KNEEL BEFORE LEIA

[anghraine]

I hope you all had a merry Christmas, f-list, and that there's a decent probability of us all having a good year in 2011.

So!

I used to wonder why Leia is always Princess Leia.  I mean, of course there's Everything's Better With Princesses (TV Tropes!), but it seemed a little odd that she'd be continually identified by that persona.  Naturally she would in ANH, and I can even see why she'd want to retain her Alderaanian title -- as a way of honouring her parents and Alderaan and so on.  No, it's simpler than that:

Why is she a princess at all?  A princess and not a queen?

All the Alderaanians on Alderaan itself die, including her parents.  Anyone off-planet at the time (diplomats, merchants, tourists) would have survived.  It'd take them awhile to gather, find a new home and so on -- yes, of course.  But it'd happen eventually.  I very much doubt Leia would have ignored her responsibility to her people.  Leia is many things, but irresponsible is not one of them.  So I vaguely figured that she tried to find places for the Alderaanian refugees to stay during the war, and refused to be Queen until she could fully take up the mantle of leadership, blah blah blah.

Then, of course, I discovered the EU, where she's still Princess Leia even though she doesn't seem to have much to do with the Alderaanians.  There was something about it in The Courtship of Princess Leia, but only as a pretext for considering Space Fabio.  I need a planet!  If I become part of this oppressive tyrannical government, much like that I've spent my life fighting against it, I can get a planet and there will be sunshine and rainbows for my people!  (I try to forget it, really.)

So I ignored that, and in my headcanon she became Queen of the Alderaanians and led them to ... somewhere, and ruled justly and wisely and when called upon to do so kicked ass and she and Han were really happy actually.  La!

Then I stumbled across this oldish interview about some of the original plans for ROTJ.  Jedi, of course, is easily my least favourite movie of the OT, mostly because it feels rushed, a little incoherent -- like three movies crammed into one -- and it seems that a LOT of character development took place off screen.  Except for Han, of course.  Heh.  Anyway, so I was interested to see what it might have been like, if everyone hadn't been frazzled and decided to wrap it up all at once.

I knew some of the basic stuff, like Luke's sister being this girl on the other side of the galaxy who wouldn't even show up until the next movie, and not Leia at all.  But I had no idea how the Luke and Vader plot unwound, though I figured it'd be a bit less abrupt, and I really had no clue what was going to happen with Leia.  Apparently, it was this:

the ending was the coronation of Leia as the queen of what was left of her people, to take over the royal symbol.

OMG THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER, Y/Y?  WHY DID IT NOT HAPPEN? WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?

Also, this would make a totally kickass AU reimagining of ROTJ and WHY HAS NOBODY WRITTEN IT?  Luke and Leia as unrelated BFFs with the occasional bit of UNSPOKEN BUT NOT SQUICKY attraction, Luke going off to DO JEDI THINGS, Vader realising that the Emperor is shockingly KIND OF EVIL and should be overthrown not for his personal galactic domination plot but for the GOOD OF THE GALAXY which is actually a totally Anakin thing to think and we'd actually see him and Luke having MEANINGFUL INTERACTIONS.  But most of all, QUEEN LEIA OMG OMG I NEED THIS SO MUCH.

... I would apologise for the capslocks, but I feel they are wholly in the spirit of Star Wars.  So I will simply say, yet again:

QUEEN LEIA.