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He had several meetings on Naboo, official ones with their placeholder of a senator and with their current queen, as well as several less-than-official meetings with a few local Rebel leaders.
As with other trips, he had brought Leia along to observe the official meetings and learn about the planet’s cultures. She already had the makings of a fine public servant, even at the age of ten, what with her sharp mind, wry wit, and keen sense of justice. Sometimes she reminded him of her mother so very much, a thought he dared not think outside his private study.
But his trip to Naboo had another ulterior motive, at least in regards to his daughter’s education. Leia was still very much a little girl, one who sometimes missed the mother she could never know. Oh, she knew she was adopted, all of Alderaan knew that, but her birth mother’s identity would remain a closed subject, no matter how often Leia tried to wheedle the information out of him. And she knew—or, at least, he hoped she knew—how much he and Breha loved her. He knew that Leia fiercely loved them, and he prayed that she’d forgive him if she ever found out the secret he guarded so closely.
This trip was a way for her to continue to gain skills as a future legislator and potential senator, but he also wanted for her to learn about Naboo’s beloved queen and senator, Padmé Amidala. It had become customary for guests to Theed City to pay a visit to the senator’s tomb. Truth be told, it was the closest he could come to telling her about her birth mother without jeopardizing themselves and the still fairly nascent Rebellion.
And he wanted her to have facts about Padmé, rather than the half-truths and hopeful fictions that had sprung up in the years since her death. Stories that made her more of a legend than a person. Stories about the sainted Queen Mother who had died in grief at the loss of democracy and of the Republic, died without giving birth to hope and freedom. Stories about the Young Queen, who dressed as her handmaiden and walked unseen among her people, blessing them, inspiring courage and hope. The Goddess of the Broken Heart, a woman whose life was dedicated to helping those in need, whose compassionate life had been cruelly cut short by the Empire’s sinister agents, whose passionate voice had been silenced because it spoke truth. It was rumored that she’d return, to free them from the slavery of the Empire, to restore peace and justice to the galaxy. This last story was one that he knew many rank-and-file Rebels held to closely—after all, hadn’t she presented the Petition of 2000? Even if it had fallen on stone ears?
Bail, however, saw her as his friend, felled by forces far stronger and stranger than either of them had realized. And when he looked at Leia, well, he saw Padmé, too. Not as a fearsome figure of legend, but as a little girl who wanted to change the galaxy. Of course, Leia wasn’t her mother—not either of her mothers, actually. There was a fierceness and a forthrightness about her that was all her own.
Critics back home, of course, saw those traits and called his daughter a ‘spitfire’, a title Leia thought hilarious. She’d giggled when she’d read it in the news columns. “They think I spit fire?” she’d said. “Just wait till I’m a legislator.”
He had no doubt of that.
But now they were standing hand-in-hand inside Amidala’s tomb, a large, decently lit mausoleum that had a stained glass portrait of the woman interred there. A plaque nearby drily listed the basic data bits regarding Padmé's life—birth, career, death. It was an official account, so it skated over the fact that she hadn’t been a supporter of the Chancellor retaining his emergency powers. A note regarding her legacy alerted Bail to the fact that apparently one of her nieces was on track to becoming senator of Naboo. Good for her; he’d have to keep an eye out for the young woman.
Leia tugged on his arm. “Papa, how can someone be elected queen?”
He smiled. “Remember your lessons? Here on Naboo, queen is an elected position. A little different than your mother’s position, but an important one, nonetheless.”
“Oh, right.” She chewed on her bottom lip, a tell that she was thinking something through. A tell he’d have to train her to drop, but that could wait for another time. “She was also a senator. Like you?”
“Like me.”
Leia pored over the plaque. “These dates—did you work with her? Did you know her?”
He nodded. “Yes, I did. Naboo and Alderaan have historically been close allies. It’s one reason we’re making this visit, to strengthen those bonds.”
“Cause of death, unknown,” Leia read. She looked up at Bail, her eyes wide. “How come they don’t know?”
“Lots of people die in war,” he said. “Even senators.”
Leia got that look on her face that meant she somehow disagreed with what he’d said, pulling her hand out of his and settling it on her hip. “Why would a senator be in a war? Why wouldn’t she be in the Senate?”
“I don’t know, Leia,” he said. It was a lie, of course, but one meant to protect the both of them. Besides, how could he explain to her that Amidala had survived multiple assassination attempts, the Battle of Geonosis, and several missions behind enemy lines during the Clone Wars? Or that he himself had raced his speeder straight toward danger on Empire Day? “Senators don’t live in the Senate, after all.”
“True,” she said, looking toward the stained glass portrait of Padmé. Leia squinted a little, as if trying to make out the expression on the portrait’s face. “She looks sad. Maybe she died saving someone. Maybe she died a hero.”
She didn’t know how close to the truth she actually was. “Oh, Senator Amidala was certainly a hero,” Bail said. “Heroes are more than just the protagonists in your favorite holo;” (her current favorite holo had heroes very loosely based on Skywalker and Kenobi) “She was always unafraid to speak her mind, to do what’s right. To speak up for those without a voice.”
Leia bit her lip again. “Did other senators ever oppose her?”
“Debates in the Senate happen frequently, so yes.”
“What did she do when she was right and they disagreed with her?”
Bail smiled, memories of Padmé's passionate speeches coming to mind. “She persisted, dear. She persisted.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Leia said, taking her father’s hand again.
He had no doubt of that.