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Hi! I’ve learned a few readers who aren’t that into Star Wars have been lured here by the tasty tags. Welcome! I would really, really like everyone to enjoy this story and its emotional rollercoaster, not just the sex and violence. I assume you have at least a vague awareness of the original trilogy with its space wizards, lightsabers, metal bikinis, and giant slug bastards, so you really only need a couple minutes of actual history. Behold!
Princess Leia’s origin for newbies:
- Leia was adopted as a newborn by Queen Breha Organa and her husband Bail, the Viceroy of Alderaan by marriage, and its senator before he abdicated so his daughter might be elected in his place. They were friends of Leia’s birth mother, Padmé Amidala of the beautiful-if-complicated planet Naboo, but for years Leia herself and nearly everyone else believed she was a random orphan.
- Leia was not a random orphan; her parents were famous heroes! Padmé was a queen/senator/warrior/philanthropist who fell in love with and secretly married Anakin Skywalker, a powerful, dashing member of the typically monk-like Jedi who met and befriended her while they were both children in very different desperate situations. Then everything went haywire according to the secret evil plans of the couple’s supposed friend and then-lawful(ish) leader of much of the galaxy, Chancellor Palpatine. This. Guy. Is. The. Worst. Among countless other awful things, he concocted and ended a massive war that the originally peaceful Jedi — including Anakin as a celebrated general — fought for him. This was a disaster he used in order to seize complete power and attempt to destroy the ancient enemy of his secret Sith religion: you know, the Jedi.
- Anakin was assumed to have died in the subsequent purge of his Order which the Chancellor claimed had attempted a hostile takeover. Nope! In reality, Palpatine had his creepy grasp all over Anakin’s psyche, culminating in taking advantage of his so-called friend’s prophetic dreams that his pregnant wife would die in childbirth. A promise to save her manipulated the young man into serving him as Darth Vader, a cruel persona that would soon become synonymous with the iconic suit that both disguised his old identity and provided limbs and life functions lost when heartbroken Jedi Master Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi fought to stop his fallen student, comrade in arms, best friend, and brother-son (and strongly hinted canon secret step-nephew, which just makes all of this sadder).
- Vader survived against all odds and eventually caused or influenced the deaths of billions of beings, beginning with most of the Jedi, and, to his eternal regret, Padmé herself whom he choked into a physically and mentally weakened state when she tried to persuade the man she thought was still her husband to come back to her and their unborn child(ren). Just like Palpatine wanted, the unmitigated death of Padmé, who was brilliantly laid to rest still appearing pregnant, left nothing but pain and anger in what had once been an understandably troubled but good person who loved his family more than the galaxy itself.
- Assuming he had failed and killed the closest person to him, Kenobi exiled himself in shame on the same
absolutely dog shitharsh world where Anakin had grown up enslaved, hiding from Jedi hunters and only really living to protect all he believed was left of Anakin: his twins, Luke and Leia. - Leia doesn’t know it yet, but she inherited incredibly strong Force sensitivity which can manifest in many ways, some of which may seem perfectly natural to her. If Vader or Palpatine, who later declared himself Galactic Emperor, knew that Leia lived, they would have killed or used her because of her connections and powers.
- Bail and Breha kept these dark secrets for the safety of their daughter — whom they fiercely trusted and adored despite her immediate relation to a rampaging monster — including the fact that by most definitions she technically was not an orphan at all. They wanted to tell her the entire truth once it was safe enough, but they never had the chance to do so in person. No, no, I’m fine, I’ve just been cutting onions.
- The first Star Wars movie (by release date) begins with Leia caught by Vader fleeing with the heroically acquired schematics for the Death Star, a top-secret, moon-sized mobile space station with cataclysmic firepower. With no other choice before her capture, she sends the plans away as data-tapes stored in a droid (literally a sapient space robot) with orders to find Ben Kenobi who, despite surviving the Jedi genocide through sad sack grade self-exile, risked everything to save her from kidnappers ten years prior. There is nobody else Leia and her (honestly poorly concealed) Rebel parents trust more with intel that could stop the Empire, but held in these horrible conditions, the princess worries her last-ditch plan may have failed.
- Tarkin is unfortunately also a very big part of Leia’s story, but almost everything you need to know about him is presented naturally throughout this work. In short, he’s a military man and a politician who is so awful that he’s the Emperor’s number two or three guy after Darth Vader, whom he privately suspected was Anakin, having met him during that war. Most other characters of note are my original creations and therefore require no special introductions.
Oh, and because weird things bother me, here is a phonetic aide for the Organas’ commonly mispronounced ship, Tantive IV:
- Tan (sunTAN)
- Tive (acTIVE)
- Ve (VEhicle)
- IV (FORce)
Please enjoy,
Armorweave