▸ Column · A bonding-ceremony dispute among Senate-District society on Coruscant, Star Wars galaxy
EMPEROR PALPATINE replies.
Replied to by Emperor Palpatine, with a rebuttal from Yoda.
The letter
My betrothed, Dominic, and I have spent fourteen months arranging our bonding ceremony in the gardens of the Senate District — an intimate gathering, the seating charted by hand over three long evenings. Then I learned his mother, Renata, had quietly contacted the venue and added forty-seven names from her temple circle, none of whom I've met, putting us eleven thousand credits past our means and erasing the whole design. When I raised it, she wept and told Dominic I was "carving his family out of the happiest day of his life." Now Dominic only asks me to "find a way to make it work," and I watch him fold back into her version — her chosen officiant, a band she's hired, a holo-montage of his childhood with not one image of me in it. I love him. But this has become Renata's party for her son. How do I take my ceremony back?
Emperor Palpatine replies
My dear, how patiently you've borne this. Fourteen months of your labor, your evenings, your design — and a single secret call unmakes it, and still you are the one cast as the villain. Tearful Renata, with her forty-seven strangers, and you the one "cutting out family." Let me be candid: notice who taught you to even ask permission for your own ceremony.
But it is not Renata who troubles me. It is Dominic. "Find a way to make it work" — do you hear what that is? A man choosing his mother's comfort over yours and calling it peace, because your hurt is quieter and easier to overrule. I knew a gifted young man once, torn between the woman he loved and the loyalties others had wound around him. The loyalties won. They always win, in men who'd rather be folded than stand.
I would never tell you to issue ultimatums. I only wonder why you call wanting your name in your own marriage "selfishness." It is not. It is the bare minimum of self-respect. The guest list is yours to unmake. The man is yours to measure. No one would blame you for finally asking what, exactly, you are marrying into. The choice has always been yours.
— Emperor Palpatine
Yoda weighs in
Hmm. Smooth, the old serpent's voice is. "Measure the man," he says — and to war with the one you love, he points you. Watched him too late once, I did. Heed me now.
Beneath your fury, fear there is — fear that vanish you will, your name, your place, into Renata's day. Real, that fear. But grip the ceremony too tight, and crush the marriage in your fist, you may.
Frightened, Renata is also — of losing her son. Two frightened hands, pulling the same boy apart.
Sit with Dominic, you must. Not the venue — the fear, name it together. The flowers, forget for a moment. Keep the marriage. Let the party go, hmm? Patience, my friend.
— Yoda
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