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He tears down the Republic, and the Senate cheers. No one raises a voice in protest; almost anyone who might have done so is absent from the Senate chamber, already arrested or fleeing it, implicated in some fantastical conspiracy against Palpatine, or maybe the whole government. He’s not particularly clear on the distinction, and why should he be? They’re interchangeable now.
Padmé knows her exclusion from those arrests isn’t an oversight. Perhaps it would look bad for Palpatine to implicate the Naboo Senator, or perhaps he has something worse in mind for her.
She puts her bets on the latter.
