Index Discussion Cantham House—Your Place for Everything Alderaanian

Welcome, fellow Alderaan-lovers! This thread, named for the Alderaanian consulate on Coruscant, is a safe space for anyone who feels a kinship to or an appreciation of that peaceful planet destroyed in 0 BBY.

In addition to monthly discussion questions, we would like to encourage community engagement and support. Got a theory? Have a philosophy you need to hash out? Want a sounding board? Feel free to bring it to the group.

The second post will be reserved for recommendations of fics related to all things Alderaanian. We ask that you keep to the rules against self-promotion, but we’re all on the lookout for our next great read. Share a link, a summary, and what impressed you about, please.

We also hope to have a quarterly writing prompt and would love to see the different ways it inspires new material.

For now, our first discussion question is pretty simple: Do you connect to Alderaan more before its destruction or in the memories of its survivors?

 

Index of Recommended Fan Fictions

 

I’ll start the discussion.

I feel a kind of nostalgia for Alderaan in memory, things that are unchanging because they will never be given a chance to progress or grow. It’s tragic to have this ancient civilization frozen forever.

 

I like Alderaan as it was before the destruction and write about that.

 

It's kind of shifted for me over the years; before the Prequels we only had a few bits of EU and the various fanon versions of Alderaan to give a sense of what it was really like. So even knowing intellectually that it had to be a real place in the Galaxy with all kinds of things going on, my main point of reference was Leia and her connection to the planet. And of course, most of what we saw of Leia for years and years was set post-ANH (other than fanfics here and there) and storylines dealing with her homeworld were stories about coping with her grief on some level. So I think for me there is always a sense of poignancy to reading about Alderaan and its culture, even in brighter AU timelines.

But the greater screen and page time that Alderaan has in NuCanon has definitely made me more interested in the world for its own sake and not just the tragedy and aftermath associated with it. (Though I think those are worth exploring too, and for the next generations on from the survivors too. I kind of wish that Legends canon had shown more of the Solo kids getting to learn about Alderaan and connect with the culture. There's a part in one of the YJK books where they visit the remains of the planet, but it's more of an adventure story than anything if I remember correctly.)

As far as actually writing about Alderaan in my own works, I haven't really yet and that seems like an oversight. Another thing to add to the list...

 

I connect to Alderaan primarily as a symbol, and the symbolism attached to its destruction.

In Legends canon the Alderaanian perspective is primarily post the destruction of the planet with a big exception: SWTOR, where you actually go to the planet and spend time there for while, and...it's probably the least interesting planet in the game. That's actually good, it's supposed to be this idyllic paradise where everyone lives this blissful gentry lifestyle in mountaintop palaces surrounded by grassy snowfields full of pretty animals and engages in genteel politics and relationship dramas like they're on the set of a very Star Wars version of Downton Abbey. Sure, you blast open some Killik hives and murder some assassins and a nasty false king on the way to restoring the crown to the rightful house, but compared to plunging the depths of Rakata prisons on Belsavis or determining the fate of two linked species on Voss or slumming on Hutt-controlled Nar Shaddaa it's just very nice and sedate.

Alderaan is the Star Wars city on the hill (literally, fly up to Elysium on a thranta in-game sometime), which makes its destruction symbolically far more important than the actual devastation, as horrible as killing two billion people and a planet in one go might be. It's the kind of event that feels like it should be referred to in-universe purely by date, like 9/11 or 12/7, with absolutely everyone knowing exactly what that means. The memories and stories of the survivors are certainly important, but I feel that personally that well has been thoroughly plumbed and I have nothing to add. I'm much more interested in the reactions of everyone else in the galaxy to this seminal event, on every side of the conflict. At this point I've written several diaries where the internal timeline crosses the 0 BBY line and I've always felt it essential to include commentary on the destruction of Alderaan. It's one of the few things in the galaxy far far away that everyone experienced collectively which is a fascinating thing even as it was such an impossibly monstrous action and seeded trauma everywhere.

 

Not sure if anyone’s been following The Acolyte, but one character is confirmed as Alderaanian. Here are my thoughts on it from elsewhere:

https://dorksideoftheforce.com/post...w-information-for-the-yord-horde-01j1z6vf7w81