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A queen has no time for gossip. She should dedicate herself to her people and work towards leaving the world a better place than she had found it. She should filter out any whispers that wanted to draw her attention away, for she had far too many important things to do, like reviewing the newest piece of trade regulation passed by the Senate.
A queen has no time for gossip, yes this is true, but when your queen is still a child, it is hard to resist the temptations of a good gossip session.
Queen Amidala, righteous and royal that she may be, was currently doubled over in laughter as her trusted handmaidens tried valiantly to embody the stuck up air of the latest ambassador they had to deal with. Sabé captured his look of arrogant disdain, right down to sticking her nose so high in the air that they all could see up it, but Cordé was the one who sent Queen Amidala, who was Padmé to her friends, into a laughing fit by copying the ambassador's vocal tic of starting every sentence with “Well, obviously…”
Padmé laughed, wiping away a tear from her eye and glad that she wasn’t wearing the formal queen make up at the moment, for it would surely be ruined if she was.
A queen had no time for gossip, this was known by all of the girls who sat around the room with pillows pulled into their laps as they laughed and joked, but sometimes, a teenager is allowed to be a teenager.
The gossip moved from the ambassador to romance, as gossip was prone to do. Rabé adopted a conspiratorial grin as she rummaged through her bag and said, “Get a load of this.”
Upon revealing just what she had smuggled in, Padmé found herself blushing for no good reason. It was a holo-book with a completely indecent cover. A Human woman and Kiffar man were lying in a field, with the woman’s head thrown back in quiet pleasure and the man pressing his lips lightly into the woman’s neck, his hand gripping her hip. The woman was wearing a pink dress that just barely covered her chest and her bare legs looked impossibly shiny and soft and if the dress just shifted slightly more to the left then Padmé would be able to see the smooth curve of the woman’s upper thigh, and Padmé found her blush deepening as she realized just what she was thinking of.
Her handmaidens made various scandalized oohing noises as they clustered close and Padmé followed along, giggling at the appropriate moments and trying hard to not steal another glance at the woman on the cover.
Rabé went to the next page and the beautiful woman disappeared. Padmé tried her best to not be disappointed when the first image was a Zabrak man with a shirt half undone and glistening muscles who stared provocatively at the viewer, his long hair falling over his shoulders elegantly. Sabé sighed dreamily at the sight and said, “Do you see those eyes? I could spend forever looking into them.”
“You just like that he has tooka eyes,” Saché teased, making Sabé gasp and try to push her off the couch. Saché was ready for that though and dodged the push with ease, ducking behind Eirtaé who rolled her eyes at them, smirking in satisfaction at Sabé’s groan of defeat.
“What’s the next one?” Yané asked, tugging on Rabé’s sleeve.
Obliging, Rabé went to the next page and oh. Padmé was quite sure she forgot how to breathe.
The picture showed another image of a couple in a passionate embrace, but it was a Twi’lek woman and a Human man this time. The backdrop of the picture seemed to be a public theater which made what they were doing all the more scandalous. They were, granted, both clothed but Padmé was being thoroughly introduced to how erotic strategically placed clothing can be. The woman once again had a look of bliss on her face, head tilted up towards the sky as if there was nothing on her mind except pleasure. The man was pressed closely on her side, lips brushing against her lekku in a way that looked utterly lewd. The woman’s top half of her dress had been peeled forward, showing off the delicate curve of her spine while just covering her breasts. Padmé found herself looking at the man’s hand that hovered just over the woman’s ass and wondered what it would be like to be in his place. Could she make the woman make that same face if she had the chance? What would it be like to trail a finger down her lekku and feel the shudder run down the woman’s back? Would the cloth hiding the woman’s breasts from view slip to expose her?
A finger poking her cheek brought Padmé out of her fantasies, which made her blush harder.
Dormé was grinning, though it looked far too smug.
“So,” Dormé drawled, doing a remarkable job keeping her amusement out of her voice, “do you see something you like, Padmé?”
Padmé summoned what dignity she could. “It’s aesthetically pleasing I suppose.”
That was the wrong thing to say, considering the looks her handmaidens shared.
“Sure,” Sabé said, blank in a way that had Padmé blushing even more. “So, if we were to, hypothetically, encounter a man who looked like this, you wouldn’t stare just a little?”
“I don’t care about the man,” Padmé said, the words tumbling out of her before she could think about them. The jovial atmosphere disappeared for a moment as her handmaidens registered the comment and its implications, and looked at her. While they did that, panic was building within Padmé. It wasn’t unheard of for people to fall for the same gender in Naboo society but it was something that was acknowledged and then politely ignored.
“So, she’s your type?” Yané said, drawing the attention to her. Hesitantly, Padme shrugged.
“I-I don’t know?” Padme admitted. “I haven’t… I haven’t really looked. At women. But I think they’re pretty.” Awkwardness bubbled up in her while she struggled to put together a coherent sentence.
Yané nodded sagely. “Women can sometimes be so beautiful it makes words hard, I understand. It’s an old illness you have, called Pretty-Girls-Make-Brain-Go-Kaput.” The mock graveness in her voice had Padmé laughing, and then Yané was laughing, and then everyone was laughing and the moment of uncertainty was broken.
“So,” Sabé said, clearing her throat after they were done laughing, “if we were to, hypothetically, encounter a woman who--”
Padmé groaned, throwing her pillow at Sabé’s face.
They continued to look through the holobook, though the handmaidens made sure to ask Padmé if the women in the pictures were her type. By the end, Padmé wasn’t exactly sure if she had a type, but she knew that Rabé was never going to let the comment, “I think the dress looks nice,” go, especially since the dress in question was barely hanging onto the woman’s body and looked like it was going to fall any second. Rabé had already made several comments about Padmé thinking that clothes look best when they were on the floor, and Padmé really didn’t have any counterargument to that.
A queen had no time for gossip, nor romance. But Padmé liked to think she always had time for friends, and if those friends wanted to gossip, well who was she to stop them.