Lit "Her mother had been dead before Alderaan blew up, so wouldn't she be Queen already?"

Interestingly, in the ANH comic- Bail is referred to as "Bail Antilles" at one point.

EDIT: Another note- Bail was not ruler after the Ascendancy Contention- his mother was:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mazicia_Organa

though at some point between then and The Clone Wars, she died, and the throne apparently passed to Breha.

 

Yup- eventually they cleared that up.

 

Maybe Bail chose to forgo "monarch of Alderaan" in favour of "Viceroy of the Alderaan system"- allowing him to handle the bigger job- while Breha dealt with the planet.

 

...Forcedamned inbred nobles. So hard to figure out who gets which title.

 

I suspect his having the job of Senator may have played a part. Can't represent your planet on Coruscant and rule it on Alderaan at the same time- at least, not well.

 

Didn't her father do that for a long time?

From what I understand, he was king, prime minister, and senator at the same time, and might also have been a general and a high ranking member of a charitable organization. And he still has time to go and personally rescue a jedi and get involved in other adventures.

 

I thought the reason he was never called King - was that he chose not to take that rank- with Breha having it (as Queen).

Though I suppose that might have been me overthinking it.

 

No, no, no. For all we know, the Ascendancy Contention happened either in 32 or 28 BBY (Star Wars: Darth Plagueis and Agent of the Empire Hard Targets disagree on that matter). And the Ascendancy Contention resulted in Bail's father being nominated Viceroy. I should know that, I wrote Mazicia's article. (And also Bail Antilles's, for the most part.)

 

Actually, finding out his dual title gave me a chuckle. "First Chairman and Viceroy." Makes it sound like Alderaan is a Marxist-monarchist republic.

 

It's true that the article doesn't say when Mazicia died- it was the wording of the statement:

When the Clone Wars erupted between the Republic and the Separatist Confederacy in 22 BBY, Queen Mazicia Organa had been dead for some time, and the throne had been passed to Breha Antilles, who was the wife of Bail Organa.

that made me think Breha was already Bail's wife by the time Mazicia died.

 

I don't think I could have worded it any other way, unfortunately. The facts are scarce, you see: we only know that A) Bail and Breha were already married for some time by 22 BBY and B) Mazicia died at some point between 38 and 22 BBY. Not very helpful.

However, if the marriage that helped resolve the Ascendancy Contention was indeed that of Bail and Breha, then they were married in either 32 or 28 BBY.

 

Most recent source to possibly mention it- Darth Plagueis.

Wookieepedia comment on the Ascendancy Contention page:

While the novel does not mention the ascendancy contention directly, a part of the narrative taking place in 32 BBY describes how Jorus C'baoth "had been enlisted to arbitrate a dispute among some of Alderaan's royal houses." As it is unlikely that there would have been two separate disputes between Alderaanian nobles which C'baoth settled, it can be concluded that this was a reference to the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention.

 

Well, technically, Star Wars: Agent of the Empire 6: Hard Targets, Part 1 is more recent than Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by a few months.

 

Indeed.

Thinking more about it, that actually isn't a bad description of Alderaan.


Personally, it kind of makes me wonder if Bail acted like a senator full time simply because his other jobs didn't do much - the royal titles are mostly ceremonial, and Alderaan is rich, technologically advanced, and inhabited by peaceful people with a strong sense of charity and civil duty, so being its civil leader doesn't sound terribly time consuming either. Come to think of it, what does the Alderaan government even do besides deciding whether to spend their surplus on ponies or puppies?

 

Haven't read that one.

Maybe they'll clarify it?

 

According to Wild Space, Bail Organa actually was a hard worker: "Organa buried himself in the work he'd brought with him, a virtual mountain of domestic and intersystem legislative business. Obi-Wan, observing this, found himself reluctantly admiring. Just like Padmé—and unlike so many other Senators the Jedi had observed—Organa was no pretender."

Basically, the story happens in 3 BBY, and they celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Contention.

 

I suppose that, unlikely as it might be, C'baoth may have resolved two Alderaan disputes instead of one.

 

You know, I can't help but wonder what a full list of Palpatine's titles would look like. Might even put Idi Amin to shame.

I wasn't trying to say that he wasn't a hard worker, just that his domestic workload was light enough that he could focus full time on being a Senator and doing all the work associated with that job. It does sound like he handles both in this quote though...

 

You'd think that they had learned from one "HOW DARREE YOU?!"

 

That's what particularly funny. Breha is Queen, but Bail obviously does all the work. Even funnier, it's pretty clear the royal palace of Aldera belongs to Bail, not to Breha. Leia referred to it as "my father's palace," and the building was occasionally referred to as "House Organa." Furthermore, when the people of Alderaan organized a protest under the castle's wall (in The Last of the Jedi: Master of Deception), they lashed out at Bail, not Breha.

"THIS TIME YOU RRREALLY P***D ME OFF!"

 

That makes sense if the monarchy is largely ceremonial though, it just means the people of Alderaan are smart enough to protest the actual holder of power, Bail, rather than the figurehead, Breha.

If we can't blame Leia's failure to assume the throne on the machinations of Alderaanian nobles, we can always blame it on something else. Blaming her adopted status is certainly possible, since that was publically known. While the Alderaanians themselves might not have cared this is entirely the sort of thing Palpatine would have meddled with in order to spite a rival.

Since Breha's sister Deara Antilles was a spy for the Empire it would make sense for Palpatine to try to placed upon the thrown, giving him information and influence on Alderaan, even if only in a ceremonial capacity. That might have either led to Bail assuming power in his own right, or allowing Deara to be queen but holding her at a distant location where she could do nothing.