REBEL WITH A CAUSE

Chapter 1

When I retired from public service three months ago, I was approached by several publishers about writing my memoirs. At the time, we were in the midst of moving from Coruscant to Corellia, but once we'd settled in a bit, I began to give the idea some serious thought. I discussed it with Han, and he was very enthusiastic. I'd always liked writing, and while some of the luster had worn off during my many years of writing reports, I found myself thinking more and more about it. I enjoyed creative writing growing up, and the idea became appealing. I negotiated a deal, and began working on my story.

This is a good time to start getting my thoughts down; Han, Anakin, Jarik, and three of Anakin's new and closest friends-he wanted to bring more, but Han nixed that-are at the dining room table, playing sabacc. Anakin is a very good player, and Han won't be as ruthless as he was in tournament play, but he'll give them a real game. He doesn't give anything away.

I have a real office now, as opposed to a corner of the living room. The house is big enough that Han has his own office as well. So while the boys are otherwise occupied, I'll start...at the beginning.

Born a Rebel

I was adopted into the Royal House of Alderaan a few days after I was born. I don't really remember this, but I'm told there was a great celebration planetwide when I was presented.

I think that's the last one I don't remember.

I didn't learn the facts of my biological parentage for many years, but my adoptive parents never kept it a secret that I had been adopted, and I thank them for that. To be honest, I wasn't all that curious to know who gave birth to me. Bail and Breha Organa were wonderful parents. My mother loved children; she'd wanted to have many of them, but she'd had six miscarriages before I'd arrived on the scene, and another attempt at pregnancy would most likely have killed her. I'm grateful she knew when to call it quits.

My earliest years were, as I recall them, idyllic. My mother was the Minister of Education, but once I

was in her life, she reduced her workload as much as she could, and we spent many days wandering through the beautiful gardens that she loved, picking flowers in the warm seasons and building snow castles in winter.

The problems started when, after we picked those beautiful blooms, Mom would try to teach me to arrange flowers. I refused to learn; they were gorgeous on their own. Why not just put them in a vase and be done with it? I wanted to go back outside and run around. Arrange flowers? Why?

I think that was the first time I disappointed my mother. I was three. There would be more.

Fortunately for me, my father indulged my little rebellions. He encouraged me to run about and explore. He would explain that my mother loved flower arranging, but that didn't mean I had to like it. If I wanted to run through the grass, that was a good thing. He'd take me on walks through the forests that were near the palace in Aldera. I have great memories of those times. I can still feel the soft ground beneath my feet and feel the spray from the waterfall when I think back.

Of course, being adopted into a royal family means you don't get to be a child for very long. When I was four, my parents had tutors come in to teach me to read. It wasn't very hard for me; my mother had always read me stories, and I enjoyed it. I also loved the self-defense lessons I began taking., which turned out to come in very handy later on in life. I also suspect it was one way my parents could get me to go to sleep at a somewhat reasonable hour; it wore me out. I loved staying up late, and I did as often as I could get away with.

I think it was around the time I was five that I first became aware that my parents were Very Important Beings. When you're young, you don't think about this. They're just your parents.

It was at that age that my father's three sisters-my aunts Rouge, Celly and Tia-began assisting in my 'education.'

Don't get me wrong. I loved my aunts. They were good women, all of them. But we had conflicting objectives.

I wasn't aware that I was a princess for the first five years of my life. Of course, I was referred to as such by visitors, but in my mind, I wasn't what a princess was. Princesses in the stories my mother told me-which I enjoyed-always ended up being rescued from some danger by some handsome prince, marrying him, and living happily ever after. Fun bedtime stories, but not what I wanted to be. My parents, who were involved, busy people, didn't seem anything like the parents in those stories, either. The only princess from those stories that I ever wanted to be like was the one who refused to marry the prince her parents had chosen for her and ran off with a commoner.

That may seem prescient in retrospect, but I just liked the princess in that story. She was funny, and could fight, and she said what she felt. And the commoner treated her like she was a real person, not some delicate piece of glass.

When I came to the realization that I was, in fact, a princess was one afternoon while I was in my playroom. It was winter, and I'd played in the snow for a little while Dad had a break between meetings, but then I had to return inside. I had all my paints out and was engaged in creating various badly-done but amusing pictures-at least to my mind-and had as much paint on myself as on my flimsies-when my Aunt Celly came calling for me.

"Lelila, darling, there's someone I'd like you to meet," she told me, bringing an older woman into the doorway. She looked at me as if I was something you might find on the sidewalk that you didn't want to step on.

I hated her instantly.

"This is Madame Vesta, and she's going to start teaching you the proper etiquette and protocol for being a princess," Aunt Celly announced, as if she were giving me a gift. I just stared at the older woman.

"A lady does not stare," Madame Vesta told me severely.

"But I'm not a lady! I'm a girl!" I protested.

"You are a princess," Aunt Celly reminded me. "And princesses have to learn to behave in a certain way."

"But I'm busy!" I shot back.

"Come now, Leia, it's time for a bath," Aunt Celly tried to coax me. "You want to look nice, don't you?"

I couldn't have cared less about looking nice. I was busy having fun and now I had to take a bath in the middle of the day?! Outrageous!

After the indignity of a mid-afternoon bath, I was forced into one of my good dresses, and Aunt Celly braided my hair so tightly that my head hurt. I was already uncomfortable when she took me down to join Madame Vesta in one of the downstairs rooms. That's when the real torture began.

She was sitting on a straight back chair, glaring at me.

"Curtsy," she ordered.

I did. She clucked her tongue. "Sloppy. Very sloppy. Now, hold your back straight, bow your head slightly, and go down gracefully."

She may as well have been speaking Shryiiwook to me, at that point in my life. She got up and

moved my body into what felt completely unnatural positions.

"Keep your eyes averted. It's not becoming for a lady to stare," she told me severely.

By the time this was over, I was nearly in tears.

And that was the beginning of my education in being a princess.

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In the days that ensued, I had to learn to walk with a datapad on my head to insure that I was carrying myself with proper posture. Needless to say, many datapads died a premature death. Even when I managed to carry one across the room without damage, Madame Vesta was never one to praise.

Sitting down stopped being a natural act and became an exercise in keeping my spine straight, my legs pressed together and my ankles delicately crossed. This is much more difficult when your feet can't reach the floor. Even then, I was short for my age.

Madame Vesta, thankfully, only came twice a week, but my aunts made sure I practiced every day. I dreaded these lessons. I always felt as if I could never get it right. And like every five-year-old, what I wanted to do was play.

One day, not long after this had all started, my aunts came to me after my lessons and took me to my chambers.

"You're going to be in a holovid with your father!" Aunt Tia exclaimed, as if this was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I was already a skeptic at five, and based on how my aunts treated me, that was well-founded.

They stuffed me into my best dress-white, of course-and again fixed my hair so that my scalp was killing me. I started to cry from them pulling on my hair so hard.

"Now, now," Aunt Celly admonished me, "princesses do not cry. They endure discomfort."

I had no idea at the time how valuable this advice would be.

The holovid cameras were all set up in the courtyard, and Dad was there waiting for me.

"My little princess," he said, taking me on to his lap.

"I don't wanna be a princess. It hurts my hair," I grumbled.

"This won't take long," he promised me. "You just have to sit still for a few minutes. Make sure to look at the holocam."

I'm not sure how long it took, but I just sat on my father's lap, and did my best to smile, while Dad holorecorded a welcome message.

I had no idea how long I'd been writing when I realized, with a start, that Han was staring over my shoulder.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "Don't you have sabacc to play?"

"We're done for the night. It's late. You know, I saw that holovid with you in it." He grinned at me.

"Did you now?" I asked him.

"Well, one time, Muuurgh-I told you about him, didn't I?"

"The Togorian who was your copilot?"

"Bodyguard, actually, but he turned out to be a great friend. He got hurt, and I took him to Alderaan for that reason. Also tried to deal some stim, but you guys were just too damn honest." Han flashed me a rakish grin.

I looked into his eyes-those incredibly sexy hazel eyes, and grinned back at him.

"What would you have said if someone had told you then that the little girl in the welcome holovid would be your wife one day?" I asked him.

He threw back his head and laughed. "I would've said, I'm never getting married!"