Was Padmé's family rich or poor?

Question

On the one hand, the Official Star Wars Fact File 90 states that Padmé came from a small mountain village, and that her father Ruwee Naberrie was a builder (and Queen Amidala's Journal states that his mother Winama Naberrie was a weaver). When Ruwee's wife Jobal gives life to two daughters, the couple reconsiders its future with two other mouths to feed. Years later, Padmé receives impressive scores to an aptitude test, and her family decides to go to Theed, hoping to offer Padmé and her sister a chance at higher education and a richer life. Here the Naberries are presented as a poor family of workers.

On the other hand, the Darth Plagueis novel shows that the luxurious Varykino villa, along with other lands in the Lake Country, had been the family's retreat at least since Ruwee was a teenager (and the noble House Palpatine's neighbour). The family is identified as the noble House Naberrie, and in Fact File 105, Padmé's sister and her husband decide their children will keep Naberrie as their surname because of the power and respect the name holds among the citizens of Theed. Finally, Star Wars Galaxies presents Varykino as:

Lake Retreat of the Naberrie family, one of the most honored families in Naboo history. Queen Padmé Amidala was a Naberrie, along with several former Senators and many high officials.

Here it appears that the Naberries are a rich, old and influential noble family.

How can this discrepancy be explained?

Answer 1

Well let me begin by pointing out your sources don't necessarily conflict. Padme can be a member of an upper-class family that is nonetheless poor.

There's a deleted scene in Attack of the Clones in which Anakin meets Padme's parents. Her home is rather large and well-decorated. They appear to be a family of means, but it's impossible to tell if that was the case before or after she was elected queen.

Anakin and Padme's father have the following conversation:

            ANAKIN
        Padme tells me you teach at the
        university?

            RUWEE
            (nodding)
        Yes, and before that, I was a
        builder. I also worked for the
        Refugee Relief Movement, when I
        was very young.

Now this is just speculation, but social work to builder to professor generally isn't the career path of most poor and destitute people we see in Star Wars. My guess would be his work as a "builder" is either more akin to an architect on Earth, or that he had the financial stability to pursue work he found personally rewarding.

This is also just speculation, but it's absurd enough that a teenager would be elected queen without the added dimension that she was poor, too. It just makes much more sense that she came from nobility, as the sourcebook claims. It also makes her romance with Anakin, an ex-slave from the backwaters of the galaxy, more poignant.

Answer 2

Possibly Padme's father Ruwee Naberrie was an architect and a developer instead of a building craftsman. He mighthave been a builder who hired laborers instead of being a builder hired as a laborer. I lived next door to a millionaire developer for some years.

And if his mother Winama Naberrie was a weaver, she could have been a poor woman who worked as a weaver to earn a living or a rich woman who owned a weaving firm that hired weavers to weave and specialized in weaving exotic luxury fabrics to custom order.

In the English language calling someone a member of a specific occupation is a little ambiguous about how high or low he is in that occupation.

As for having a home in a small mountain village, it could be a poor small mountain village or a small mountain village where a lot of rich people had their country mansions because it as a resort for the rich like Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, Tuxedo Park, NY, the Berkshires, Massachusetts, or Newport, Rhode Island.

In Earth history, and the present time, rich people, either nobles or new rich industrialists, usually have apartments, houses, or mansions in the city and also houses or mansions in the country. In rural England in the 19th century almost every small village would have one or more large country estates and mansions nearby, and many still do.