I’m a PT basher. No doubts there. I didn’t start out that way, but I’ll save that story for another day. Out of my loyalty for what has come before, I dig through the detritis of the PT to find something of value. That’s a tough job, let me tell ya. There has got to be one thing, one good thing I can hold on to and make my own. Something I can divorce from its surroundings and maybe get a bit of enjoyment out of it.

For TPM, I found three things: Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn, and 12″ action figures. There has been nothing like Darth Maul in SW, before or since. The one thing GL did right with him is not to spill everything about him. It’s the mystery that adds to the attraction, and I’m speaking as a girly girl here. Qui-Gon was what I had hoped the Jedi would be, but, alas, it didn’t turn out that way. I would have more feeling toward their demise if they had been like him. As for the action figures, TPM was the first time I was able to buy the SW stuff I wanted, so I loaded up on 12″ figures. And, yes, I do have Maul and Qui-Gon. Two Qui-Gons, actually: one in his Jedi garb and the other with the poncho he wore on Tatooine. I also have almost all the Amidala dolls, including three of the four Portrait Edition dolls. For AOTC, three 12″ figures, and two of them are still unopened. Not for monetary reasons, but because the excitement of buying them left quickly as I had visions of the train wreck I had beheld on the big screen still haunting me.

One good thing. One. Is that too much to ask for?

I’m mildly amused and more than a little annoyed with this albeit small dispute about Leia’s royal status. To shine a little light on the subject (and to vent my spleen a little), let me conduct a little history lesson. No tuition or textbooks required.

Caveat: It’s not canon, just an extrapolation based on EU, ROTS spoilers, and my knowledge of how most monarchies work.

Alderaan has a Queen, Breha. She is a regnant queen, which means she reigns in her own right. Bail Organa is Prince Consort of Alderaan, which means he’s husband to a reigning queen. He is not King of Alderaan; typically, women do no share their titles with their husbands, and there can be no title higher than Queen when she is the rightful inheritor of the throne.

EU says that the Organa family is also royalty. That could mean a number of things:

1) Bail is a descendant of a royal house that previously ruled Alderaan.

2) Bail is a descendant of the same royal house (Antilles) that his wife is a member of.

3) Bail is heir of the Organa branch of the Antilles house who has a competing but equally valid claim to the throne.

4) Bail is heir of the House of Organa who has a competing but equally valid claim to the throne.

If 3) or 4) are correct, then Bail and Breha could have been crowned as joint rulers of Alderaan, and he would be King in his own right. Also, Bail’s claim could still be recognized as Prince Consort if it was agreed that he would take that title as long as any children from that union would bear the Organa name. So the House of Organa would be the ruling house when an Organa child ascends the throne.

Leia gets her royal status from her adopted mother and her name from her adopted father.

EU also says that Bail at the time of the ANH was Viceroy of Alderaan. “Viceroy” does not mean “king”. It means he rules as a representative of the throne. It probably also means that his wife is dead, and when she died, Leia was not old enough to ascend the throne as Queen. Bail was probably titled “the Prince Regent”, who governed in Leia’s name. By the time of ANH, she was a Senator representing Alderaan, so it may be safe to assume that Bail was the caretaker of the throne until a time when Leia returned to rule.

This is only a tentative list; I’ve left enough room so I can post things on the fly if the need to rant comes up.

Incomplete list of topics

It’s coming! I still haven’t decided if it’s going to be 30 days or 60 days, but in the meantime, I’m stockpiling topics. The list will be posted on the message board when there’s a decent number of them.

If the particular spoiler can be believed, it appears that Anakin gets sucked into the Dark Side by Palpy saying he knew a way to save Padme, whom Anakin foresaw would die. The entire premise is lame, and it says more about Anakin being selfish and possessive than about any supossed seduction. In fact, there is no seduction here, only somebody going way out of the way to set a trap. I (and a lot of people) thought his fall would be gradual, so gradual that he wouldn’t know what happened until it was too late. Palpatine wouldn’t simply hold out something tempting and dare him to take it. The point the OT made about Palpatine’s kind of evil is that it is insidious (no pun intended), that it gets under the skin and festers there, taking its sweet time killing you. The time GL wasted took in setting everything up made that impossible, so he had to go for the jugular and bring out the candy. It’s so blatant it’s rediculous.

If Palpy was some kind of evil genius, he wouldn’t need to suddenly say “here, take this”. He would have examined his prey and started feeding Anakin poison from the beginning. This boy had enough moral voids in his personality and makeup that he could pick and choose which one(s) to exploit. His need to save Padme isn’t a deep enough void to yield compelling drama. Everybody wants to keep their loved one around them for as long as possible, that’s a given. For example, Palpy could have played on Anakin’s guilt about slaughtering that band of Sandpeople down to the last child. He took part in creating a young life while he had destroyed young lives with his own hands. Yes, Anakin is possessive, but that possessiveness has not manifested in an actual evil or borderline evil act. There aren’t any scenes that have burned themselves into Anakin’s brain that he will relive at his own recall or at Palpatine’s mention. (Shmi’s death doesn’t qualify because Anakin did not cause her death.) In other words, Palpatine can’t draw Anakin to the Dark Side unless the Dark Side has already manifested itself in him.

Palpy doesn’t need to work this hard to bring it out, and it seems overly elaborate the way it’s looking now. Sure, he’s layering this with taking over the Republic, exterminating the Jedi, etc., and this other project will serve those ends. But I can’t help seeing an old guy in a bathrobe holding out a handfull of Tootsie Rolls to a kid playing on the sidewalk.

Ew.