Gigachad Qui Gon Would Never Leave Shmi In Slavery. Source: I Said So

So, I've got a question. In an AU where Padmé survives, fakes her death, and goes into hiding, are she and Vader still legally married? Or was that dissolved upon the registration of her death? Or, since her death certificate was falsified, would that mean that all her legal contracts would remain intact? Or would it be a legal question that would have all the experts perplexed because there's simply no precedent, and would result in a lengthy court battle? (Or a not-so-lengthy one, depending on the state of Vader's temper.) Would it even matter anyway, since she apparently didn't marry under her own name? Since neither of them married under their legal names, is it even a valid legal contract in the first place?

I'm probably going to have to end up BS-ing the legal stuff for Fortune's Rule, but if anyone knows if there's a canon answer (or Legends) to the question of whether they would still be married after she faked her death, that would be lovely.

Edit: The closest real-world example I can find is Enoch Arden laws, and while the Republic/Empire probably has something similar, those don't quite fit the situation, since they have to do with someone being missing, not faking their death.

Art: Mother and Daughter

Padmé and Jobal Naberrie.

Sketched in pencil on watercolor paper, outlined in pen, and then used paintbrushes to fill in with pigment from Derwent Inktense blocks. I've barely touched the Inktense blocks since receiving them about ten years ago, so it was really cool to actually, finally use them for a finished piece, rather than just messing around! They worked super well for both intense and subtle coloring, too.

The scene is based on the image from the Wookieepedia Legends page for Padmé's mausoleum.

Something funky's going on with Padmé and Jobal's arms, and the angle of the stone under the stained glass ended up a little off somehow, but on the whole, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! (Especially Padmé's cloak; I don't quite know how that happened, but glad it did!) The stained glass worked out much better than expected, and Inktense was a really nice medium for getting the tonal variations. Could just be me, but it seemed easier to move around on the page than watercolor, which made it more forgiving if an area ever became too light or too dark.

Me: Searches up synonym of word for book Google: Gives me perfect word Also Google: This word is archaic Me:

Sending this your way .. about Nur and how horrific it is… tie in to your reference about Nur in Fortunes Rule and how Vader has a lot to explain and atone for when it comes to the whole torturing and entombing

Jedi esp younglings 🤯

Hey, thanks! That little bit about the entry point and the security will definitely come in handy, as I am planning to have a Nur chapter at some point down the line.

Honestly, I may have gotten myself in a bit over my head with the whole Nur thing. I didn't realise just how nasty it is when I mentioned it back in Part II, so, uh... yeah, that's going to be fun to figure out. Fortunately, it will be a while before that arc, so there's some time to figure out how to approach it.

Would like to suggest an alternative ship name for the Obi-Wan and Satine thing:

Satobi

Now, I know, it's not the most aesthetically or aurally pleasing word, but if you say it quickly, it sounds like "sad Obi," and that's just so appropriate.

(Disclaimer: I don't know much about the whole ship-naming thing, so apologies if this breaks any rules of nomenclature, but it was a fun way to play with sounds and meanings.)

Happy New year!! Hope you made it through grad school applications! Looking forward to that crazy call in FR! Cheers!

Happy very belated new year! I did make it through applications, with a couple acceptances, and am now just hoping the funding holds! And I am pleased to announce that the new chapter in Fortune's Rule is finally posted!

Characters keep getting ideas and running with them.

So, uh, Piett and Starkiller... yeah, this was definitely not the plan when I first decided to include those characters in Fortune's Rule. (Heck, they weren't originally supposed to be in the fic at all, but then neither was at least half of the story that's happened thus far, so....)

They were supposed to have pretty separate parts in the story, and they were both going to be much more minor than they're turning out. Until Piett apparently decided Starkiller needs a friend. And he's definitely not wrong, so who am I to say no?

The unfortunate thing here is that now I'm going to have to figure out how the heck Vader is going to deal with the news that his admiral and his apprentice are in cahoots behind his back.

*looks sternly at characters*

Do you see how much extra work you are making for me? Now, behave!

(This seems to have become a recurring theme in the writing of this story. Ahsoka and Padmé weren't originally going to have as close a relationship as they do, but then they decided to take the reins for just one chapter, and look how that turned out.)

Hope you get to post next chapter of fortune Rules soon after your move!

Me too! This chapter is taking so much longer than I expected! It's a bit of double whammy, because this one wasn't at all planned out in advance. After last chapter, I realised I needed to include a few things as transitions/setup for later events, so I'm having to write this one out of nowhere, while dealing with all the moving stuff. Can't wait to be done with all the chaos, can't wait to hopefully get back to writing and posting on a more regular schedule, especially as we're on the cusp of more interesting things starting to happen.

I've been trying to wrestle out some more of the current chapter this evening, actually, and your comments have been a nice bit of encouragement, so thank you! 💛😊

The way Vader speaks differently from Anakin, not just accent but diction, makes me wonder how the heck he picked that up. Did Palpatine decide, "You must speak properly and menacingly, my disappointingly casual apprentice"?

Or, oh geez, did Vader actually start voluntarily looking up higher-level vocabulary and practicing stiff, formal sentence construction, just so he could avoid sounding like Anakin?

Well, he's nothing if not extra.

When Obi-Wan inevitably finds out about this voluntary study in the Force ghost afterlife, he really wishes he were sufficiently corporeal to bang his head on the wall, because how many years did he spend trying to help Anakin with linguistic skills, and now he decides they're actually useful?

I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson's Wax and Wayne series at work, and the kandra naming pattern reminded me of Plo Koon in Star Wars, so then my brain was like, "PloKoon? Plo as a kandra?"

What if he takes a bag of spare bones with him on campaigns during the Clone Wars, and one of the Wolfpack finds it one day—

Trooper: "Hey buir, do we want to know why you have a bag of bones under your bed?"

Plo: "Ah... those were from Little 'Soka's first hunt."

Trooper: "Um... okay, that makes sense for the nuna bones, but some of these look human, and I'm getting a little concerned for the safety of the 501st."

And yeah, the nuna bones probably are from Ahsoka's first hunt. She gave them to him the way kids give grownups useless little things they find or make. Plo of course treasures them, and they're secretly his favorite bones.

Also, just saying, being a kandra would allow Plo to survive Order 66. He would just have to sneak off as a mistwraith.

(Not sure how you explain a Force-sensitive kandra, or how a kandra got out of the Cosmere and into the SW universe in the first place, but anyways.)