Why Vader/Dormé?
Their love is so sick and wrong...or is it?
Vader and Dormé is not such a ‘crack’ pairing as you might believe…In fact, next to Obi-Wan and Sabé, this is very logical and realistic pairing.
¬They both have an inferiority complex: having to, or feeling they have to, go to great lengths to prove themselves to other people. This stems from their upbringing: Anakin as a slave then under the tutelage of a Jedi Knight, Dormé as a handmaiden trained to serve and protect Amidala whose life is more important than Dormé's. (In the fiction on this site, we've added the backstory that Dormé is also from a lower middle-class family and is not treated with the same respect given to those handmaidens of noble families)
¬They have both always obeyed the orders of someone higher than them and were raised not to question it.
¬They are dependant on someone else to tell them what to do and give structure to their lives.
¬They are closer in age than Anakin and Padmé who was four years his senior. As one of the newer handmaidens in Amidala's service, it is very likely she is younger than Amidala. In the fiction on this site, Dormé is two years younger than Anakin. When Anakin became Darth Vader, Padmé was 27 and he was only 23. Dormé is 21 when she enters his service. This gives them many years together to learn about each other and form a friendship, growing up and maturing into full-fledged adulthood as they learn about themselves as individuals (something neither of them really had a chance to discover before) and about each other.
¬They are both flawed individuals straining to be better than what they are but never fully suceeding.
¬They are completely honest with each other, though not with anyone else, which builds their mutual trust and respect.
¬They don't feel like they have to hide anything and feel they can be open with each other without being chastised or guilt-tripped.
¬They support each other and their decisions.
¬They have never had a true friend before. As discussed in A Study on the Relationship Between Sabé and Her 'Queen', there is a fine line between Padmé and her handmaidens where duty is placed above any friendship they might have. The handmaidens are never 'off-duty' in their protection of the senator and there is always a class diferentiation between them. Moteé, whom Dormé considered a friend, was really only using and manipulating her for her own entertainment and as soon as she hooked up with Veers didn't pay much if any attention to Dormé at all. The other handmaidens were either her mentors/superiors or discluded her from their circle of friends because of her class difference. Obi-Wan was more of a father/older brother/authority figure to Anakin and C3PO doesn't count, Palpatine continually manipulated/mentored him as well, so Anakin too had no real friend as in someone who actually took the time to get to know him as a person without ulterior motives (yes, it might not have seemed like it, but it is apparent in the AOTC novels that Padmé did have ulterior motives. Her family urged her to have a family, Anakin had the hots for her...).
¬They are love sponges. What this means exactly is that they feed off the affections of other people. Vader loves the attention she gives him and Dormé basks in the attention he gives her.
¬They often make promises they are not strong enough to uphold, but are aware of this flaw in each other. (In the fiction on this site, the only promises Anakin is able to keep are the ones he makes to Dormé)
¬They both are very passionate people, putting their entire heart, mind, and yes, even their soul into things they believe in. This includes doing terrible things in order to protect the ones they love.
¬Their love is not stemmed on lust, purely physical attraction, but forms through a mutual understanding and friendship. It might be a warped, sickly, diseased kind of love, but it is more real and true than anything Anakin had with Padmé, the woman he chased after but never really knew all that well. Though Anakin and Padmé were married for three years, he was always away fighting in the Clone Wars and they never really got to know each other. It is believeable that they shared a passioante physical love, but highly doubtful that the connection was anything more than that. Vader and Dormé spent two years getting to know each other, spending time together, and growing as friends before dancing around their growing affections for each other as individuals, not as what society or other people dictated. Lust can grow with absence, but true love grows over time spent together, learning of each other's best qualities and worst faults, accepting, understanding, forgiving, but most of all: communicating freely.