pLOT

In Medias Res
into the middle of things
To Kill A Mockingbird starts with the sentence: "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." That happens at the end of the book. The idea seems to be that it comes up in a conversation the adult Scout is having, and the book is her explaining the events that lead up to it.
Star Wars, anyone? OK, opening crawl notwithstanding, we open in the middle of a galactic civil war with a space battle happening literally right over our heads... and this is the fourth episode. And it took twenty-eight years just to catch up with the  back-story.




Domestic Abuser
In the Revenge Of The Sith novelization, even before he chokes her there are signs of this developing between Anakin and Padme. While welcoming him home she mentioned the war effort and he immediately turned on her for bringing it up; he soon picked up on the fact that something had changed since they'd last met, came to the conclusion that she was seeing someone else, and seized her. True, he was instantly contrite and apologetic when she said that he was hurting her, but many abusers have that sort of pattern. He resented her job for taking her away from him and giving her a "politician face", a polite non-expression, and as the book goes on he cares less and less about the anguish and physical pain he causes her, believing that she's trying to manipulate him, becoming jealous of people who so much as talk to her. He still ultimately turns because of Palpatine's promise of power to save her, but by that point he thinks she's traitorous - he wants to save her for his sake. For her part, she loves him, but is absolutely horrified to find that she no longer trusts him as absolutely as she once did.

• It doesn't help that Palpatine told Anakin that Obiwan had been visiting Padme. It really doesn't help that Obiwan really was visiting Padme because he was the only Jedi Padme was 100% certain she could trust.