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This Is Not A Story - Time Travelling Dirty Politics

Summary:

Padme goes back in time from the approximate instant of her death to her first day in the senate and chooses to fix things by playing the politics of sneakiness, not of hope, ethics or morals. It's just dirty pool all the way down.

This is not a story, but a summary of an idea that anyone can use as a prompt if they want to. You don't have to ask, make like Nike and Just Do It.

Notes:

Standard disclaimer of non-ownership applies.

So I'd been turning this idea over in my head for a few days, but I can't really make it gel, so you all get the messy typed-in-the-posting-box version.

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

So, here's the thing about Padme, Bail and the Delegation of 2,000. They were trying to convince people to do things because of morals and ethics and notions of Right and Wrong.

Much good it did them.

So, handwavy The-Force-Works-In-Mysterious-Ways timetravel happens and Padme wakes up on Coruscant, on her first day in the Senate. On that first day she'd been all optimistic and determined to Do Good. She'd met Bail and various others who became her allies and they formed a cohort that worked to Do Good Things.

The thing is, Padme saw how that turned out. It didn't work. It didn't work because Palpatine cheats, people are selfish and some people have no moral centre to appeal to.

She isn't totally sure what she's going to do - she's half thinking she'll go to the Jedi to see if their Force woo can help, when she finds herself at a vote. It was a vote for a bill that had the unequivocal support of Bail, and not incidentally Padme back the first time. The thing is, Padme has seen the tiny bits of legislation that got slipped into the bill while it was getting passed. Innocuous little bits that had added up to denying Outer Rim systems supplies, that had added up to increasing Palpatine's power, that had added up to leading up to the war.

She knows what it does and she votes against it.

Bail doesn't talk to her that afternoon. She's demonstrated to him that she's against that sort of progressive bill with that one vote.

Padme gets politically courted by senators who had never wanted anything to do with her.

As she talks to them, listens to them talking about economics and what things do for them personally, Padme gets an idea. She isn't going to politics that openly align her with those people whose opinions she agrees with. Padme slides herself into the self-interested majority. They're not bad people per se, they're just . . . shallow. She starts campaigning on behalf of economic moves that will do things that either counter something Palpatine is doing or get something done that will help people, but couches every move she makes in the most offensively self-interested terms possible. When a vote comes up that will deprive the Outer Rim in such as way as to cause war later, she couches her arguments in terms of how having access to Outer Rim goods will be monetarily advantageous to this or that mid-rim or core system.

Over and over again she votes against bills that seem custom designed to do good things for the less-well-off but will hurt someone in the long-term.

All of Padme's former allies write her off. Palpatine is fooled into thinking that she's shallow and not worried about appearances now that she's in an appointed position rather than one that is elected.

Padme tells the truth to her handmaidens, using her knowledge of the future to convince them. Y'know, predicting who will win a race, precise outcomes of major natural disasters etc. etc. Padme is aware of what's going on over on Kamino, knows that they were already growing clones, and doesn't know about the mind control chips. She just assumes that the clones lost it and it was some sort of horrific uprising of people who saw the end of the war had come and were hoping to break free and had misdirected their fury or something like that. She asks one or another of her ladies to look into the Kamino situation for her to see if they can't find a way to help the clones or something.

The one thing that she exercises her optimism on is tracking down Maul. She knows that he survived, because she lived through the war and his shenanigans. She figures out where he had gone after being chopped in half and has him collected and nursed back to health in secret. She and Sabe make reforming Maul into their pet project. Basically, "Palpatine screwed you over. Why don't you help us screw him over right back?"

When it becomes clear that Palpatine has her outmanoeuvred in terms of starting the war, Padme starts a long term project to get the clones free. She starts a campaign against clones in the Republic. You see, sapient cloning is illegal in the Republic, sure, but lots of people get clones anyhow. Many of them are wealthy people who want perfect babies or who want an exact replica of a child who died. These cloners are, for the most part, makers of single individual clones for singular purposes. There are, in fact, a lot of clones in the Senate. Padme starts her campaign, slowly and quietly to get them declared non-people. Palpatine, thinking he can use this against his clone army later is very encouraging.

I shall get back to the point of that in a minute.

She also, (recalling that she'd heard once that a large number of casualties in the early days of the war came from Jedi who didn't know how to adapt to working with an army behind them, and clones who didn't know how to adapt to a Jedi . . . wherever) convinces Maul to take up a position training on Kamino. She's managed to worm her way into Kamino on a wonky premise that if the Jedi are funded by the Senate, and the Jedi purchased the clones, then technically the Senate and/or the Republic own the clones on some level and should have a say in the clones. Maul, being a trained sabre user can then help teach the clones how to work around a Jedi who has no idea how to work with other people and messes things up by trying, a Jedi who is going to try to save all the clones and thus manage to stand in their sightlines and firing lines all the time trying to block all the incoming blaster fire, or a Jedi who's going to fling himself ahead like a moron and forget he's supposed to work with the clones.

One or two of the handmaidens also take up teaching positions, among other things making sure the clones learn about police work so that the Coruscant Guard get appropriate training before getting thrown at that job.

Also, between Maul and the handmaidens they snoop until they find out about the chips and Padme gets some backwoods of nowhere scientist to find a way to EMP the chips or something. She found him because she's been sneaking around behind Palpatine's back, so she's found people to do things off the beaten track.

She also makes sure to get Shmi free as soon as possible, and to send word to Anakin that his mother is safe and well. She then takes the chance to stay in contact with him, and also to relay messages between Shmi and Anakin. She loves Anakin, and even if they never become a thing again (she's hoping it works out but is trying very hard not to accidentally groom him because that would be bad - she has Sabe look over every communication for creepiness as an independent third party) and devotes a lot of time to teaching Anakin about politics and things with the intent of countering Palpatine's bad influence. Padme arranges for very discreet guards on the Lars farm specifically so that the tragedy of Shmi's death won't happen. The point is, that Anakin is much more balanced as a person when he doesn't have to worry about his mother and when someone is actively defraying Palpatine's bad influence.

Anyhow, the war comes anyhow, they wind up on Geonosis anyhow, but there are far fewer casualties as the Vod'e have better training thanks to Maul, but also Padme knows what's coming and is able to do some clever manoeuvring with the help of her handmaidens in order to reduce Jedi casualties too.

Padme, loudly proclaiming to all and sundry at the Senate that the idea of a Sith in the Senate is stupid, manages to get the whole of the Senate thinking about a Sith or at least CIS spy in the Senate. She forces loud arguments with Bail in public places to inform people of the facts in a way that is entertaining to the masses (two senators nearly killing each other shrieking about evil space wizards is pretty entertaining) which ensures that the Jedi do not find themselves faced with, 'Jedi, Sith, what's the difference? They're space wizards with laser swords'.

This is also when she makes her move about the clones. Oh, look at this clone army. Clones aren't people and we need to stop the encroachment of clones into our affairs. That's when she makes her move. She gets the senate to agree that all clones aren't people and can't be treated as such. "I'm so glad my fellow senators feel this way. If you look at your pads, you will note that I have just sent this verified list of clones masquerading as senators to all of you. As we have just declared them to not be people, they must resign effective immediately. Joe Bloggs, Joanna Smith, Sheev Palpatine . . ."

There's nothing any of those senators can do as a majority of senators have agreed that all clones need to be booted out. Palpatine, along with a wide cross-section of political stripes of senators have been sharply disenfranchised.

While Palpatine is out of the way, a bunch of other senators make moves to undo some of his more egregious bad legislation, but the really clever part for Padme is the fact that all these campaigns to prove to people that clones are people too and need a place in society has the knock-on effect of making the Vod'e legally people too. In order to get themselves back into office, they have to admit the Kamino product are people too.

Padme spends several weeks ducking assassination attempts following her forcible dethroning of Palpatine, who hadn't even known he was the result of his parents wanting a carbon copy of the kid they'd had before Sheev version 1.0 had died of something or other, is particularly infuriated when he gets his seat as Chancellor back only for that to lead to them having to treat all the Vod'e as people and provide pay to the clones as well as allowing them to leave the GAR if they want.

Somewhere along the way, Padme has managed to explain to Anakin at least some of what she's doing. Not the details, but pointing out how convincing people of practical things can get them to do good things in a way that appealing to a higher nature that some people don't have *cough*Mas Amedda, Tarkin, you-know-who*cough* will not work. I leave it to everyone else to decide if Anakin and Padme get together or if she, I don't know, gets together with Maul or Sabe or something. I just figure that she'd know that Anakin had to have been badly influenced by Palpatine and would include talking him around as one of her side plans.

Anyhow, Padme is maybe persona non grata with all the Vod'e as the person who insisted all the clones aren't people. That is, except the Guard because they've been watching her in the Senate and she always gets things done that help the Vod'e, unlike all the nice Senators who never get anything done because they're trying to convince people to Be Good. And she and Fox are like best friends in commiseration over people being awful. Then there's some dramatic denouement during which she winds up explaining in a public setting all the things she did to trick the Senate into doing the right thing and Bail or Yoda or whomever is all, "But you could have just asked, people would totally do the right thing."

And Padme and Fox are all like, "Uh no. People are terrible." And then there is some sort of happily-ever-after.