Literature / Leia, Princess of Alderaan

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... There was a princess who became a legend.

Leia, Princess of Alderaan is a young adult novel in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, written by Claudia Gray, who had previously written Lost Stars and Bloodline. It was released as a part of the multimedia promotional project, Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

The story delves into Leia Organa's life and relationship to her adoptive family, House Organa, as she grows into a leader of what will soon become the Rebellion.

It was released on September 1^st, 2017, along with Phasma, as a part of that year's synchronized release of Star Wars merchandise known as Force Friday.

On May 4th, 2018, it received a manga adaptation on the LINE app, like Lost Stars before it.

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Tropes in this book include:

• Adaptation Distillation: The manga adaptation, which as of spring 2023 is only halfway complete, is a pretty close adaptation of the book, condensing the dialogue and exposition a bit while keeping and emphasizing all the most important parts. The art is fantastically expressive, showing a very human young Leia who feels strongly about her situation.
• Adopted into Royalty: Leia's birth status doesn't affect her eligibility for the throne of Alderaan. There's already a version of the Day of Demand ritual with adjusted wording to reflect that the speaker is adopted, which suggests that there have been adopted heirs before her.
• A Lesson in Defeat: On their first Pathfinding expedition, one of the others accidentally breaks a leg and has to be moved on a travois. In tears she says she's never failed so badly at anything before, and Kier says that means today is an important lesson, as learning to deal with failure and move on is very important, which Leia finds to be very striking advice. Breha reinforces this near the end of the book, telling Leia that the most powerful lesson she can learn is how to fall, and surviving it, to rise again.
• Anger Born of Worry: Bail is terrified of Leia getting killed or worse, captured by the Empire. This leads him to be very short with her through much of the book, especially after her meeting with Moff Panaka.
• Anti-Smother Love Talk: Breha comes around to the idea of letting Leia know what's really going on, and involving her in limited and safe ways to start, well before Bail does. He's very upset when she gives him this talk and lashes out saying he would do anything to protect Leia, and if Breha won't then he doesn't know her like he thought he did.
• Big Brother Is Employing You: One of the challenges Leia takes on to formally become her mother's heir is to join the Junior Imperial Senate. She served as her father's intern in the proper Senate for two years and initially thinks it's possible to change the Empire from within and moderate its worst excesses.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Almost the moment Leia finds out about action against the Empire she's torn, knowing that it means people getting killed, both in direct combat and in Imperial reprisals. She wrestles with the morality of this through the whole book, also considering that doing nothing is Betrayal by Inaction. When she reveals things to Kier, he certainly shares her awareness that the Empire is evil and 'someone' should do something but says that major action against the Empire invites extreme consequences, and he considers it irresponsible for high ranking Alderaanians to engage in such things, as not just them but all the citizens of their world would be punished. Eventually Leia does settle on a broader perspective, feeling that Alderaanian ideals mean being willing to take that risk for others. A reader's knowledge of A New Hope and what happens when Leia is captured on Rebel business proves that Kiers is if anything underestimating the consequences. But he's wrong to think that ratting out Bail and Breha to the Emperor would have saved everyone else. The Empire isn't fair or reasonable. He's also incorrect that the Empire is too big and any resistance is doomed to failure.
• Business Trip Adultery: When Tarkin crashes a dinner party attended by the Organas and various Rebel-leaning allies, Breha puts him off the scent by feigning being a Lady Drunk and accusing Bail of spending all his off-world time on Chandrilla and particularly with Mon Mothma. He and Mon Mothma catch on immediately and play along. Leia knows it's all a lie but finds her parents fighting in any sense distressing enough that she wants to burst into tears - and then does, knowing it will help sell the act to the increasingly disgusted Tarkin.
• Call-Back:
  • Onoam is a moon of Naboo where spice miners work in poor conditions, as mentioned back in Attack of the Clones, when Mace theorized that the assassination attempt on Padmé's life could've been by disgruntled spice miners from there. And as Rebels mentions, it's not fun to mine for spice for a number of reasons.
  • The jubilation dress that Leia borrows from Dalné is the same kind of dress that her mother wore at the celebration at the end of The Phantom Menace, which likely - and explicitly, in the manga - helped Moff Panaka see the family resemblance.
  • While conversing with Leia, Tarkin talks about how he hopes the Empire can bring perfect peace and rule to worlds such as Paucris, Lothal, and Rattatak. He is obviously referring to the events of Rebels when he specifically brings up Lothal as an example, having personally seen the situation himself. As for Rattatak, a few years before the Clone Wars, it got raided by Weequay pirates and got engulfed in a gang war until Ventress personally killed all of the warlords (though it probably didn't get any better when she left to join Dooku).
• Call-Forward:
  • Promotional material for The Last Jedi mentioned that Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo is an old friend of Leia's. Sure enough, Amilyn appears as a major character and they befriend each other in this book.
  • Similarly, Crait is visited, having been mentioned in promotional material for The Last Jedi as being home to an old Rebel base.
  • Senator Tyrnna Pamlo appears as an ally of House Organa in regards to the Rebellion.
  • Wobani is under strict Imperial rule. Apparently, Palpatine set up a "Commodities Enhancement Program" galaxy-wide, and this took an impact on Wobani as the local workers had impossible quotas to fill (which became harder as there were fewer and fewer farmers) and were thus punished by being fined, with the farmland being given to Imperial officers who would put it under better management (in other words, profit from it themselves) while everyone else starves in poverty. By Rogue One, it becomes home to prisoner camps.
  • Leia would later return to Naboo while on a mission to help Alderaanian refugees and to save it from Operation: Cinder.
  • Saw Gerrera and his partisans are mentioned as causing the usual trouble, further causing more Jurisdiction Friction between them and the rebel leaders. And then one of their bombings get Panaka killed, costing the rebels a possible ally but also preventing him from telling Palpatine about her.
  • Towards the middle of the novel, 2V puts Leia's hair in her iconic two side buns.
  • Bail and Breha are careful about keeping Leia's true parentage under wraps. In regards to being the daughter of Padmé, it gives her some brownie points as we see later in Bloodline and possibly won over Panaka's loyalty just before he was killed. That, or he would have ratted her out to Palpatine.
  • The lock of hair Leia has in Bloodline is Kier's, her Lost Lenore.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Leia has some sharp, pleading words about her parents keeping her in the dark, though it takes a while, and her proving herself, before they start telling her more of what they're doing.
• Calling the Young Man Out: Breha scolds Leia for her well meaning but disastrous mission to Wobani saying that Leia can't act so impulsively without consideration of the larger picture. Later a stressed, angry Bail tells his daughter that now that she *knows* why they're so absent she should be more understanding about it.
• The Cameo: Some of these are confirmed by invokedWord of God.
  • During a pathfinding class on Pamarthe, Leia and Amilyn see an unnamed Orson Krennic buying quadanium from a two-timing rebel senator.
  • While Leia is looking for transportation at the Coruscant docks, she sees a beat-up YT-model freighter, which she approaches thinking that the pilot could need her money for repairs before it takes off. Sound familiar?
  • From Lost Stars, the Moa and one of its crew members, Methwat Tann (though unnamed), make a brief appearance, nearly hired by Chassellon Stevis before Leia arrives in need of transportation to Pamarthe.
• The Chains of Commanding: Leia realizes quickly that while she's fine with risking herself, risking the crew of the Tantive IV, or any of her people, is much worse, and feels she can't even unburden herself to them.
• Chekhov's Skill: Amilyn's interest in astrology is initially another signifier of her cloudcuckoolander status. At the climax, after their escape from Paucris Major, Amilyn uses this knowledge to avoid being captured by an Imperial vessel by a) being able to quickly identify another star system with a sun with almost identical ionization levels as that of Paucris and claim that's where they came from, and b) using said astrological knowledge to seem like a kook to the Imperial officer over the coms so they are swiftly allowed to pass.
• Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb: After discovering her parents' role in the Rebellion Leia loses focus while climbing a cliff and, in the manga, is dramatically caught by Kier, who she's roped to.
• Continuity Drift: The Obi-Wan Kenobi series came out some years after this novel. While there aren't a lot of direct contradictions, and Leia's reaction when Kenobi's name is brought up in passing can neatly be interpreted as fondness for him personally, the younger Leia in said series is not as isolated, has human attendants, is a lot weirder and more insightful thanks to her Force abilities, and already knows the Senate is all but powerless to moderate Imperial cruelty. Breha is also less of a presence in that series than in this book, where she's the ruler of Alderaan and on equal standing with Bail.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The story begins on Leia's sixteenth birthday and chronicles how she joined the Rebellion now, meaning it takes place before "Bounty of Trouble" and "A Princess on Lothal".
  • Queen Soruna is not the current Queen of Naboo, but rather Queen Dalné, who is likely her predecessor (under the assumption her term as queen ended before Shattered Empire).
  • As said in his titular book, Tarkin likes designing Imperial uniforms.
  • A type of Alderaanian wine, Toniray, first appeared in Bloodline and later in Inferno Squad.
  • Mahranee from Dark Disciple is mentioned and implied to have recovered from the massacre.
  • Pamarthe (the homeworld of Resistance pilot of Greer Sonnel) from Bloodline is visited and mentioned as being home to a feisty population. As Bloodline and Scorched explained, their behavior is why a great many of them initially joined the Imperial military, but then switched to the rebels after Alderaan gets destroyed, seeing the Empire destroying it as cowardly.
  • Gatalenta from Bloodline is revealed to be the homeworld of Amilyn Holdo, adding in some more information about Gatalentan culture.
  • Lonera and Riosa from Bloodline are mentioned, as they would later be represented in the New Republic Senate by Senator Varish Vicly and Senator Ransolm Casterfo respectively.
  • Harloff Minor, which debuted in Bloodline, is also mentioned.
  • Dinwa Prime is mentioned. In Adventures in Wild Space, Milo and Lina listen to a broadcast from Mira Bridger about it, and later on in Lost Stars, Thane lists it as one of the Empire's atrocities.
• Cool Sword: The Rhindon Sword, a ceremonial weapon that would-be heirs take up on their Day of Demand, and again later when they formally become heirs to Alderaan's throne. In ages past would-be heirs had to use this sword to fight their way to the throne room.
• Crushing the Populace: When the Empire takes over a world they set about this. On Wobani they've reduced the population to living into vast refugee camps, unable to even own their own transportation, and this doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary.
• Cry into Chest: Leia, discovering why her parents have become so distant and seeing how tearfully upset they are at the thought of her facing the wrath of the Empire for their actions, breaks down and is embraced◊.
• Cultural Rebel: Gatalentans are known for valuing simplicity and plainness, which Amilyn finds boring, so she dresses more flamboyantly and dyes her hair.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Leia starts the story with the sense that her parents no longer want to spend time with her; she still sees them regularly, but they turn her away and don't even look at her for long, even on a day that's all about her declaration to become her mother's heir. Of course, they're neck-deep in the Rebel Alliance and want her to be as ignorant of what they're doing as possible, hoping innocence will protect her if they're caught.
• Death by Secret Identity: Moff Panaka, upon meeting Leia, deduces that she's Padmé Amidala's daughter and tells her he'll remember her to Palpatine. He is assassinated by the Partisans just after Leia and Queen Dalné leave, preventing him from revealing this. This is an unusual example in that the person with the secret identity is unaware of the fact.
• Debt Detester: The Chalhuddans refuse to take vaccines from Leia unless she admits that they'll owe her a favor in future. That favor turns out to be aiding the Rebellion. However, upon the favor being met Leia says it's greater than the favor she gave them in the first place and so she owes them, and Occo Quentto says exactly, and when she pays them back they will owe her again - it's not truly hating a debt, it's respecting one another and having a continued relationship of mutual aid.
• Demoted to Extra: See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo each appear once, each in one of Leia's charity missions. She gives Threepio very little thought - the Chalhuddans speak and understand Basic perfectly well so he's really only able to give some cultural context - but is impressed by Artoo's initiative.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Could be the book's subtitle. Leia's mother (who appeared for two seconds at the end of Revenge of the Sith), her father (who's had only slightly more of a presence in the films), and Alderaan are given much more depth and characterization. Of course, we all know how this ends.
• Did They or Didn't They?: The narrative is deliberately ambiguous about whether or Kier and Leia slept together the night they visited the Coruscant garden.
• Die or Fly: Leia unwittingly calls on the Force for the first time to save herself and Kier from falling off a mountain. Lacking context, she just puts it down to a weird feeling and a burst of adrenaline.
• Doomed by Canon: Kier, Leia's first romance, is just so perfect for her you know he ain't making it to the end of the book.
• Dramatic Drop: Narrowly averted when Moff Panaka meets Leia. He's so shocked by her resemblance to Padmé that he nearly drops his teacup and saucer, but manages to recover after only splashing tea on himself.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Leia has no interest in finding out who her biological family is, as she already has a family and clearly believes this information will be irrelevant to her life. That's not how things turn out.
  • Throughout the book Leia feels pain about her parents being emotionally absent and thinks that even after almost a year it still hurts, and worse, her reaction to feeling pain is to turn to her parents. The book closes with her being comforted with the idea that her home, her people, and her family can never be taken away from her.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Downplayed. The instructor for Leia's pathfinding class, Chief Pangie, is more on the harsh but fair side and at worst is maliciously cheerful and demanding, or shouts at her students when they make dangerous errors. Chassellon Stevis certainly sees her as this, though. Eventually she responds to his complaining by telling him that the class is meant to prepare all of them for much harsher situations.
• Drunk on Milk: At a party on Coruscant Leia and Kier drink glowwine, textually a non-alcoholic drink that sets off an endorphin rush. Notably, they're still clear to rent and drive a speeder after imbibing.
• Everyone Knew Already: It's no secret that Leia was adopted and she doesn't mind talking about it. Panaka takes interest when he sees her uncanny resemblance to Padmé.
• The Fashionista: WA-2V or Toovee, Leia's personal attendant droid, is programmed to prioritize looks over all else and is therefore obsessed with hair, fashion, and Leia's appearance. It's to the point where it's questionable how intelligent she is - when Leia comes home filthy, bedraggled, and slightly injured after surviving an assassination attempt on a Moff, all Toovee cares about is that the (dirty, damaged) dress she borrowed from the Queen of Naboo is the most gorgeous outfit Leia has ever worn.
• Fatal Flaw: Panaka has always listened to his superiors, from Padmé to the Emperor, even when he disagrees with them. It puts him in an extremely vulnerable position when the Emperor rewards him with a governorship, and makes him a target for assassins.
• Feminist Fantasy: Much of Star Wars is very male-focused. This book certainly still has plenty of men in it but is quite interested in politically active women, being about Leia Organa and portraying her mother Breha as having as essential and active of a role in the Rebellion as Bail, as well as including the current Queen of Naboo and various female junior Senators as Leia's peers.
• Friendless Background: While Leia has played with people her own age and is familiar enough with the staff to ask after their families, she doesn't seem to have had any friends other than her parents. We're told repeatedly that Alderaanian royalty doesn't hold itself above others but Leia also tells herself she can't treat someone who works for her family like a friend. Breha arranges her to take Pathfinding courses with an assortment of her peers, instead of one-on-one with a tutor, with the explicit purpose of having her make friends.
• George Lucas Altered Version: In the first edition of the novel, and in the audiobook, while Leia is being persuaded that it's okay for her to have fun and a personal life in the midst of galactic suffering and unrest, she quotes an Alderaanian philosopher who said, "Strength through joy". Strength Through Joy was a state-operated organization in Nazi Germany that subsidized leisure and vacations for certain types of German citizen, to keep them content with their situation and aid in propaganda. Claudia Gray apologized for using this slogan, saying she had been ignorant of its existence and was horrified. Later editions changed the quote to "Joy drives out fear", dodging the Unfortunate Implications of having a Nazi slogan in the mouth of an Alderaanian.
• The Ghost: Saw and his Partisans are mentioned as causing the usual trouble. They end up affecting the plot of the book by planting a bomb to assassinate Moff Panaka.
• G-Rated Sex: Taking down someone else's braids on Alderaan is considered very intimate. Kier takes down Leia's braids when they're alone on Coruscant right before the Did They or Didn't They? moment.
• Growing Up Sucks: For all Leia's eagerness to be considered grown up enough to join La Résistance, once she is she has a real pang as she realizes how much it changes everything.
• Hair Memento: Leia takes a lock of Kier's hair as a keepsake after his death.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Bail and Breha want to try to recruit Moff Panaka, but he's killed by Saw's faction before they can find out if he's amenable. Then again, this also keeps him from telling the Emperor about Leia.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: "As easy as dunking a Mon Calamari", Leia thinks at some point, and then muses that because she used to play with Mon Cals as a kid, she knows that dunking them is easy, it's getting them to break the surface long enough to push them down that's difficult.
• Hope Spot:
  • Panaka, meeting Leia, realizes that Padmé's baby is alive and well. He had known about the secret marriage between Anakin and Padmé, and had told Palpatine about it. We can assume that he mourned Padmé, who was once his queen, when she passed, and he immediately says he'll tell the Emperor about Leia's adoption while giving her a too-firm, painful handshake. He is certainly not aware of the terrible consequences that would have fallen on Leia and her people if he'd been able to tell the Emperor and probably sees it as good news to share. Then the Partisans kill him and the secret dies with him.
  • When the Rebels by sheer luck find one of the few Imperial Officers who is a Reasonable Authority Figure, they hope they can contact and work with him, or even convince him to switch sides. He then gets assassinated. Yes, this is also about Moff Panaka.
• Humanizing Tears: Bail and Breha can come off as somewhat brusque and stern at first, smiling for the public but brushing Leia off privately and showing anger when she acts out of incomplete information or, say, discovers some of their activities. When they confront her over the latter, Breha starts crying as she begs her daughter to understand.
• Intimate Hair Brushing: Kier undoing Leia's braids and brushing her hair is seen as an intimate act, and is the first step towards a closer relationship. This is also intimate in the sense that it happens right before the Did They or Didn't They? scene in the gardens.
• Jumped at the Call: Leia wants to help the fledgeling Rebel Alliance the moment she finds out someone is moving against the Empire. She literally performs data analysis to find an active Rebel base on Crait and takes a ship there so she can volunteer. Bail, who was thankfully on-base at the time, is terrified and furious - they might have shot her down! But finding out that her parents are involved makes Leia all the more determined; knowing they're ethical people, she finds her few doubts clearing. Bail and Breha try to keep her ignorant, but without ever ignoring their specific requests and orders Leia pushes and keeps getting herself increasingly entangled.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Soon after finding out what her parents are up to, Leia longs to tell people and feels like she's lying by omission by keeping their secret, though she knows full well why it's so important. Leia concludes that in order to become trustworthy enough to help them, she has to learn to be a good liar and a bit more of a Guile Hero, and gets over her reluctance.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Like in Legends, Breha is infertile. Unlike in Legends, it's due to her injury on Appenza Peak (which was severe enough to require her heart and lungs being replaced) making it very unsafe for her to bear children, so she chose to adopt instead.
• Let Them Die Happy: Leia reassures Kier as he dies that she'll turn in the rebellion to save Alderaan, having absolutely no intentions of doing so and destroying the evidence he gathered once he died.
• Loophole Abuse: If you are in a position of power in the Empire and you care at all about people, you will need to do this a lot. Leia's first effort, rescuing a hundred Wobani by hiring them as she was only cleared to leave with her crew, does technically work. She just couldn't have known how badly she stepped on a larger scale effort in the process. Later in the book she starts looking to Mon Mothma's example, as the older Senator is quite good at this.
• Missed the Recital: Bail doesn't show up for Leia' first day in the apprentice legislature. She feels hurt but tells herself he probably wasn't on the planet at the time. The next day she walks in on him having breakfast in their Coruscant apartment and, surprised, he asks what she's doing there before remembering that her first day was yesterday. He's been so busy that he forgot.
• Mythology Gag: There is a place on Eriadu, Tarkin's homeworld, named Rivoche Ranges. Rivoche was the name of Tarkin's niece from Legends.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: On her mercy mission to Wobani, Leia tries to evacuate some of the refugees, but the governor refuses her and says she can only leave with her crew. She hires a hundred people, as many as can fit on her ship, getting around the restriction. She gets home and learns that her father and others in the Senate have been secretly negotiating the evacuation of the refugees for months, and Leia's actions destroyed the negotiations - the Imperial official in charge of the planet feels humiliated and retaliatory now and scraps their efforts out of spite. Leia had looked into Wobani before choosing it and found nothing about those plans, leaving her feeling both guilty and angry.
  • Leia inadvertently almost makes things far worse on Onom by meeting with Moff Panaka, who had served Padmé when she was Leia's age, while wearing a borrowed royal Naboo gown. He instantly sees the resemblance, asks after her heritage, and tells her he'll remember her to the Emperor. At the absolute best this would have put Imperial scrutiny on her and it probably would have been much worse, if Saw's Partisans hadn't planted a bomb and killed Panaka as Leia was leaving. Later she notes her father seems to be most angry that she went to the Naboo system at all.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Leia has a fantastic poker face, so when Tarkin sat her down for a faux-friendly chat and dropped the name of the Paucris system to see if she'd flinch, all he managed to do was tip her off that the Empire was aware of operations there, and so she was able to get the system evacuated.
• Non-Human Non-Binary: Chalhuddans have five genders and change them according to an elaborate set of customs and individual preference, with 3PO saying their native pronouns involve two or three past genders and possibly their future gender as well as the gender they currently are. For the sake of convenience with "drylanders", in Basic they all go by the gender-neutral "they".
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Breha after Leia tells her about how Panaka was surprised to see her and wants to tell Palpatine, as she realizes he's recognized Leia as Padmé's child and almost doomed Breha's whole family. She doubles over in horror and flings her arms around her daughter, shaking.
  • Leia, when Tarkin namedrops Paucris as being a world at unrest to get a reaction out of her.
  • Leia does it again during the evacuation of Paucris Major when she realizes that Kier has arrived in the system just as the orbital platforms are preparing to self-destruct.
• Open Secret: Leia comes to the conclusion that since the Empire aggressively rewrites history and utilizes heavy propaganda, finding and spreading the truth about how malevolent they are will help and gathers some data on it. Mon Mothma gently tells her that virtually everyone she might convince knows already that the Empire is evil and distrusts its version of events.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Sort of. All of Alderaan already knows Leia is adopted (as The High Queen was having problems bearing children) and she hardly ever saw it as a big deal, having always seen Bail and Breha as her loving parents. She's a little weirded out by Panaka asking after her biological family.
• Parents as People: Bail and Breha are unquestionably good people trying their best and love her dearly, but it's hard on Leia to be the daughter of people who are both major career politicians and running a significant Rebel faction. With their Rebel involvement stepping up they have little time for her and can't guide her through her first steps into having and exerting power - and consequently making mistakes that cost other people. At one point they manage to have dinner with her for the first time in quite a while and get to talk about what she's doing, including what she's going to get up to next - only to be called away on urgent business before Bail can quite remember that another faction is doing dangerous things near that location.
  • It's an ongoing struggle. Making the decision to go against the Empire was a long, hard choice for Bail and he lashes out verbally when Leia brings up a moral quandary he himself had struggled with - Alderaan is prosperous and peaceful, the one Core Worlds planet where people can live under almost no oppression, and doesn't a rebellion put it at risk? - and calls her a coward. Bail is extremely upset by any indication of Leia being at risk to the point where he cruelly says Breha doesn't care and he doesn't know her, after his wife suggests starting their daughter out in low-risk situations.
• Pet the Dog: Considering how much of a Bad Boss the Emperor is, he did reward Panaka for his loyalty with a governorship.
• Pimped-Out Dress: When they're about to visit Moff Panaka, Queen Dalné, seeing that Leia's dirty from their visit to the mines, lends her what she claims is the plainest of her dresses, an extravagant and ruffled affair that makes Leia, much more on the Modest Royalty side, quite uncomfortable. She's very frustrated when she returns after getting dirtied and scratched up by the bomb that killed the Moff wearing the dress and her personal attendant droid, Toovee, only screams in excitement that it's the most beautiful thing she's ever worn.
• Playing Both Sides: During one of their pathfinding classes, Leia and Amilyn discover by chance that Chandrilan Senator Winmey Lenz, a member of Bail and Mon's group of rebel Senators, is also selling quadanium steel to the Empire. After informing Mon Mothma, the rebel Senators plan to phase Lenz out of their group by making him think there's been a disagreement between several factions.
• Precision F-Strike: Characters in this book mostly use established franchise-specific curse words like "Stang" and "Poodoo", but in the climax Amilyn, shedding her loopiness, tells Leia "Don't be an ass" after Leia tells her to leave her and save herself. It's a pretty mild curse but stands out.
• Protagonist Title: Leia, Princess of Alderaan, not to be mistaken for the Princess Leia comics that take place after A New Hope.
• Publicly Discussing the Secret: It's dangerous in most places for politicians of any stripe, including Junior Senators, to so much as express criticism of the Empire. Every time she notices one of her peers doing this, Leia is alarmed.
• Snake People: Sssamm Ashsssen, one of the people in Leia's Pathfinding class and a fellow apprentice legislator, is a Fillithar. In the book he seems to be pretty much just a giant snake with a prehensile tail and no hands, though his body secretes a substance that lets him easily climb a sheer cliff face and he slithers comfortably through snow. In the manga he has short, webbed flipper-like appendages for arms but still slithers close to the ground.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Mon Mothma quickly recognizes that trying to keep Leia out of the Rebellion is not only almost impossible, but would be a waste of her talents. She draws the line at keeping the Organas unaware of their daughter's activities, though.
  • According to Queen Dalné, Panaka is not corrupt, just willingly blind to corruption under his watch, and a good person. When he recognizes Leia as Padmé's daughter, she asks him to establish oversight that would rein in the corruption and he agrees immediately, acting so reasonable that his Queen is startled. Evidently he's normally less willing. Too bad he gets killed mere minutes after taking that decision.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The rulers of Alderaan are expected to do this. In order to be her queen mother's heir, Leia formally swears to take the challenges of the body, the mind, and the heart - train to summit a mountain, go into politics as a junior Senator, and undertake missions of charity and mercy.
• Sadistic Choice: Leia quickly learns that many of the bills sent to the Apprentice Legislature feel like this to her, mirroring how the adult Rebel senators feel about the actual legislature. One of their assignments is to decide the punishment for a planet that, after suffering an emergency and depleting their fuel, refused to refuel a TIE convoy. Arguing for no punishment looks like a suspicious lack of loyalty to the Empire and any choice has ramifications. This sort of thing leads to Leia learning to become good at Loophole Abuse.
• Shipper on Deck: Amilyn is quite happy to try and nudge Leia and Kier closer together, especially in the manga where it's her cleared throat and pointed comment that has Leia realize he's trying to spend more time with her. Bail and Breha also approve of him and invite him to a banquet so Leia won't be lonely when they go off to discuss Rebel business.
• Shout-Out: One of the senators allied with the Rebellion is Senator Cinderon Malpe of Derella. Whatever this holds for him is unclear.
• Slave Liberation: Amilyn tells Leia that the law on Gatalenta is that any slave who sets foot on its surface is freed automatically. Leia hopes there's a similar law on Alderaan that she's just missed but isn't in a position to check right then.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Lieutenant Ress Batten, the pilot assigned to help and transport Leia as Leia sees fit, is probably the one character in the book who's the most like Han Solo. Known for being an excellent pilot, she's aloof, casual to the point of rudeness, and sarcastic, often claiming that her main fear on risky ventures with Leia is the trouble she'll be in, but is very loyal and true. In the manga she's able to draw and aim a blaster very fast. Leia also remembers being cautioned not to get too friendly with rogue pilots, though in Batten's case, it's platonic.
• Warhawk: Downplayed, but Queen Breha wants the Rebel faction she is part of to start arming as she has stopped believing that a Velvet Revolution will work against the Empire. This dismays other leaders, her husband included, but they see her point and start up an operation in the Paucris system to refit a fleet with weaponry.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Not shown directly on page, but even aside from a shaky connection with Saw's Partisans there's apparently quite a few rifts in this Rebel faction.
• The Unreveal: Panaka learns Leia is Padmé's daughter, but he is killed in an assassination by the Partisans before anyone can do anything about it. Panaka is quite eager to tell Palpatine about Leia, almost certainly ignorant of how badly that would go for her and so many others. Because he was reasonable and fairly good for a Moff, some members of the Rebel Alliance wanted to reach out to him and try to work with him somehow. He's known for loyalty and the Alliance High Council is made up of his former queen's friends, but he's also loyal to Palpatine.

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