CT What makes Leia a Princess?

Regarding the sketches, while fascinating, I'm inclined to think that's just McQuarrie using a type of rough heroic archetype, rather than imposing a deliberate similarity. They're sketches, after all.

As for the notorious "who Darth Vader is" quote - I think zombie hit the nail on the head with that one, he's simply the man who killed Luke's father, a detail that wasn't originally intended to be revealed in the first film. That would have been the revelation, perhaps revealed to Luke by Vader in a similar scenario to the duel in ESB, with Vader merely trying to lure Luke to the Dark Side as he and Palps do in ROTJ. There's actual deleted dialogue from ESB where Vader starts goading Luke by telling him that he destroyed his family.
Besides, GL refers to Luke's father as being dead in the same 1975 discussion with Alan Dean Foster, and he's not talking "from a certain point of view":

GL refers to Vader and Luke's father very specifically and literally as separate characters in a later 1977 interview:

These statements weren't made public at the time, they were private conversations with collaborators - no reason for any spin, secrecy or double meanings. We can always try to say that GL was considering it as an alternative, but the simple fact of the matter is that there just isn't any evidence at all prior to late 1977 (David Prowse's possible guesses/spoilers) to suggest that Darth Vader was meant to be Luke's father, and plenty that specifically says he wasn't.

 

All of which is again very likely.

Still, somehow I think it's quite odd that McQuarrie drew Luke and Leia as identical twin blondes--with the same bowl haircut, even!

As I've noted before, this goes back to the Jungian concept of the anima/animus--a person's shadow self of the opposite gender. Mind you, though, Carl Jung was also deeply interested in the problem of sibling incest.... which, given the whole tangled Norse saga of Siegfried and Brunnhilde, once again suggests that GL may have had some Wagnerian ideas on his mind.

(Luke's inherited sword is clearly a direct steal from Siegfried's story. Much more obviously, so are some of the names, like "Balmung" and "Brunhuld," in the notes for the 1973 Journal of the Whills outline.)

After all, in that 1975 discussion with Alan Dean Foster, GL refers to a "trilogy" of SW films, but only one prequel film. Thus the saga would be "a trilogy with a prelude".... the exact form of the four operas in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

--

As for the question of Luke's father: who's to say that GL wasn't keeping his options open when writing the original film?

Notably, GL didn't say "we learn Darth Vader's backstory," or "we learn Vader's secret." Instead he said "we learn who Darth Vader is." That language suggests there might have been some secret Vader was concealing behind his mask--something to do with who he was, not who he'd killed some 20 years beforehand.

Plus, we almost assuredly haven't seen the full extent of GL's 1975 conversation with Foster. I'm certain some of it was held back--just like how the relevant conversations about Luke's father were omitted when The Making of ESB included excerpts from GL's 1977 story conferences with Leigh Brackett.

I'm fairly certain that you're right to say the originally intended resolution of the matter was different than in the finished trilogy. But that doesn't exclude other possibilities.

For instance, young Darth Vader could have cuckolded Annikin Starkiller's wife. Or Vader could even have been Luke's older brother instead of his father. (I can't get Guybrush and LeChuck in Monkey Island 2 out of my mind here--that video game was put out by LucasArts, after all.)

Likewise, GL may have considered the option of making Leia Luke's sister all the way back in 1975.... but if so, then a) he was clearly saving that idea for a future film, and b) he would've also had the option not to go through with it.

GL's discussion of Luke's twin sister in his 1977 story conferences with Leigh Brackett actually suggest to me that, if he'd ever had the idea for Sister Leia already, he'd likely abandoned it by late 1977.... only to un-abandon it in ROTJ, when he needed to explain who "the Other" was in a single film, after the idea of a 12-episode serial SW saga proved impracticable.

Also, the last quote in your post is actually from a series of 1977 story notes where GL spoke "in-character" as different people from the SW galaxy. That particular quotation, in fact, was ostensibly said by Princess Leia, just after the events of the first film. So at that point, if there was to be a big revelation about Darth Vader's identity in later films, neither Luke nor Leia would have been privy to it... and it wouldn't show up in briefings supposedly made by the Rebels in-universe.

 

That's all possible, but again, there just isn't anything solid to support the notion that Father Vader was an idea prior to late 1977. We can read it into quotes like "We learn who Darth Vader is" or the line of dialogue from Vader in Draft Three where he says he has a feeling he knows this Rebel pilot, plus, of course, the performances in the 1977 film which fit beautifully with it, but that's purely in the light of what happened later, and ignoring more plausible explanations based on information that existed at the time.

If there was anything - and there would have to be something, even if it was just a scribbled note or the recollection of someone who was working with GL around the time - it would have been included in an official publication by now. Why wouldn't it have been? It would reinforce GL's claims that this grand plan existed from the start.
I know that "absence of evidence does not equal the evidence of absence", but for there to be absolutely nothing, given the amount of developmental material that has been unearthed, does strongly suggest that the idea was a post-Star Wars development.

 

IIRC, Bail Organa isn't royalty, and the royalty on Naboo ain't hereditary.

So it's more like "Daddy's Little Princess Leia".

 

Bail Organa was the Viceroy of Alderaan, not Naboo. Leia was the adopted daughter of Bail Organa and Queen Breha of Alderaan, making her a Princess of Alderaan. Whether or not her adoption was publicly known would be the issue which would make her title contentious - or perhaps not, if Alderaanian customs allowed an adopted heir. Regardless, she was certainly acknowledged as being the legitimate Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan at the time of SW/ANH.

 

You're certainly right. The available evidence, on the face of things, does tend to suggest such a simple answer.

And yet...

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

"The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
--J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers

"The search for the Grail is the search for the divine in all of us. But if you want facts, Indy, I've none to give you. At my age, I'm prepared to take a few things on faith."
--Marcus Brody, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

"When you say, 'The Eye will see,' you aren't talking about OUR eyes, are you?"

"An Eye that can see the three dimensions of time as well as the three dimensions of space -- it will show you beauty beyond belief, but once you have seen Spacetime Six, will you ever see Spacetime Four again?"
--Sean Clark and Orson Scott Card, The Dig

"It's time."
--Brian Moriarty, The DIG

 

You go girl!
Love that book/movie

 

If Padme could be an elected Queen, Leia could be an elected Princess.

Leia looked out over the balcony to her crowd of Alderaanians that shouted exuberantly "Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!" and who was she to refuse? And that's how she was elected Princess of Alderaan at the time of the OT.

 

Yeah. She's an adopted princess. She's the last of her line, as well. That's part of what motivates her to live up to her lost world, avenge them, and prove her own worth, I imagine. But the power of Leia comes from her convictions and her desire to be better than her family/dad in the EU, much like Luke has a similar motivation. I know this may sound quaint, but as a Sailor Moon fan, I'd say Leia is a powerful princess of the Force.

 

Her adoptive parents were royalty.

 

Slightly OT, but I always wondered what would happen if the Queen (or King) of Naboo had offspring while elected. Like for instance, if Padme had Luke and Leia during her term. Would they have been called the Prince and Princess of Naboo during that time, would have gotten some other fancy title, or maybe no title at all?

 

A bunch of Republicans fighting an Emperor, fighting for a democratic representative government. With Princesses and so forth.

I remember groaning at the line that Padme Amidala was a democratically elected Queen at the age of 14. That's not a Queen. That's just weird.

 

Are we talking of what made Leia a princess or a queen?

By the way, the House of Organa ruled Alderaan longer than any other noble family. Bail Organa's wife, Queen Breha, came from the House of Antilles.