to do so, but no one who actually makes it through the training seems to have any intention of ever doing anything other than either dying in service to the Queen or else pledging to serve someone else, like Amidala, if she ever happens to retire so completely from political life that she no longer has need of a household that includes a coterie of handmaidens, and, in any case, she and Ellessé are fairly certain that they’re going to die in service, based on the dreams they’ve had, so they’re not too worried about it (believing, as the other handmaidens do, that, so long as they make good ends and perform their duties to the absolute best of their abilities, that they will have led full, rich lives of purpose and meaning, and that the Great Lady will welcome them gladly home to her bosom, when they have left their mortal lives behind).
14.) Natural: She’s one of the few handmaidens who’s (eventually) gradually regressed to her natural appearance, to help maintain the illusion of sufficient variety amongst the handmaidens to keep it from being quite so glaringly obvious that the handmaidens are chosen for their ability to be able to hide the Queen safely amongst their numbers, and it’s actually become a bit jarring, to look in the mirror and see bright green eyes (with a very few random amber flecks and a thin ring of oddly bluish-brown around the outer rim of the irises) and thick, wildly wavy amber colored hair instead of a brunette with dark eyes who could be any number of her handmaiden sisters staring serenely back out at her.
15.) End: She usually spends most of her days closeted with the Queen and her principal handmaidens, working over figures and helping to juggle the allocation of moneys for public works as well as for projects closer to home (regarding, for example, the weapons and training and materials provided for the handmaidens or for the Royal Guard), but she keeps in practice (in case another crisis like the Trade Federation’s invasion should ever strike again) by occasionally joining the handmaidens who are performing guard duty on either the Queen or her decoy, and it is thus that she eventually meets her end, helping to stand watch over Dormé during a diplomatic function at the city of Selton and instinctively throwing herself between the young decoy and a sniper’s shot, managing to hold on just long enough to tell Ellessé goodbye before succumbing to a grievous wound that has badly damaged her brave and loyal generous heart.
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