About Me
Leia Organa was born to Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker (nee Darth Vader) on the asteroid colony of Polis Massa in 19 BBY, shortly after the start of the Great Jedi Purge and the foundation of the Galactic Empire.
Amidala and Vader knew that the children, both having potential in the Force, had to be protected from Emperor Palpatine if they would one day overthrow him and become the heirs to the Empire. Deciding it would be best if they were separated, the two Sith Masters agreed to send the infant boy to live with his father's stepbrother Owen Lars and his wife Beru on Tatooine. Leia was adopted and raised by Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan and his wife, Queen Breha Antilles Organa. Through adoption, Leia Amidala-Skywalker became Leia Organa. The twins never saw each other again.
The daughter of the former Naboo Senator and a former Jedi Knight was given a home within the House of Organa, one of the galaxy's so-called Ancient Houses. Her adoptive parents could not have children of their own, so Leia became the heir of the Royal House of Alderaan. Silya Shessaun, a mentor and a friend of Amidala, assisted in her upbringing, as did Bail Organa's three sisters Tia, Rouge, and Celly, whom Leia described as "three redoubtable dowagers" who "made her girlhood an intermittent burden."
Although the Organas were not trying to hide the fact that Leia was adopted, they never informed the Princess of her parentage, nor did they reveal the existence of her brother. However, Leia gained a faint memory of her mother and father, and began to sense she had a twin brother. This presumably had something to do with Leia being Force-sensitive. In the years to come she would become obsessed with the idea of finding him.
In 18 BBY, Leia was at an Alderaanian park with Winter and her carer Memily when she demonstrated her Force-sensitivity by knocking over a weakened fence as Memily was about to lean on it, saving her life. This was observed by an Alderaanian who reported this incident to the Empire, and the Emperor sent Inquisitors Ferus Olin and Hydra to investigate. Ferus, who was a double agent and still acting for the Jedi, covered this up and stated that this was just a rumor, and the Empire did not discover Leia's heritage.
The Princess, nicknamed Lelila, grew up with Winter, an orphaned daughter of one of Bail Organa's aides who was likewise adopted by Bail and Breha. Ever since being adopted by the Organa family, Winter was Leia's best friend and companion as they spent many of their formative years together. With a natural grace and poise, she was often assumed to be the next Princess of Alderaan by court visitors, while the tomboy Leia was regarded as a domestic girl.
Due to her visions as a young child, Leia rejected the upper-class gentility of her adopted family; first clandestinely, later openly; which was a constant source of despair to her aunts Tia, Rouge, and Celly. Nevertheless, they were determined to turn her to what they called "a proper princess," and hired deportment teachers to drill into her a behavior fitting for the heir of an Ancient House.
One part of making her a lady was to learn how a princess dresses and does her hair. According to traditional Alderaanian custom, Leia's hair was allowed to grow long and arranged into fanciful hairdos. Ironically enough, one of Leia's trademark symbols; her signature "bun" coiffure; was inherited from her mother's homeworld of Naboo, although a long time passed before she came to know it. To avoid the tiring hairstyling, she even shaved her head once - only to be forced to wear a wig, even though she argued that she did not need earmuffs in the summer.
While Leia deeply resented being "everyone's dress-up doll," her outspoken nature blossomed out when she was educated in diplomacy, government and languages. Like her birth mother, Leia had the benefit of palace education: best equipment and the finest tutors, among them Arn Horada, who instructed her in galactic politics and history.
Bail understood Leia’s rejection of her adoptive environment stemmed from her childhood visions. He wanted to expose her to as many experiences as possible in the hopes of encouraging her to develop an interest in politics on her own terms. Thus he often took Leia and Winter on trips to other worlds such as Ithor, where he attended the Time of the Meeting as representative of the Imperial Senate. About six years old at the time, the Meeting was an unforgettable experience for Leia in the sense that there were other worlds out there, from which her upbringing had sheltered her. She and Winter also visited Alderaan's secret Caamasi colony in her childhood.
Besides receiving palace education, Leia attended the Alderaan Select Academy for Young Ladies under the tutelage of the strict Madame Vesta. Together with other daughters of Alderaanian nobles, the Princess was instructed on etiquette, table manners and many other useful (and to her mind, pointlessly contrived) things that a lady needed to know. During this time, Leia saw the downside of the upper class as well, which would fuel her rejection of upper class values. One of her school friends used drugs, many of the girls had a condescending attitude towards ordinary people and threw expensive parties even though many in the galaxy were hungry and suffering.
Despite knowing she was loved, Leia often felt an outsider to her family. Winter was like a sister to her, but she couldn’t forget the sense that a real brother was out there somewhere. Some times she could almost feel his presence. In her growing years, she often felt that she was quite different without exactly knowing how, and began to believe a part of her was missing. It can only be assumed this was an indication of her latent Force-sensitivity and of the lingering twin bond with Luke Skywalker.
Winter remained a comfort to Leia, despite the differences in their personality. Though the pair's physical resemblance was tempered by Winter's stunning white hair, the two friends soon learned to employ similar looks for tactical advantage, a practice they would continue throughout their lives. Winter sometimes disguised herself as Leia so that the Princess could escape the Aldera Royal Palace to create mischief and visit with inappropriate boys. Leia also befriended Neena, a musically talented girl about her age who lived in the Organa household.
Once she reached her adolescent years, Leia became friends with Heeth and Raal Panteer. She and Raal fell in love soon after but the relationship failed to last. Organa and the Panteer brothers would meet again during the Galactic Civil War.
Bail began grooming his daughters to succeed him in the Imperial Senate, encouraging her to attend Alderaanian debates and palace receptions for offworld personnel. In this Leia unknowingly followed the footsteps of her late birth mother, who had entered politics at an early age and became a Senator. Indeed, Leia resembled Padmé Amidala in many ways: she was confident, poised and a had a quick political wit.
When Leia was thirteen, she met Wilhuff Tarkin for the first time when he came to visit Bail Organa on Alderaan. She had heard a lot about the Moff from her father, none of it good. She instantly disliked him, holding that he represented everything that was wrong with the Empire. Leia was particularly disgusted with the idea of Tarkin having a slave, as she did not understand how it was possible that the Emperor allowed slavery. The visit made her seriously contemplate what kind of galaxy she lived in, and whether there was something better out there, somewhere.
At the age of sixteen, Leia attended the University of Alderaan together with Winter, whose holographic and audiographic memory, as Leia would joke, was quite useful with homework. They studied history and art, two subjects the Empire seemed eager to suppress, which in Bail Organa's opinion was all the more reason to study them. Leia also began training with Giles Durane, a mercenary her father had hired to teach her self-defense and marksmanship. True to her tomboyish nature, she enjoyed these lessons far more than those of Madame Vesta, and showed considerable talent in both areas.
Around this time, Leia began to realize that her father was preparing her for something more than just becoming the next Senator of her home planet. A month before turning seventeen, she accidentally overheard a secret HoloNet meeting Bail Organa was having with fellow Senators Mon Mothma of Chandrila and Garm Bel Iblis of Corellia, where the name Alliance to Restore the Republic came up. Leia's hatred for the Empire had been growing over the years; she certainly found their treatment of non-Humans and women atrocious and their desire to control everything appalling; but was uncertain of an open rebellion within the Empire. She decided not the tell her father what she had heard when speaking to him, but expressed her desire to leave the world of politics. Bail would later name Winter as heir to the Alderaanian throne.
Among the old Houses, it was customary to bring the daughters to Coruscant when they finished school at seventeen - or even sixteen, if the parents were ambitious to start the long and complex search of a suitable groom candidate at the Imperial Court. The aunts would have been glad to see their nieces marry someone from one of the other Ancient Houses; while Winter was amenable to the idea Leia, regarded their heirs as "brainless twerps" and refused to be presented to the Emperor until she could do so as a Senator in her own right, not simply as a young girl in the Court marriage market. Her aunts were horrified, doubly so when Leia's decision was backed by Bail Organa.
The time for Leia's introduction at the Imperial Palace would not come, though. At the age of eighteen, before the time came for her to decide whether to become heir to the royal family, she witnessed a Caamasi being arrested by two stormtroopers for simply trying to buy a meal at a restaurant. Bail had arranged for the Caamasi she saw arrested to be released, but by then Leia announced her intention of not accepting her title as Princess of Alderaan, which was bestowed upon Winter. Bail told Leia he understood her decision; his last act as part of the royal family was to introduce her to the Caamasi, Eg'Ros Akala. Striking out on her own, Leia defied the Empire’s rule by becoming a mercenary for hire, gun runner, and occasional exotic dancer and pit fighter. For a time she went on missions with other pirates like Han Solo and his partner Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, Boba Fett, Crimson Jack and his partner Jolli, Rik Duel and his partners Dani and Chihdo, and Dash Rendar. With them she was involved in several mercenary operations including a hit on the Hutt crime lord Jabba.
While on a mission for one employer Leia came across an old artifact called a Stargate through which she discovered the existence of other universe. Since then she met several strange new alien species, expanded her practices as a freelance mercenary and made close associations with many she has met on her travels. During this time she acquired skills at the lightsaber and began to develop her own knowledge of the Force. All the while, she never lost sight of the idea that her brother was out there, somewhere in one of the infinite number of dimensions out there waiting to be reunited with her.
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