Would Padmé have suffered professionally from having her marriage to Anakin and children revealed
..., in the same way that Anakin might have been kicked out of the Jedi Order?
shareWho knows? It's all so lamely plotted that it's hard to tell what the rules are for any of this stuff...
shareYeah, nobody ever said anything.
Apparently there was no problem with being an unwed pregnant senator, except for a few people talking behind her back. And really, I suspect that everyone who cared had a pretty good idea who the baby's father was, and nobody was outraged or planning to make official trouble. They had to notice that ever since her adventures with the hot young Jedi the two of them had been close - I mean try to hide something like that from handmaidens who are trained to be as observant as any top security operative!
The handmaidens probably wouldn't talk, though. But, yeah, if the Jedi didn't know...I mean, they must have known, right? How could they not? I don't remember if they find out or when? It's been awhile since I've seen the movie...
I'm not sure what a political scandal would even look like in the Republic. There are SO MANY worlds, each with three politicians at all times on Coruscant. Scandal would probably bubble up and burst as fast as you could snap your fingers. So it seems like even a big scandal (barring treason) would blow over fast.
Really, the Jedi had to have a clue, they've got magical powers and the rest of them all have to be smarter than Anakin, and Padme's followers and associates had to have an idea who got her preggers. But nobody said anything, there was no scandal, apparently nothing but some talk behind her back.
Frankly, both the Jedi order and Coruscant society probably allow the Jedi knights a bit of leeway on that front, for all their training they're still biological beings with whatever urges are normal for their species. Do you think Qui-Gon was celibate his whole adult life? No way! I assume that if a Jedi went all the way and got married then they would have to leave the order and make a new life, but short of that, it's not like they were wearing chastity belts.
Yeah, I assumed that they'd have to know, but I can't remember them every either (a) saying anything about knowing (which is weird), or (b) finding out and being surprised. That neither moment happens is another knock against the scripting that Lucas did on these films. (Let the record show that I still think of Lucas as a genius for Star Wars IV and American Graffiti alone, I just think he fumbled on these three).
I guess this is all doubly baffling to me because I assumed that, if anything, the bigger problem would be keeping the Jedi in the dark about Anakin's breaking of his vows, not Padme nailing a Jedi knight. It seems like politicians would be cooler about that than monks would.
I also feel like making the Jedi not allowed to love or marry was a mistake. It should have been an open-ended thing. Like, if you think about Jedi knights as samurai, maybe some of them became more monk-like (Yoda) and others more knight-like (Luke), but it wouldn't be required of them to take vows of celibacy - only if they chose to do so. It felt almost arbitrary and random - especially because they never did anything with it. This big, secret romance was set up in Attack of the Clones and wasn't paid off in Revenge of the Sith. Weird.
As to who was celibate and who wasn't: who knows? Star Wars is a very low-sexy universe. They amp it up in Empire Strikes Back, but only with Han, Leia, and Lando. But I never got the impression that Obi-Wan was ever interested in anything. Of course, maybe he's just aesexual. Qui-Gonn maybe wanted to get it on with Anakin's mom, though...
As for the Jedi being celibate of not... Lucas left if all frustratingly vague. It's pretty clear that marriage is out for Jedi, and presumably long-term relationships are out, too... but what about short-term relationships? What about no strings attached flings? What about passionless sex for reproduction only? What about SEX???
There's nothing in any of the films that says whether the Jedi are celibate or not, a huge omission. But Anakin is the only jedi we ever see express any kind of passion, the rest seem more uninterested than frustrated. Even Rey seems completely uninterested, and nobody ever told her she couldnt.