According to Star Wars: Episode III
MEDICAL DROID: Medically, she is completely healthy. For reasons we can't explain, we are losing her.
OBI-WAN: She's dying?
MEDICAL DROID: We don't know why. She has lost the will to live. We need to operate quickly if we are to save the babies.
Medically healthy humans don't die for no good reason.
So what did Padmé die of, and how did they even know she was dying?
Medically healthy humans don't die for no good reason
But she wasn't "medically healthy".
She was suffering from - at the very least:
Twin birth. That's a pretty stressful thing to happen to a human body, especially if it was premature, possibly caused by, or at least correlated with...
Injuries from Anakin force-choking her in a fit of jealous rage. She was unconscious at the end of it (when you lose consciousness, it can indicate Bad Things are happening in your brain):
Also, psychosomatic effects from pure psychological shock does have a capacity to cause major physiological issues.
To top that off, we don't know what the exact state of medical science/technology in TGFFA is. For all we know, they don't know how to help someone who's in cardiac arrest - meaning a heart attack could be written off as "broken heart, can't help here". Or, more likely, an aneurism (I didn't notice them scanning her brain at all).
Remember, you (well your question) just trusted the opinion of a medical droid that declared a woman who just gave birth to twins a clean medical bill of health.
Having said that, canon simply doesn't give an unambiguous answer that would be scientifically plausible, anymore than it cares about lasers and ion engines making sounds in a vacuum, or the ability of midi-chlorians to somehow cause a virgin birth in absence of DNA from a male reproductive cell in a species emphatically NOT designed to work that way. So,
Complications from severe plot failure. She died of Lucas writing the scenario.
Life force is a proven thing in Star Wars, remember what was said in ANH about all living things, apparently distinct from physical bodies - see the ghosts like Ben Kenobi. Maybe the droid was saying her body was fine but her soul was drifting away. Since they can detect the Force potential with instruments (midichlorian counts), maybe they can detect the presence of a life force soul with instruments too.
Why would it do that? She was just the victim of evil magic.... the droid doesn't really get it and explains it as "lost the will to live", but it could be some after effect of Palpatine or Anakin's Force stuff, or a direct murder. Palpatine isn't above rigging up a self-fulling prophesy, after all.
According to the (Disney Canon) "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" book, she died from losing the will to live. Apparently that's a thing you can die of in the Star Wars universe, noting that Cliegg Lars also succumbed to the same fate after his wife's death. The book also mentions that the medics are largely incompetent so that may have been a contributing factor towards her baffling diagnosis.
LEAVING MUSTAFAR, Obi-Wan takes Padme to the planet Polis Massa, where Yoda and Bail Organa are waiting. Medical droids try to save her life, but their efforts are in vain - she has lost the will to live. The droids deliver not one baby but twins, and the dying Padme names them Luke and Leia. Yoda, Obi-Wan and Bail Organa know Anakin Skywalker's children will be strong with the Force. They must find a way to prevent them from being found by the evil agents of the new Sith Emperor.
The Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (junior novelization) gives us some additional information from Obi-Wan's perspective
“Medically, she is completely healthy,” the droid said. “For reasons we can’t explain, we are losing her.”
“She’s dying?” Obi-Wan said, horrified. No, no! He couldn’t take another loss like this.
But the medical droid bobbed its head. “We don’t know why. She has lost the will to live.”
I know why, Obi-Wan thought. Anakin has broken her heart.
Obviously this identifies why she lost the will to live, but not necessarily how this resulted in her death.
And in the Revenge of the Sith novelisation, Obi-Wan comes to the conclusion that her death isn't the result of physical damage, suggesting that there's something metaphysical happening to her:
“All organic damage has been repaired.” The droid checked another readout. “This systemic failure cannot be explained.”
Not physically, Obi-Wan thought.
Unfortunately, he doesn't complete this thought...
The scene in Star Wars : Revenge of the Sith - Illustrated Screenplay has an additional line. Evidently, her "energy" was depleted:
OBI-WAN: You have twins, Padme They need you...hang on.
PADME: I can't...Padmé winces again and takes Obi-wan's hand. She is holding Anakin's japor snippet.
OBI-WAN: Save your energy.
PADMÉ: Obi-Wan...there...is good in him. I know there is...still...A last gasp, and she dies. Obi-Wan studies the necklace.
The film's VFX Supervisor John Knoll ascribes her death to "a broken heart"
After Padmé dies of a broken heart, her body is taken back to her home planet for a state funeral
Moving down the canon scale, the Star Wars novel "Coruscant Nights II : Street of Shadows" states that Padme's cause of death (at autopsy) recorded her cause of death as strangulation:
There were conflicting reports, of course, but all the autopsy reports were in agreement on two things: that she had been strangled, and that the child had died with her.
But exactly how the former had been accomplished, no one was quite sure. The evidence of strangulation had been there, and obvious: the fractured hyoid bone, damage to the larynx, and compression of the trachea were all clear indications of fatal throttling. But... There were no signs of bruises on her neck, no scratches or signs of congestion... no indication of exterior trauma at all. Her throat had been pristine. It was as if she had somehow been choked to death without physical contact. And there was only one power in the galaxy that Typho knew of that could accomplish such a thing.
The Force.
That being said, in-universe it's made clear that her autopsy has been tampered with and falsified. The results may be incorrect on a number of counts. Out-of-universe this conflicts heavily with the film canon. The medical droid clearly stated that her body was physically healthy whereas broken bones and a compressed trachea would be instantly obvious on even the most cursory of medical inspections, as well as preventing her from speaking.
We also have confirmation from the (now canon 2016 Edition) Star Wars: Character Encyclopedia, which relates that the official reason for her death was that she was attacked by one or more rogue Jedi.
Padme had supported Apailana's bid for election. Although the official explanation for Padme's death is that she died at the hands of renegade Jedi, Apailana privately believes otherwise.
A broken heart. Remember in Episode 3, she tells Anakin that he's breaking her heart. That's what killed her, to know that the man she loved could so easily destroy what both she and he worked so hard to protect, and to just throw away their lives the way he did. There have been perfectly healthy people in the real world that have died from broken hearts.
It could also be attributed to the fact that she actually lost the will to live. Her life had just been obliterated, she no longer had anything to live for or any reason to live. She didn't want to continue living, so she just gave up.
The answer is clear:
She has lost her will to live.
Free Will of humans has always been considered independent of the physical body (sometimes it is attached with soul even by scientists like Descartes, Laplace, Newton), so your material physical health can't ensure your survival if you don't have will to live. In other words, you always have some amount of will to live and you can willingly die (Death at Will isn't easy thing and it is considered achievement in some religions. Check Nirvana).
Such things arose because scientists in old times, who believed in the deterministic nature of nature, couldn't explain our free will. Modern scientists like Stephen Hawking believe that human behavior is deterministic and can be solved by mathematical equations (Source: The Grand Design book). But, non-deterministic free will guided by true self (soul) is still in influential existence thanks to religions (and, Will to Live medical things and miracles). And, nobody can deny it scientifically. One can only give opinion.
So, out of universe, it has influenced Star Wars for sure. And, in-universe, such thing is scientifically valid (which shouldn't be surprising since we have Force Ghosts and Death at Will by Kenobi).
Who's to say that "humans" who lived in a galaxy far far away, long long ago, are the same as the humans watching the films? Do we have midichlorians? So maybe their physical health was more sensitive to psychological or emotional states than ours is.
I took medically healthy to just mean that her body didn't have any physical damage, defect, or infection that could explain her condition. A person's psychological state can alter their physical well-being, and that's what the implication was.
A broken heart. Her connection with Anakin was on a much greater scale than just love. When Anakin was starting to sway towards the dark side, Padmé became ill because their love for each other was so strong.
When Anakin was being seduced by the dark side her sickness began.
Medically healthy humans don't die for no good reason.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (does have some symptoms)
Elderly who die soon after their spouse.
Elderly who pick their time of death.
And somewhere, but I don't have a citation, heard about a spy in WWII, under torture who willed himself to death.
But it's not common, nor easy (at least for depressive / suicidal people). Or very few people would make it through junior high.
There's an article out there called, "Padme Didn't Die Of A Broken Heart." The gist: Palpatine used his ability to manipulate life force to steal Padme's, in order to keep Anakin alive. It's a neat and tidy theory, and very well explained.
She died of a broken heart she gave up her will to live a form of suicide.even in space love is really the only thing worth living for.It goes to show without love we are lost
