Teen Princess

“Hey Alderaan, I got your secret plans right here.”

In re Princess Leia’s character arc in The Empire Strikes Back (see yesterday’s entry), dougo  writes:

“It seems wrong to say Leia’s motivations are all about Han. She wants revenge against Vader for blowing up Alderaan (and, in general, freedom from the empire), and Han is just a distraction.”

Leia never mentions Alderaan during Empire, and while she clearly feels a duty toward the rebellion, she seems to serve only a figurehead function. That Mon Mothma woman is in charge of the rebel forces (her Grand Moff Tarkin being old lobster-face Admiral Ackbar) and Leia seems to be in it for the adventure and intrigue. She’s around to hand out medals and look great in a slave outfit.

I was so sure that Leia doesn’t feel any particular sense of vengeance against Vader that I went back and watched Act II of Star Wars tonight. Sure enough, hours after her home planet is destroyed, Leia is cracking wise, kicking ass and swinging from chandeliers, when most other people would have been, I don’t know, all mopey and stuff.

Part of this, I think, is that Vader, rather pointedly, doesn’t blow up Alderaan. Rather, he seems reluctant to do something so rash. He didn’t seem to feel any pangs about torturing his daughter a scene earlier, but he draws the line at blowing up her home planet. It’s Tarkin who blows it up and he gets paid back in full by the end of the movie. Oh, you Grand Moff Tarkin! Did no one ever love you?

That explains the lack of Leia’s feelings of revenge, but why is she so unaffected? There is only one explanation — she hated that place. Just like her twin brother Luke couldn’t wait to get the hell off of Tatooine, Leia probably blasted off from Alderaan in a huff, tired of her blowhard ex-Jedi uncle Bail and all her tiresome senatorial duties.  I mean, she didn’t undertake her secret “deliver the secret plans” mission because she’s a bureaucrat.  She went off looking for adventure and she found it.  Maybe that’s the reason she affects that weird English accent when she’s brought before Tarkin; she’s trying to get his dander up so maybe he’ll blow up Alderaan faster.  Giventhe fact that Peter Cushing is English, maybe Leia is actually making fun of his accent, playing the Ugly Alderaanian, just to piss him off.  Just like with Han in Empire, she protests too much — “Oh noes!  Not Alderaan!  Anyplace but Alderaan!”  This is exactly the reason why people in the US have to be 35 before they can be elected president.

(One of the most egregious gaffes [not to be confused with gaffe sticks] in the Star Wars universe is the placement of Luke on Tatooine.  Padme Amidala has twins and they are entrusted to the care of somebody or other; one is taken to Alderaan to be with Bail Organa, the other is taken where?  Why Darth Vader’s home town, of course!  He’ll never think to look for him there!  Hey!  And let’s send Vader’s mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi there too!  That will double our chances of the kid never being found!  And let’s not even change the kid’s name!  With minds like this making decisions, perhaps it was best that the Old Republic fell apart after all.)