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Leia Skywalker Organa Solo (born Leia Amidala Skywalker)

Species: Human

Homeworld: Polis Massa (born), Alderaan (adopted)

Portrayed by: Carrie Fisher, Ingvild Deilanote  (Rogue One), Aidan Bartonnote  (Revenge of the Sith), Billie Lourdnote  (The Rise of Skywalker), Vivien Lyra Blair (Obi-Wan Kenobi)
Voiced by: Julie Dolan (Rebels), Carrie Fisher (Rogue One), Shelby Young (Forces of Destiny), Misty Lee (Battlefront II), Carolyn Hennesy (Resistance)Foreign VAs


Princess Leia Organa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2b5d8473_efc1_4f51_9c9c_090f79329e7b.jpeg
"All I ever do is wave."

"The Senate's boring. It's just people in itchy clothes arguing."

Born on the asteroid Polis Massa, Leia was separated from her twin brother Luke in order to keep them safe from the Empire. She was adopted by Senator Bail and Queen Breha of Alderaan. When she was ten, she was kidnapped in order to lure Obi-Wan Kenobi into a trap set up by Inquisitor Reva Savander.


    Tropes as a child 
  • Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: A major one with Obi-Wan Kenobi. In Legends, she only knew of him through her father and never met him in person. Canon has her actually meeting and bonding with him when she was a child, to the point of naming her son after him (though that latter point could have also been because of what Luke told her about him).
  • Adopted into Royalty: She was adopted by the House of Organa shortly after her birth, which was no barricade to eventually being proclaimed Crown Princess and heir to the throne. Leia, Princess of Alderaan also implies that she wasn't the first adopted heir to the throne in the history of Alderaan, either.
  • Adoption Angst: Her snooty cousin Niano (whose line to the throne she blocked, following her adoption) reminds Leia that she's "not a real Organa" after a spat between the pair at a royal gathering. While she handles herself admirably in the face of such a cruel comment, she later experiences a momentary crisis of confidence, until Bail firmly insists that she is an Organa, and as heir to the throne, will in time be able to boss her cousin about as she wishes.
    Leia: I'm not even a real Organa.
    Bail: Don't ever say that. You are our child. You are an Organa in every way.
  • Adorably Precocious Child: She's an endearingly cute, playful little girl, though her adorable appearance belies her lightning-fast wit and ability to dress-down anyone who challenges her with withering observational skill — as both her haughty cousin Niano and badass General of the Republic Obi-Wan Kenobi can testify.
  • The Bait: Inquisitor Reva Savander orchestrates Leia’s kidnapping with Obi-Wan’s connection to the Organa family in mind, surmising (correctly) that it’ll be the only thing that can drag him out of hiding and into her hands.
  • Child of Forbidden Love: She and her brother were the result of Anakin's and Padmé's union, who were in a Secret Relationship due to Republic-era Jedi being forbidden to marry.
  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: In a neat Call-Forward to her rescue from the Death Star prison cell in A New Hope years later, she’s initially unimpressed when Obi-Wan appears at her cell door on Daiyu, after she’s kidnapped by Vect Nokru’s gang, simply asking “Where’s the army?”.
  • Death Faked for You: Both she and Luke had their deaths faked at birth to protect them from Palpatine.
  • Dramatic Irony: Leia gives her condolences to Obi-Wan when he tells her the friend she reminds him of is dead, not realising Obi-Wan was describing her late biological mother.
  • Establishing Character Moment: She's first established in Obi-Wan Kenobi as running away from a formal event she had to dress for in order to go into the woods with her little droid to observe ships leaving Alderaan.
  • Friendly Address Privileges: As a princess, she’s formally addressed as ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Princess’, including of course by Obi-Wan — until she begins to trust him, at which point she tells him that he can simply call her ‘Leia’.
  • Generation Xerox: Obi-Wan tells her she reminds him a lot of a brave woman he knew (she doesn't know he's talking about Padmé, her own mother). Bail and Breha fondly talk about her in a manner that hints they're also happy to accept her fierce spirit as coming from their dear, departed friends Padmé and Anakin.
  • Happily Adopted: It was common knowledge on Alderaan that Leia was adopted by the Organa family, although she has no idea at first who her biological parents are. Following the destruction of Alderaan, in the Princess Leia comic miniseries, Leia fondly remembers her adoptive father and mother, Bail and Breha Organa; she's also shown to have a warm and supportive relationship with them in Leia, Princess of Alderaan.
    • This is briefly defied in Obi-Wan Kenobi when her cousin Niano states that she’s "not a real Organa", which hits her hard. She repeats it to Bail when he calls her out on her vicious Hannibal Lecture of Niona. Bail has to reassure her that she absolutely is an Organa. That being part of their family is not blood, but being a person who lives up to Organa ideals.
    • In the Kenobi series she's initially curious about her biological family but ultimately shrugs about it. In Leia, Princess of Alderaan, a sixteen year old Leia says she's never cared to ask. If either of her biological parents were alive she would want to have a relationship with them. As it is, her adoptive parents are the only family she's ever had or could ever want. Her family is complete as it is.
  • Hidden Depths: She frequently gets the opportunity to demonstrate she's Wise Beyond Their Years, probing deep into the psyche of someone she's talking to (her cousin in episode 1, Obi-Wan in episode 2), demonstrating her Force sensitivity even untrained and at a young age.
  • Little Miss Badass: Even under extreme duress, after being captured by Reva, Leia refuses to give up the location of The Path's base. Reva tries to break her by claiming Obi-Wan is dead, tries to use the Force to read her mind, and eventually has her strapped into a torture device but Leia still refuses to give her anything.
  • Little Miss Snarker: She gives good snark to Obi-Wan when Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like and commenting on his age.
    Obi-Wan: We're farmers from Tawl and you're my daughter.
    Leia: [under her breath] Granddaughter, maybe.
    Obi-Wan: What?
    Leia: [quickly] Nothing.
  • Nature Versus Nurture: She does a really good job of showing she's the daughter of Padmé and Anakin and of Bail and Breha. She has a lot of snark and stubbornness, and a lot of compassion and duty. She displays Anakin's recklessness, Padmé's independent grit, Bail's roguish charm, and Breha's devotion to government.
    Breha: I thought you said you got through to her.
    Bail: I did, but you know what she's like.
    Breha: I know who she's like.
  • Nice to the Waiter: Despite her cousin making fun of her for it she's still polite to droids, using their full names and not treating them as "lower life forms" just because they have to serve others.
  • Rich Boredom: She views the Royal Palace as something of a Gilded Cage, and in terms of her role as Princess (and heir to the throne) of Alderaan, she laments that all she does is wave to the adoring crowds when she'd far prefer to escape to the woods adjacent to the Palace and go starship-spotting with her Robot Buddy, Lola.
  • Sheltered Aristocrat: Prior to being kidnapped and taken to Daiyu, Leia had never been off-planet, and her cousin Niano tells her it's because her very existence is kept "secret", due to her not being "a real Organa" — which may have a kernel of truth, and a decision born out of protection, considering her Skywalker heritage.
  • Too Clever by Half: On Daiyu, she correctly deduces that she was only kidnapped to drag Obi-Wan out of hiding, but her youthful impulsiveness and (admittedly understandable at the moment) paranoia leads her to assume Obi-Wan is actually a kidnapper as well until he proves he's a Jedi.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: In the first episode she delivers a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her cousin, talking about how he wants his father (who he's scared of) to like him and thus repeats things he doesn't really understand. In the second she surprises Obi-Wan by telling him that by trying not to reveal anything by being silent, he's actually revealing quite a lot.
    Obi-Wan: How old are you?
    Leia: I'm ten.
    Obi-Wan: You don't sound like you're ten.
    Leia: [proudly] Thank you!

Princess Leia Organa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/leia_41.jpg
"I feel like because I can fight, I have to — for those who cannot."

"I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you'll do as I tell you, okay?"

Over time, Leia became the princess and senator of her adopted homeworld and a leading member of the Rebel Alliance. Strong and beautiful, she catches the eye of Han Solo and an interesting relationship blossoms between the two. Luke Skywalker eventually discovered that she's his twin sister, and believed that she had the potential to become a powerful Jedi in the future.


    A-F 
  • Ace Pilot: Though she rarely demonstrates it, she is actually a skilled pilot; during the Battle of Theed she pilots an N-1 starfighter to destroy the Operation: Cinder satellites causing natural disasters on Naboo and also saves Shara Bey from TIE/LN fighters.
  • Action Girl: Leia fights her way out of the Death Star, chokes Jabba to death with her own chains, and joins the Rebel strike team for their mission on the Forest Moon of Endor.
    Leia: Somebody's got to save our skins!
  • Action Politician: In A New Hope, she is senator of Alderaan as well as a princess and an Action Girl, although halfway through Palpatine disbands the Imperial Senate (and the Empire blows up her planet), after which she becomes a rebel full-time.
  • Age-Gap Romance: With Han Solo. According to the official timeline, Han was born c.32BBY, meaning he is around thirty-two when he first meets Leia, who is just nineteen, making for a gap of thirteen years. However, while Han is clearly attracted to her, they don't actually get together until three to four years later, when he's about thirty-five/thirty-six and she's about twenty-two/twenty-three.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played with. Leia's First Love in Leia, Princess Of Alderaan is Kier, a very suitable Alderaanian Nice Guy who is dead by the end of the book though their relationship wouldn't have survived him trying to turn her parents in to spare Alderaan from Imperial reprisal. In the films Leia ends up falling for rebellious smuggler Han Solo over Ideal Hero Luke (which is probably just as well, seeing how they're Long Lost Siblings). She possibly takes after her mother in this regard (though Han never went as dark as Anakin). When Han claims she likes him because he's a scoundrel and that "there aren't enough scoundrels in [her] life", she doesn't try very hard to counter this. However, she seems to like him more when he becomes a nicer person and she never liked his cocky money-hungry sides.
    Leia: [after Han returns to the Battle of Yavin] I knew there was more to you than money!
  • Ambadassador: Just like her mother, Padmé, she's also a diplomat who's not afraid to get in on the action.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: As Han is about to be frozen in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back – which he may not survive – she declares her love for him. He responds with the now iconic line "I know".
  • Archnemesis Dad: She's one of the Rebel Alliance's leaders, which naturally puts her at odds with her father Darth Vader. This culminates in Vader having her tortured for information, though both of them weren't aware of their relation at the time. This continues after Vader's death, as her relation to Vader being revealed led to her losing credibility as a senator.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: When Luke comes with Han and Chewie to break her out of jail, she defies the stereotypes of a princess and takes charge of her own rescue and gets them safely out of the prison block.
  • Badass in Distress: She is a prisoner of the Empire for a large amount of the first movie, but during this time she is able to resist their torture techniques and refuses to give up the location of the Rebels' main base, even when threatened with the destruction of her home planet for refusing to do so. After Luke, Han, and Chewie break her out of prison, she plays a leading role in her own rescue mission and helps the team escape the Death Star.
    [Leia blast a hole in a wall grating to make an escape route]
    Han: What are you doing?
    Leia: Somebody has to save our skins!
    • In Return of the Jedi, she is captured by Jabba, but again plays a critical role in the team's escape and kills Jabba in the process.
  • Badass Normal: In the Original Trilogy, due to being unaware of her Force-sensitivity. Despite this, she's almost as badass as Luke.
    • Her first encounter with Vader, where she not only lies to his face but talks to him like he's an idiot (Vader isn't fooled).
      • In Rogue One we finally find out why, and it's not because he used the Force. It's because he was a couple of seconds away from getting the Death Star plans back.
    • She later strangles Jabba to death. When she reflects on that moment in Bloodline, Leia realizes that she may have tapped into the Dark Side to draw the strength necessary to choke a Hutt to death.
  • Battle Couple: With Han in Return of the Jedi; although they'd fought together before and clearly had feelings for each other, it wasn't until the last film that they officially got together.
  • The Beautiful Elite: She is the Royal Princess of Alderan, a skilled diplomat in the Imperial Senate, before its dissolution by the Emperor, and a high-ranking and highly respected officer in the Rebel Alliance. That's on top of her beauty, which she inherited from her birth mother Queen/Senator Padmé Amidala, who was noted for being very beautiful and also for her skills in diplomacy, and her handsome father Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, whom she also inherited her connection to the Force. Through her mother, she also has blood ties to the Nobility and Aristocracy of the Naboo.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In A New Hope. When imprisoned on the Death Star, Vader turns up to interrogate Leia with a droid fairly bristling with syringes. As the door closes on them, it's clear that she's about to be tortured for information. And yet the next time we see her, she looks perfectly fine, without so much as a puncture wound or a hair out of place. Legends has two explanations for this - in the radio drama Vader dismissed the droid after having it give her one injection and used a Force technique on her instead, in Death Star a doctor was dispatched to tend to her after Vader left - and either is plausible for canon. The 2015 novelization A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel and the Farm Boy adapts the radio drama's torture scene, so it might be what happened, but a medic still may have been assigned to her.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Han. Dear God with Han. This is especially the case in The Empire Strikes Back; they spend half their time arguing and snarking to cover up their feelings - Han outright accuses Leia of being angry with him because she wants him to stay with her. In The Force Awakens, it's indicated this continued even after they got married.
  • Benevolent Boss: During the battle of Hoth she is giving a bunch of troops a briefing about the plan. When one of them expresses doubts she doesn't get mad or tell him to shut up but instead reassures him that it will work due to the ion cannon.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: She's a pretty nice person in general, but she does strangle Jabba The Hutt with her chain, and the novelization even says she was calling on the Dark Side to get more strength at that moment.
  • Big Damn Kiss: With Han and Luke. (Granted, she didn't know Luke was her twin brother at the time.)
  • Big Good: While not the highest-ranking leader in the Rebellion, she fills this role for the most part with the possible exception of Return of the Jedi where Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar are the main leaders.
  • Big Sister Instinct: She's technically Luke's younger sister (and neither of them was fully aware of their relationship until Return of the Jedi) but Leia still looks out for her twin brother like any good sibling. She is quick to comfort him after Obi-Wan is killed and is clearly worried when he doesn't return to Echo Base by nightfall. She risks her own life to try and warn him he's walking into Vader's trap and insists on turning the Falcon around to rescue him rather than leave him behind. When Luke tells her Vader is his father and that he will come after him, she begs Luke to run as far away as possible and is distressed when she can't dissuade him from turning himself over to the Empire. She's not too worried about him following the end of the Battle of Endor though, as she can sense through the Force that he's alright.
  • Big "SHUT UP!": Leia to C-3PO after he's about to tell her the odds for a second time in The Empire Strikes Back.
  • Big "WHAT?!": After finding out that despite her (feigned) cooperation, Tarkin intends to destroy Alderaan, anyways.
  • Blatant Lies: Her claim that the Tantive IV was on a diplomatic mission comes across as Implausible Deniability to Darth Vader, who was there to see the ship escape the battle over Scarif.
  • Blue Blood: Having been adopted into the Alderaanian Royal Family in early infancy, she gained the title 'Princess' as the daughter of the reigning monarch Queen Breha and her Prince Consort, Bail Organa. In-universe, she is therefore referred to as 'Your Highness', the grander 'Your Royal Highness' (by C-3PO), and simply 'Princess Leia'. She also has blood ties to the nobility of Naboo via her biological mother's Naberrie lineage.
  • Braids of Action: Several examples.
    • In The Empire Strikes Back, Leia is wearing her hair in two braids while she fights her way out of Cloud City.
    • In Return of the Jedi, she's wearing her hair in a single braid when she kills Jabba. She's also shown wearing braids (pinned back) when she takes her helmet off on Endor. She also picks up some leather ornamentations in the Ewok village and wears them in the braids for the rest of the film.
  • Brainy Brunette: Taking after her mother, Leia is quite intelligent and displays some quick-thinking throughout the trilogy that helps save the day, including hiding the Death Star plans with her droids (only life forms can be detected by the Empire's scanners), giving the name of an older rebel base when questioned, figuring out that the Empire only let the Falcon go so they could track them and taking out the lights in Jabba's barge to create a distraction. She also proves to be quite astute at detecting danger or whether someone is trustworthy. George Lucas also stated in DVD commentary for A New Hope in 2004 that she had PhD by the time she was 19, although it's unclear if this is canonical; she did, however, receive a top-class education due to being royalty, being a skilled diplomat and public speaker, as well as multilingual (she is said to be fluent in Huttese and "proficient" in Shyriiwook).
  • Brief Accent Imitation: Bloodline confirms that Leia developed a brief British accent while meeting Tarkin on the Death Star as a mockery of his aristocratic accent.
  • Brother–Sister Team: With Luke, her twin brother, although they were unaware they were twins for much of the trilogy.
  • Call-Back: During the Battle of Endor, when Leia and Han are seemingly cornered by stormtroopers, she reveals she's actually got a hidden blaster. Han states "I love you" and she smiles and says "I know", referencing what he said to her in the previous film following her Anguished Declaration of Love.
  • The Cameo: She appears at the very end of Rogue One (with a young Carrie Fisher's face in CGI) to receive the stolen plans of the Death Star as the Tantive IV flees the Scarif system right under Darth Vader's nose. The rest is history.
  • Chained by Fashion: In Return of the Jedi. Initially, Jabba forces her to wear a collar with a chain to humiliate her, but it becomes this trope when she strangles him with said chain and then joins in the firefight.
  • Chainmail Bikini: In Return of the Jedi, during Han's rescue mission she ends up fighting in an outfit that consists of a metal bikini and a wispy 'skirt' (if it can even be called that). This is actually a rare justified example, as she was forced to wear the outfit when Jabba the Hutt made her his slave. The rest of the time, she always fights in practical clothing.
  • Chain Pain: In Return of the Jedi, she uses the chain Jabba forces her to wear to strangle him to death.
  • Characterization Marches On: In A New Hope she refers to Chewie as a "walking carpet" which impiles that (a) she's unacquainted with Wookies and (b) she's somewhat dismissive of him because he is one. This suggests that they were going for a more "haughty princess" or elitist Politically Incorrect Hero characterization for Leia, which clashes with later entries in the series which show her as an experienced and progressive-minded galactic politician and diplomat who would probably be familiar with most prominent species in the galaxy and advocates increased tolerance, respect and cooperation between different species.
  • A Child Shall Lead Them: Downplayed. She became one of the youngest senators ever elected when she became Senator of Alderaan in her late teens, as well as a leading member of the Rebel Alliance. She takes after her mother in that regard, Padmé being only fourteen when she was elected Queen of Naboo and eighteen when she was appointed Senator. It's deconstructed in that Leia had to spend a lot of time proving she could be a capable leader, with the media often dismissing her as just a pretty princess playing at politics.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Darth Vader subjects her to this in A New Hope to try and get the rebels' base out of her, though we don't see exactly what was done to her. It completely fails, with Leia refusing to betray the rebels no matter what is done to her.
  • Color Motif: Fisher once joked that she couldn't tell you much about Leia's personality, but she could tell you that her favourite colour was white, as that was all she ever seemed to wear. From Return of the Jedi onwards, she wears no white at all.
  • Commanding Coolness: Although she is typically referred to by her royal title, her official military rank in the Rebellion is commander.
  • Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: A double-whammy. Leia openly jabs at Luke's and Han's haphazard, unplanned rescue into oncoming stormtrooper fire... and then Han gripes right back when she pulls them out of the frying pan and into the fire by opening up an escape route into a dianoga-infested trash compactor.
    Han: Maybe you'd like it back in your cell, your highness.
  • Daddy's Girl: Implied. While it's been noted that Leia had positive, happy relationships with both Bail and Breha, there is more emphasis on Leia's bond with the former. This is rather ironic considering how much Leia detests her biological father Darth Vader, and she takes quite a while to come to terms with their relationship. For further irony, Leia tends to take after Anakin / Vader in terms to personality, namely being Hot-Blooded, opinionated, and vengeful.
  • Damsel out of Distress: Something of a recurring theme.
    • In A New Hope, while she doesn't get out of her cell until Luke and Han show up, she almost immediately grabs one of their blasters and essentially takes command of her own rescue.
    • Then in Return of the Jedi when she strangles Jabba to his death with the chain he put her in.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: She remembers her mother's death (despite being only a baby at the time) and saw her adoptive homeworld destroyed as a You Said You Would Let Them Go. Her past turns out to be darker still; her previously unknown biological father is Darth Vader (and her mother's death was mostly his fault, nearly resulting in her and Luke dying too).
  • Deadpan Snarker: Leia is one of the snarkiest characters in the series.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: In Return of the Jedi, she disguises herself as the bounty hunter, Boushh, to infiltrate Jabba's palace. Boushh was an actual bounty hunter that was employed by Black Sun and was killed for attempting to blackmail them. She got the armor when she and Mal Kanata fought Boushh and stole his armor
  • Deceptive Legacy: Downplayed, especially compared to her brother. Leia always knew she was adopted and was completely fine with it. She was given the impression by Bail that she was orphaned by the Clone Wars, which isn't completely untrue; Padmé died giving birth to her after being Force-choked and having her heart broken by Anakin, who at this point had turned to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader. Bail states in a recording he left for Leia that he wanted to tell her who her biological parents were, especially her mother, but he couldn't because it was too dangerous for her. He never told her that her parents were navigators on a spice freighter or anything like that, though.
  • Defiant Captive:
    • For much of A New Hope. Immediately following her arrest, she feigns ignorance about the stolen Death Star plans, even blatantly lying to Darth Vader's face about them. She resists the Empire's attempt to torture the Rebels' hidden base out of her and when faced with execution she maintains her dignity, insulting Tarkin and pointing out that the Empire's brutal methods will only drive more star systems to rebel. The only time she loses her cool is when Tarkin threatens to blow up her home planet of Alderaan unless she reveals the base...and then proceeds to do so anyway. Even then, though, Leia lied about it, giving them an older base that has long since been abandoned, and when a certain stormtrooper comes to her cell, she merely snarks at him that he's "a little short for a stormtrooper". Upon learning the stormtrooper is actually here to rescue her, she leaps into action and quickly takes charge of the mission.
    • In The Empire Strikes Back, she struggles with the stormtrooper who has her captive and screams at Luke that it's a trap. It doesn't do much good, but points for trying.
    • And again in Return of the Jedi when she's enslaved by Jabba, ultimately being the one who kills him and blowing up his ship.
  • Defiant to the End: Towards Tarkin in A New Hope. Though she knows full well she will most likely die, in fact, Tarkin even informs her that her execution has already been arranged, it doesn't stop her from snarking at him every step of the way. That is until he threatens Alderaan.
    Leia: [smugly] Governor Tarkin. I should have figured you were holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench the moment I was brought on board.
    Tarkin: [mockingly] Charming to the last. You don't know how hard I found it signing the order to terminate your life.
    Leia: I'm surprised you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Her relationship with Han in The Empire Strikes Back is an example, as she starts out rather icy to him, but by the end is declaring her love for him.
  • Deuteragonist: Of the original saga, her importance to the Galaxy as the second of the Skywalker twins, it is heavily implied by both Yoda and Obi-Wan, and outright confirmed by Luke, that should her brother fail in his quest, she will be the only hope the Rebellion will have against the Empire.
    Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope.
    Yoda: No, There Is Another...
  • Doomed Hometown: Her home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star.
  • Double Agent: At the very start of the trilogy, Leia is a member of the Imperial Senate, but she secretly serves in the Rebel Alliance. She gets found out when Darth Vader catches her fleeing the Battle of Scarif with the Death Star plans, after which she is openly a Rebel Leader.
  • Dude Magnet: She attracts attention from Han (her future lover), Luke (before he realized they were related), Lando Calrissian, Ezra Bridger, Kier Domadi, and Jabba the Hutt.
  • The Dutiful Daughter: Luke sees Leia as this, as Leia was a part of the Rebellion while he was on Tatooine. In her past and current life, Leia is dedicated to carrying out her duties, both royal and moral, because of the teachings her parents bestowed on her.
  • Establishing Character Moment: Her first few scenes in A New Hope tells the audience a lot about Leia's character. Whilst stormtroopers attack her ship, Leia calmly gets C-3PO and R2-D2 into an escape pod along with the Death Star plans and an emergency message for Obi-Wan Kenobi, then ambushes a stormtrooper with a blaster to buy them more time. When she's brought before Darth Vader, she is imperious and defiant, pretending she knows nothing about the plans.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Her reaction to Lando being forced to sell out Han to Vader, so that Cloud City will not be invaded. She eventually forgives him after he helps them escape and rescue Luke.
  • Fake Shemp: In Rogue One, digital effects manage to feature a 1977 Carrie Fisher as Leia.
  • Fan Disservice: That Chainmail Bikini she wore in Return of the Jedi? Out of context, it looks like ordinary fanservice, but in context, she didn't wear it by choice. Not only did Jabba the Hutt force her to wear it, she was Jabba's slave at the time and was to be kept at his side at all times until he felt like disposing of her. Wearing that outfit was a humiliation from her perspective - and she eventually killed the person who forced her to wear it.
  • Fanservice Pack: Carrie Fisher was always beautiful, but most of Leia's outfits were pretty modest - then came the iconic metal bikini in Return of the Jedi, which left little to the imagination. Although it's technically Fan Disservice, it's one of the most remembered moments from Return of the Jedi for a reason.
  • Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Downplayed with Luke. While Leia had royal duties and later, political ones, to attend to at a relatively young age and Luke is comparatively more rash than her, it's not by a big margin. Also, he matures into a more level-headed person.
  • Forced to Watch: Leia is forced to watch the destruction of her homeworld Alderaan. In The Empire Strikes Back she's also forced to watched Han being frozen in carbonite.
    G-O 
  • Generation Xerox: Leia's very similar to her mother, Padmé, in lots of other ways, being a Politically-Active Princess, Royals Who Actually Do Something Action Girl. They were both active members of the Senate by the time they were in their teens and often partake in humanitarian work; they both also fall for somewhat roguish men who are Ace Pilots (though Han at his worst was nowhere near as bad as Anakin could be, seeing as he eventually became Darth Vader and all). They both end up hiding their close connection to Anakin Skywalker; Padmé has to hide her marriage to Anakin because he could be expelled from the Jedi Order, while Leia hides the fact he's her father because people wouldn't take kindly to her being the daughter of one of the worst tyrants in the galaxy.
  • Genocide Survivor: In A New Hope, the Empire uses the Death Star to blow up the planet of Alderaan, with Princess Leia being Forced to Watch as her home is instantaneously destroyed. The Expanded Universe goes into more detail about how this affected her. The comic Star Wars: Princess Leia goes over Leia's attempts to track down and protect any other surviving Alderaanians.
  • Go-Go Enslavement: Her skimpy slave girl costume in Return of the Jedi.
  • Good Is Not Soft: Leia may be good, but she is not to be messed with. She is the first main character to score a kill on a stormtrooper, is initially quite willing to let Chewie strangle Lando for betraying Han, and chokes Jabba the Hutt to death with her own chain when he enslaved her and tried to kill her loved ones.
  • Gratuitous Princess: The plot of the series could have been exactly the same were Leia not a princess (the princess of a planet that is brutally destroyed), but because of the tradition of kidnapped princesses in fantasy stories, Leia is a princess through and through.
  • Great Escape: In A New Hope, Luke, Han, and Chewie bust her out of the Death Star's detention level before she's executed and she helps them fight their way out of the battle station.
  • Guile Heroine: Leia is reasonably skilled at deception; notable examples include successfully tricking Tarkin into believing the rebel base is on Dantooine and passing herself off as a bounty hunter to rescue Han.
  • Gut Feeling: She gets a lot of these, particularly in the comics and novels, regarding whether someone is trustworthy, what direction to take, or when making important decisions. After learning her true heritage, Leia and Luke realize that this was due to her latent Force sensitivity.
  • Height Angst: Downplayed. Leia is 5'1", which is on the short side for women, but she never was overtly ashamed or angry about her stature. She did hope in Leia, Princess of Alderaan that she hadn't reached her last growth spurt, but the thought was Played for Laughs then being a serious moment.
  • Heroic BSoD: She has a small one when she finds out Darth Vader is her father and that her twin brother intends to hand himself over to the Empire to help the Rebellion.
  • Heroic Lineage: Her father, Anakin, was a Jedi before he became corrupted and turned to The Dark Side. Her mother was also regarded as a hero on her home planet of Naboo, seen as a wise and benevolent ruler who saved them from the Trade Federation and later helped found what would become the Rebel Alliance. And her adoptive parents were not only kind rulers of Alderaan but also helped the Rebellion, which Bail helped found with Leia's birth mother and Mon Mothma.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In the opening scene of A New Hope, when the Empire catches up to the Tantive IV, Leia makes no effort to escape, instead, sending R2-D2 and C-3PO away with the Death Star plans and then holding off the stormtroopers for as long as she can. In her message to Obi-Wan, she asks him only to deliver the plans to her father to help the Rebellion, and given her surprised reaction to the rescue mission, she clearly wasn't expecting it. She fully believed she was going to be tortured and likely executed by the Empire and is more than willing to lay down her life for the rest of the galaxy.
  • Hidden Backup Prince: Along with Luke. Unlike Luke, Leia was actually raised as royalty.
  • Hope Bringer: Both her and Luke's births at the end of Revenge of the Sith represent the new hope in the shambles of the Republic that the new Empire was built upon for Yoda, Obi-Wan and the small militant senators, like Bail Organa, who would form the Rebel Alliance.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: In Leia, Princess of Alderaan she takes a liking to Kier Domadi, a fellow Alderaanian. It's easy to see why; he's dedicated to his principles, thoughtful, dislikes the Empire, and helps teach her sharpshooting. Unfortunately those same principles and the awareness that the Empire will retaliate ferociously against any rebellion, plus a more fatalistic view of it as too powerful to overturn, mean they have one very fundamental difference. As soon as she tells him about her parents' Rebel involvement, Kier breaks her trust and starts planning to turn them in in the hopes of preventing the Empire from cracking down on Alderaan.
  • Hot-Blooded: Leia is feisty, passionate, opinionated, and hot-tempered, much like her father, Anakin. However, unlike her father, Leia is generally more self-controlled and applies these traits more practically when it comes to conflict. She only occasionally loses her temper (and it's not pretty when she does), and while she can be impulsive at times, she manages to avoid being a Leeroy Jenkins.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At 5'1", Leia is quite short, while Han is over 6ft tall.
  • Human Popsicle: The post-2014 Marvel comics set in-between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi reveal that Leia had also endured the experience of being frozen in carbonite.
  • Iconic Outfit:
    • By far Leia's most iconic look is her with hair rolls and a white gown, often wielding a Stormtrooper rifle one-handed, despite her ditching all of these after the very first film.
    • Leia's metal bikini is one of the best-known elements of the third film.
  • Identical Granddaughter: Leia has shown to greatly resemble her paternal grandmother, Shmi.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: The one character in the Original Trilogy who almost never misses. Could be justified, as she has access to the Force.
  • Improbable Hairstyle: A few of Leia's hairstyles would require a lot of time and effort to achieve despite her spending most of her time either fighting or on the run from the Empire, but her famous cinnamon bun hairstyle from A New Hope is probably the stand-out example; not only would it quite difficult to maintain (in real life, it took a professional hairdresser around two hours), but the buns never come loose despite her being tortured, getting into a gunfight and nearly getting crushed in a trash compactor. Expanded material does alleviate it somewhat by revealing she was taught from a young age how to braid her hair, so she could feasibly do her own hair.
  • Incest Subtext: With Luke. They had Ship Tease in A New Hope.
    • She full-on kisses him in The Empire Strikes Back (though only to make Han jealous).
    • And then admits in Return of the Jedi that she "always knew" deep down they were connected in some way when Luke reveals they're twins.
  • Informed Attribute: Despite Yoda believing her to be a better choice against Palpatine and Darth vader, very little actually supports said belief throughout the original trilogy. Not only has Leia proven to be more hot-headed than Luke, but she has never even wielded a lightsaber beforehand. It's even jarring when one considers Luke's equal Force potential to their father, whereas Leia's skills in the Force were only briefly shown in "Return of the Jedi".
  • Insult Backfire: Leia calling Han a "scoundrel".
    Han: "Scoundrel"? I like the sound of that.
  • In the Hood: When she's first seen in A New Hope, she's wearing a hood over her head – she's also seen to be wearing the hood in her message to Obi-Wan. However, she goes without it from then on.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed, especially compared to other heroic jerks like Anakin and Han. Leia doesn't suffer fools and can come off as abrasive, snappish, and haughty, but she is also a selfless, compassionate and caring person with strongly-held morals.
  • Joan Of Archetype: Leia fits some aspects of this trope, being a courageous and inspiring young woman who is universally associated with the Rebel Alliance, though her more down-to-Earth and snarky attitude makes her an atypical example.
  • Jumped at the Call: In Leia, Princess of Alderaan she starts coming of age knowing full well that The Empire is evil but believing that it can be changed peacefully from within. Finding evidence of violent dissidence against it makes her both uneasy about the ethical ramifications and excited, but when she finds out her parents are involved she instantly wants to help, easily believing that anything they're involved with meets the highest ethical standard. Bail and Breha try to shut her out of their dealings in the hope of protecting her if they're discovered, but Leia pushes at every turn.
  • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: In A New Hope, she fights her way out of the Death Star wearing a simple but elegant formal gown.
  • Lady in Red: While staying in Cloud City, Leia is given a red outfit to wear, with Lando remarking that she looks beautiful in it. Her slave girl outfit also includes a red skirt.
  • Last Girl Wins: For Han. As Solo proves, Leia is not Han's first love, but she is his last and true love, whom he eventually marries. Likewise, he's her last boy.
  • The Leader: She is a high-ranking member of the Rebellion and particularly exerts her authority over the other main characters in A New Hope; she's also seen briefing the starfighter pilots before the Battle of Yavin and ensuring the rebels escape the Hoth base. She's mostly types Levelheaded and Charismatic.
  • Leitmotif: "Princess Leia's Theme", which is heard several times in the Original Trilogy, the Sequel Trilogy and Rogue One when Leia appears onscreen or is mentioned in some significant way. It can also be heard in Revenge of the Sith when Bail Organa decides to adopt Leia and when she is seen in the arms of Bail and Queen Breha. It also plays in The Clone Wars episode "Assassin" when her biological mother Padme and Ahsoka Tano arrive on Alderaan, years before she was born. Parts of the theme were also incorporated into "Han Solo and the Princess", Leia and Han's love theme. To a lesser extent, parts of it even sound reminiscent of "Across the Stars", Anakin and Padme's love theme.
  • Light Is Good: She's frequently seen wearing white or lighter clothing, and is practically a living symbol of the Rebellion. Her actress said it best.
    Carrie Fisher: It's not really possible to write out a list of Princess Leia's likes and dislikes. I do know her favorite color, though, it's white. She wears white all the time.
  • Like Parent, Like Child: While in looks and career choice, Leia resembles Padmé, in personality and temperament, Leia is much more like Anakin — Both are Hot-Blooded, have a hard time forgiving others who betray their trust, have a sarcastic wit, and use choking as a way to kill their enemies (Anakin's Force-choking, Leia using her slave chains to strangle Jabba the Hutt to death).
  • Likes Older Men: Han is around ten years her senior.
  • Lineage Comes from the Father: Played straight. Leia takes after Anakin, though she isn't happy about it. She is way more proactive, hot-headed, passionate, opinionated, aggressive, and stubborn than her brother Luke. Anakin's way is to get even and work alone, and Leia seems to want to follow the same path at times. The only major difference between their personalities is Leia appears to lack the attachment issues that doomed her father to the Dark Side. How much of this can be attributed to genetics versus her upbringing is debatable, but she's more like her father than her mother, despite sharing some traits — such as political ideology and career choice — with her mother. She also gains her Force abilities from her father.
  • Long Lost Sibling: To Luke. Leia is his twin sister, separated from him at birth.
  • Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: A dictator variant. She's the good and beautiful daughter of Darth Vader, who leads the Rebellion against the Empire her father serves - although they were unaware of their relationship for most of the trilogy. Unlike many examples of this trope, she and Luke aren't a couple, but brother and sister; Leia's Love Interest is Han.
  • Made a Slave: By Jabba the Hutt. It doesn't last, and she kills him by choking him to death with her own chain.
  • Mage Born of Muggles: Downplayed. She (and Luke) have a Force-sensitive father which is where she gets her powerful Force-like abilities but for most of her life, she remained unaware of this. And Leia was raised by the King and Queen of Alderaan, who were personal friends of her late biological mother.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The aggressive, Hot-Blooded Masculine Girl to Luke's gentle, All-Loving Hero Feminine Boy.
  • Meaningful Name: Leia means "ruler" in Assyrian.
  • Meaningful Rename: Justified. Given her biological parents were Anakin and Padmé her birth name was Leia "Amidala-Skywalker". However, because of a combination of wanting to protect her (and Luke) from the Empire and being adopted by the royal family of Alderaan, her last name was changed to "Organa".
  • Modest Royalty: Leia spends most of her time in either her white outfit or more practical clothing.
  • Morality Pet: Inverted, for Luke. After resisting both the Emperor's and Vader's temptations, it is Vader's threat that if Luke will not join him, then he will turn Leia, pushing an enraged Luke over the edge, and for a brief moment fully embrace the Dark Side.
  • A Mother to Her Men: Judging especially from the Battle of Hoth, she cares a lot about even the Redshirts in the Rebellion and makes sure they escape.
  • Motivational Kiss: In A New Hope, Leia gives Luke a peck on the cheek "for luck" before he tries to swing over a precarious gap.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Leia is described as being beautiful from the beginning of A New Hope, and she certainly lives up to her reputation. Then there's the infamous Go-Go Enslavement costume in Return of the Jedi.
  • Ms. Vice Girl: Leia has a temper and can be prideful, which is particularly demonstrated during her interactions with Han, but she manages to avoid letting her flaws cripple her (unlike other members of her family) and remains an unambiguously good person throughout the trilogy. It really only seems to be a problem in her personal life, as she's almost constantly letting Han rile her up and takes ages to admit her feelings for him out of pride.
  • Muggle–Mage Romance: Leia has an untapped potential in the Force while Han is a Badass Normal human.
  • The Napoleon: Leia may be only 5'1" but she can incredibly fierce when she wants to and is not someone you want to mess with. At 6'7", Darth Vader easily towers over her, but she just gives him attitude.
  • Nephewism: Downplayed, as she was primarily raised by her parents but her maternal aunt also helped in Leia's rearing by teaching etiquette lessons.
  • Nice Girl: Leia is nice to everyone except Han. She also briefly showed annoyance at C-3PO's fussiness.
  • Nice Mean And In Between: Despite still being a pretty nice character, she is more the "in-between" to Luke's "nice" and Han's "mean"; it mostly seems to be because Leia is generally less polite and more easily angered compared to Luke.
  • No Infantile Amnesia: She has a few vague memories of her birth mother, Padmé, despite the fact Revenge of the Sith shows that Padmé died shortly after giving birth to Leia. It's been implied/speculated that Leia's latent Force-sensitivity may have something to do with it. Even she admits they aren't so much memories as they are feelings.
  • Now or Never Kiss: Just before Han is about to be frozen in carbonite, she breaks away from her guard and plants a big kiss on him.
  • Official Couple: After two movies of Belligerent Sexual Tension, she becomes this with Han in Return of the Jedi; although she had actually confessed her love for him in The Empire Strikes Back and it was clear Han reciprocated, he has trouble saying it back to her and also thinks she prefers Luke. Once Leia reveals Luke's actually her Long Lost Sibling, she and Han make it official; the expanded universe confirms they got married some time before the Galactic Civil War ended.
  • One Head Shorter: Han is exactly a foot taller than her; she has to look up for him to kiss her forehead.
  • The Only One: In Return of the Jedi, when Luke confirms he and Leia are siblings and reveals she is Force-sensitive, he says that if he dies, she will be the Rebellion's only hope of stopping the Empire.
  • Only Sane Woman: In A New Hope; Luke’s well-intentioned but naïve and inexperienced whilst Han and Chewie are (initially) just in it for the money. When Leia realizes they don’t have much of an actual plan for rescuing her, she quickly takes charge of things.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Leia is introduced with a British accent, but it changes into an American one and remains the same from there. The novel Bloodline states she was putting on the accent to mock Tarkin.

    P-Y 
  • Parental Abandonment: Same as Luke, not that she could have helped it.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's only 5'1" (155 cm), but kicks lots of ass.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: With Luke. Leia is a brunette, brown-eyed, quick-tempered, sharp-tongued, worldly-wise, shrewd, and practical politician. Luke is a blond, blue-eyed, calm, mild-mannered, naïve, mystical, religious Jedi Knight. Interestingly, Leia's personality takes after Anakin, while Luke's personality is much more like Padmé.
  • Politically-Active Princess: Is a senator (until Palpatine disbands the Senate), and then an important member of the Rebellion.
  • Pretty Princess Powerhouse: When beautiful young Leia is first seen in A New Hope, she's cowering in a hiding spot aboard the corvette. Unfortunately for the stormtrooper who found her, she was "cowering" to conceal the fact she was armed. Zap.
  • Princesses Rule: She is considered the de facto leader of the surviving Alderaanians after their homeworld's destruction, but she's never referred to as "Queen Leia". Her title remains Princess (possibly because the Alderaanian throne is technically no more) and she later becomes Senator of the Alderaanian sector once the New Republic is established.
  • Princess in Rags: When Jabba the Hutt has her Made a Slave. She makes her contempt for him blatantly obvious and defies him at every turn, maintains her dignity as best she can in her Stripperriffic outfit and takes the first opportunity she can to kill him. Jabba should really have listened when she told him he was going to regret this.
  • Pursued Protagonist: In A New Hope, Leia is being pursued by a Star Destroyer on her way to deliver the plans of the Death Star to the rebellion. Using R2, she tries to send them to Obi-Wan Kenobi. They instead end up in the hands of Farm Boy Luke, which kickstarts the adventure.
  • Rebel Leader: Initially done while working as a Senator, though she drops the guise after the Senate is liquidated and becomes a full-time rebel.
  • Rebellious Princess: Played with. As a child and in her early teens, Leia generally disliked all the etiquette lessons, restrictions, and formality that came with being a princess – at the age of nine, she even ran off and hid in the woods for a week – and was much more interested in sports and combat training. However, she was actually very keen to be involved in politics and is eager to help her parents with the Rebellion when she learns of their involvement, wanting to be a Politically-Active Princess who can use her position to help people.
  • Relationship Upgrade: With Han. They begin as begrudging allies before transitioning as friends in A New Hope then have a heavy case of Belligerent Sexual Tension before sharing a Big Damn Kiss in The Empire Strikes Back and both properly become an Official Couple in Return of the Jedi. They married sometime after the war and had a son.
  • Refuge in Audacity: After Rogue One revealed that Darth Vader personally saw her ship escape with the Death Star plans, her trying to maintain her cover after being captured definitely comes off like this.
  • Requisite Royal Regalia: Leia wears royal jewelry at the awards ceremony at the end of A New Hope.
  • Rescue Romance: Eventually with Han (with the rescuing happening from both ends), though she certainly wasn't expecting it to turn out that way.
  • La Résistance: Leia is part of the Rebel Alliance.
  • Royal Blood: Leia was adopted into the House of Organa, the royal family of Alderaan, as an infant. Due to the customs of her people, Leia and any of her descendants are considered members of the royal bloodline regardless of whether they were adopted or not. Leia's birth mother Padme was also implied to be a noblewoman of Naboo and was once a Queen - although in her case, the title was an elected one, not hereditary. Her birth father, Darth Vader, is also addressed as 'Lord Vader' under the Galactic Empire.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: She's a princess by birth and she's very active both as a member of the Imperial Senate before the events of A New Hope, and a substantial de facto leader of the Rebellion once she's outed as an enemy of the Empire. She's also the first named character to score a kill on a Stormtrooper, and the last.
  • The Runaway: A downplayed version. As a child, Leia ran away from home for the first and only time. She stayed in the woods for a week before Alderaanian guards found her. She describes the experience as the "best week of her life".
  • Sadistic Choice: Although no kidnapping was involved, the choice faced by Princess Leia of giving up the location of the Rebel base or watching her home planet of Alderaan be destroyed by the Death Star was a perfect example. Especially since, in a notorious Kick the Dog moment, Grand Moff Tarkin ordered the planet destroyed anyways after Leia gave a false location in hopes of keeping the Rebellion alive. Tarkin's reasoning? "Dantooine is too remote to give an effective demonstration." Alderaan, on the other hand, was a Core World.
  • Second Love: As Solo showed, Qi'ra was Han's First Love.
  • Separated at Birth: Leia was separated from her twin brother at birth in order to protect them from their father (Vader).
  • Sex Slave: To Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi (but thankfully, Jabba died before he could have his way with her).
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: With Luke, her twin brother. While Leia is more passionate, impulsive, and hot-headed, Luke is more calm, cool, and collected.
  • Shameful Strip: Not seen, but heavily implied. After Leia is captured by Jabba the Hutt, her bounty hunter disguise is removed and she is forced to wear her incredibly revealing Go-Go Enslavement outfit, but it's never revealed if she was actually stripped or forced to strip in front of Jabba and his cronies, or not. Considering how determined Jabba was to humiliate her, it's seems rather disturbingly unlikely he would've let her change, or be changed, in private, and in one Legends book, he does have her stripped naked in front of his court.
  • Simple, yet Opulent: In a contrast to her mother's fashion sense, Leia's regal outfits are usually quite simple with few adornments, yet still elegant.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Subverted. She claims she likes "nice men", but kisses Han moments after making that statement and ultimately ends up marrying him. Then again, she likes Han more for his positive traits than his bad ones, particularly after his Character Development.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: Her relationship with Han, even after they got married.
    Leia: No matter how much we fought, I always hated to watch you leave.
  • Slave Collar: Princess Leia is forced to wear a collar by Jabba the Hutt. At one point he yanks her around by a chain attached to the collar: she later uses the chain to strangle him.
  • Sole Survivor: Downplayed. While Leia is not the only Alderaanian to escape the planet's destruction, she is the sole survivor for the planet's royal family.
  • Spin Off Spring: Zigzagged. The audience already knows that Leia (with Luke) would become a major protagonist in the Original Trilogy after her parents, Fallen Hero Anakin Skywalker and All-Loving Hero Padmé Amidala, but Revenge of the Sith chronicles how it happened.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: To her mother, Padmé. They have similar physical features, particularly their dark hair and eyes, and are both on the short side. They also sometimes dress alike or style their hair the same. When Leia visits Naboo and wears a similar dress to Padmé, Moff Quarsh Panaka is actually shaken by how much she resembles Padmé and later figures out they are mother and daughter.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She can seem somewhat emotionless and aloof at times, but she is actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold on the inside. This is particularly the case when she's around Han.
  • Super-Strength: Very briefly in Return of the Jedi. It would normally be impossible for a human to strangle a Hutt like Jabba on their own, but Leia was briefly able to tap into the Dark Side (albeit unwittingly) to pull it off.
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: In Return of the Jedi, she disguises herself as a bounty hunter named Boushh to infiltrate Jabba's palace.
  • Talented Princess, Regular Guy: She's the Talented Princess to Han's Regular Guy. She's a Force sensitive princess, politician and rebel commander, as well as a dead shot with a blaster, while Han is just a smuggler and outlaw. That being said, Han himself is decent with a blaster and an excellent pilot, and eventually gets promoted to the rank of general within the Rebel Alliance, but Leia's CV is comparatively more extensive.
  • Theme Twin Naming: With Luke. Their names only have four letters and start with "L".
  • There Is Another: Trope Namer. She is actually Luke's sister and a Force-sensitive.
  • Tomboy Princess: Especially in her youth, where she was more interested in sports and combat than etiquette lessons. And while she became more ladylike as an adult, she still has the same tomboyish mannerisms.
  • Tragic Keepsake: The chalcedony waves (the necklace she wears at the awards ceremony in A New Hope) is a family heirloom passed down to her by her adoptive mother, Breha, and is one of the few things she has left of her after Alderaan is destroyed. She later gifts the necklace to Nien Nunb out of gratitude for helping her rescue Alderaanian refugees on Sullust.
  • Trauma Conga Line: In A New Hope alone, Leia is captured and tortured by the Empire and is Forced to Watch as her planet is blown up. In the next film, one of her best friends goes missing in a frozen wasteland, she and her friends are tortured again, she watches the man she loves be frozen in carbonite and kidnapped. And in the next film, she gets enslaved by a creepy gangster, finds out her biological father is a murderous dictator (and the same man who tortured her and oversaw the murder of her adoptive parents and people, to boot), her twin brother hands himself over to the enemy in an attempt to redeem their father while telling her she will be the galaxy's only hope if he dies, and she gets shot in the arm. And this isn't even counting some of the other stuff she's gone through before the movies' timeline and the additional trauma she experiences afterwards. She rarely lets any of this openly affect her and continues fighting the Empire to the best of her ability.
  • Tsundere: Type B; the only main character she's not polite to is Han, whom she tends to be quite short and sarcastic with, though she sometimes shows a softer and more affectionate side towards him and harming him is a good way to get her mad.
  • Twin Telepathy: With Luke to an extent, beginning in The Empire Strikes Back. She hears him calling out to her through the Force and is able to locate him in Cloud City. In Return of the Jedi, she is able to sense that Luke wasn't on the Death Star when it blew up.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: Her mother and maternal aunt are noted to strongly resemble one another, thus Leia also looks a lot like the latter as much as the former.
  • Undying Loyalty: Even under torture, she never gives away the location of the Yavin IV Rebel base, even lying to Vader and Tarkin to do so as her own planet faces destruction. She is also very willing to have Lando killed by Chewbacca because he sold Han Solo out to Vader, and personally takes part in Solo's rescue. Her adoptive father Bail Organa doesn't hesitate to say he would "trust her with [his] life" in Rogue One.
  • Unpleasant Parent Reveal: She is pretty shaken up by the revelation that Darth Vader is her biological father.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: As the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, she, like her brother, is strong in the Force. However, unlike Luke, she never receives proper training to hone her connection.
  • Upbringing Makes the Hero: Leia's personality is comparatively closer to Anakin's than Padmé's, including some of his more negative traits such as impulsiveness, a short fuse, and vengefulness, especially if someone betrays her or messes with her loved ones. She occasionally displays a ruthless side not dissimilar to her biological father, such as being willing to wreck the livelihood of a planet to get rid of a vital resource for the Empire (and possibly because the planet's leader betrayed the Rebellion and got a lot of people killed). However, unlike Anakin, Leia had a far more stable upbringing by her loving and emotionally supportive adoptive parents. Among other things, they taught her to cherish peace, liberty, and compassion. As a result, Leia is mostly able to keep her worst impulses under control and channels her Hot Bloodedness into something positive; she is also a lot more secure in her sense of identity and doesn't feel the need to constantly seek validation from others, unlike Anakin, who struggled greatly with both these things.
  • Uptown Girl: For Han. You'd think a former street kid and smuggler would consider the Princess of Alderaan and high-ranking Rebel commander well out of his league. But Han can be very persuasive when he wants to be.
  • Vapor Wear: Her revealing metal bikini makes it clear she's not wearing anything beneath it. Carrie Fisher said of the outfit "if you stood behind me you could see straight to Florida. You'll have to ask Boba Fett about that."
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: Towards Han, which Lando and particularly Jabba find out the hard way.
  • Walking Spoiler: She's an interesting case as she's been present since the first installment. But Return of the Jedi reveals she was Luke's long lost twin sister. Downplayed since it's now in It Was His Sled territory.
  • Warrior Princess: In addition to being a Politically-Active Princess, she's also a very capable Action Girl who fights in the Rebellion.
  • Wartime Wedding: She and Han married in a small ceremony on Endor sometime between the Battle of Endor and the Battle of Jakku.
  • Watching Troy Burn: Leia gets front-row seats to the Death Star's destruction of Alderaan.
  • Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Towards Han, often complaining about his Not in This for Your Revolution attitude, his ego, his scruffiness, and the state of his ship. They soften up to each other in Return of the Jedi, where they get a Relationship Upgrade.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Downplayed. In her late teens, Leia displays an intelligence and inner fortitude not even some of her older peers possess and takes her role in the Rebel Alliance very seriously. In A New Hope, she's only nineteen but is by and large the most mature and level-headed of the heroes besides Obi-Wan.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: Her homeworld of Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star. However, in the Expanded Universe she goes to a lot of effort tracking down surviving Alderaanians and ensuring they and their culture survive, believing that Alderaan lives on through them.
    "We're not our enemy. We are Alderaan. We answer rage with wisdom. We answer fear with imagination. We answer war with hope. If one life with a single drop of Alderaanian blood survives, Alderaan survives. If one life with passion for Alderaanian creativity survives, Alderaan survives. And we are, each of us, important. And whatever happens, I bow to all of you, and to our future."
  • You Did Everything You Could: She tells Luke that there wasn't anything he could've done after Obi-Wan's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Young and in Charge: At just 19, she's both Senator of Alderaan and holds the rank of commander in the Rebel Alliance, also being entrusted with the vital mission to deliver the Death Star plans to her allies.

General Leia Organa

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/leia_organa_solo_tlj.png
"If you see our son, bring him home..."

"The problem with a reputation is that it can become a legend. Don't be deceived, Poe. I'm not a legend."

After the signing of the Galactic Concordance, Leia served as the senator of the Alderaan Sector in the New Republic for twenty-three years as a leading member of the Populists. After the revelation of her true parentage made her a political pariah, Leia left the Senate and formed the Resistance after the New Republic refused to take action against the emerging threat of the First Order. Burdened by family tragedies, Leia hopes to locate Luke so he can assist her in stopping Kylo Ren and the First Order.


    A-M 
  • The Ace: Even after decades have passed, Leia is still one tough lady. Her abilities in the Force even allow her to somehow survive a blast into outerspace in The Last Jedi, as well as fly to safety.
  • Action Politician: After the formation of the New Republic, Leia served as Senator of the Alderaan sector until 28 ABY (six years before The Force Awakens) while still being a capable Action Girl.
  • Adaptational Job Change: Downplayed. In Legends she became a member of the New Jedi Order, while in canon she never formally becomes a Jedi and is instead the leader of the Resistance bearing the rank of General.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Zigzagged. In Legends, she eventually became a full-fledged Jedi Knight and directly engaged in combat. In the new canon, she chose not to become a Jedi after receiving a vision of her future, particularly the fate of her son. However, that decision only took place on the literal last night of her training, so she was a Jedi in all but name. In fact, she even bested Luke in a training session, something inconceivable for Legends. Likewise, decades later, Leia can somehow use Force techniques that were never shown in the Skywalker Saga, as well as teach Rey to become a very powerful Jedi within a single year.
  • Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Following her death, she becomes one with the Force and is reunited with her deceased loved ones.
  • Babies Ever After: She and Han had a son, Ben Solo, after the original trilogy. He was actually born on the day the Galactic Civil War formally ended and the New Republic emerged victorious. It's subverted however, as a series of unfortunate events leads to Ben falling to the Dark Side and becoming one of the primary antagonists of the Sequel Trilogy.
  • Badass Boast:
    • When being threatened by crime lord Rinnrivin Di in Bloodline, Leia reminds him of just who she is.
    Leia: All those times you watched me kill Jabba the Hutt, and you never learned from his example. It doesn't pay to jerk me around.
    • A more subtle example occurs at the end of The Last Jedi. When Rey asks how they can possibly rebuild the Jedi and Resistance with what little they have left, Leia says with calm certainty:
    "We have everything we need."
  • Badass Longcoat: In The Last Jedi, she wears a black one with a high collar on Crait.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: Through the power of the Force, Leia not only survives being blown into outer space, but she also pulls herself back into the ship. But she still needs serious medical attention.
  • Benevolent Boss: She cares very deeply about every member of the Resistance, doing her best to ensure their safety and lending them emotional support and encouragement when things go wrong. Although she gets mad at Poe for defying orders and losing all their bombers, the worst thing she does is slap and demote him, before explaining why she's mad and trying to make him understand he can't solve all his problems by "jumping in an X-wing and blowing something up". She isn't even angry with him for starting a mutiny, as she knows he had good intentions, merely explaining what their plan is and reassuring him.
  • Big Good: Serves as this in the Sequel Trilogy as the leader of the Resistance. She's also the only Force-user in the Resistance until Rey turns up in The Force Awakens and Luke comes out of retirement in The Last Jedi.
  • Bitch Slap: Leia slaps Poe for his unauthorized maneuver in the opening fight of The Last Jedi. It took 27 takes to get right.
  • Blue Is Heroic: In her final scene in The Force Awakens, she's wearing a dark blue gown (possibly in mourning for Han). In an earlier scene, she's also shown to have put on a ring with blue stones, which she wears constantly from that point on. Leia is the Big Good who leads the fight against the First Order; blue is also sometimes associated with nobility and sadness, fitting Leia's current emotional state. It's also revealed that the lightsaber she constructed when she was training under Luke has a blue blade.  
  • Cartwright Curse: As of The Force Awakens, both of Leia's most serious relationships have ended in tragedy. Her first proper boyfriend Kier Domadi was killed in a freak accident and had also been intending to rat out the Rebellion to the Empire in a misguided attempt to protect Leia and Alderaan. Han separates from her despite their love for each other over their son's fall to the Dark Side and is then murdered by their son just when it looks like they'll reconcile.
  • Cassandra Truth: Most of the New Republic leadership doesn't think the First Order is a real threat, seeing Leia as a Windmill Crusader.
  • The Chains of Commanding: Downplayed, but in private, the Resistance's losses clearly weigh heavily on her.
  • Character Development: By the sequel trilogy, Leia has matured into a shrewd and dignified leader, displaying more caution than she did in her youth.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Downplayed; Leia takes her revenge on Carise Sindian by having her noble titles revoked. As Leia herself notes, it's a minor punishment in all practical terms... but it cuts to the very core of Carise's ideology.
  • Cool Old Lady: She's in her early fifties (she was about 23 in Return of the Jedi, making her around 53-54 in The Force Awakens) her title has changed from Princess to General, and she leads the Resistance and provides some mentoring to Rey. She may not have followed Luke down the Jedi path, but Leia can still use the Force and utilizes it to keep herself alive in the void of space. That's on top of surviving being blown out of an exploding bridge of a spaceship!
  • Cool Sword: It's revealed she had constructed her own lightsaber and Luke kept it for years after she ended her training. Luke later guides Rey to the saber on Ahch-To to aid her in her battle against Palpatine.
  • Cradle To Grave Character: Although the installments telling her life story weren't released in chronological order, the saga ultimately follows Leia from her birth in Revenge of the Sith to her death in The Rise of Skywalker (Obi-Wan Kenobi prominently features her as a child).
  • Dark Secret: The fact she is Darth Vader's daughter was kept a closely guarded secret; Leia didn't even tell her own son the truth about her parentage. Unfortunately, her concerns were well-founded, as after she is publicly outed as Vader's daughter, many people distrust her - even people she had counted as friends - and her political reputation is left in tatters. And then there's her son's eventual obsession with living up to his grandfather's legacy...
  • Deadpan Snarker: Though she's less hotheaded than she was in her youth, Leia still retains her snarkiness.
    • Upon seeing her for the first time in years, Han remarks that she changed her hair, to which she drily replies "Same jacket".
    • During a small argument with (who else?) Han, he says he's only trying to help, prompting her to snap "When did that ever help? And don't say the Death Star!"
    • Upon being reunited with her twin brother for the first time in years, what's the first thing she says to him? "I know what you're going to tell me. I changed my hair."
    • As the Resistance survivors are preparing the flee the Rebel base on Crait, they all look to Leia to lead them. She plays along, pretending to look behind her, then says "What are you  looking at me for? Follow him!" ("him" referring to Poe).
  • Death by Adaptation: In the Legends continuity, Leia was still alive several decades after the Galactic Civil War ended, being last seen alive in 45 ABY. In The Rise of Skywalker, she dies in 35 ABY, a full decade prior, after her efforts in trying to communicate with Kylo Ren drains up all of her energy.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Subverted on Crait; when it appears that The Cavalry is not coming, she feels resigned to her fate... Until Luke shows up, gives Leia the pep-talk that she needs and buys the Resistance enough time to escape. When Rey is left uncertain of how the Resistance can rebound after devastating losses, Leia tells her that they have everything that they need to win.
  • Determinator: Virtually nothing will stop Leia from trying to save the galaxy. Not losing her family one way or another. Not having her career ruined. Not losing almost her entire fleet. Not even being blasted into space without protection gear stops her. In the end, the only thing that finally stops her is herself as she burns her life energy up, like her brother did, to help her son come to the light.
  • Deus Exit Machina: To an extent in The Last Jedi; Played for Drama. At the end of the film's first act, she is rendered comatose after being blasted into space for a few minutes (she was able to save herself using the Force), leaving Poe and Holdo to squabble over the Resistance's leadership while Finn and Rose try to find a way to shut down the First Order's hyperspace trackers. She wakes up in the final act (partly due to Luke reaching out to her) in time to stop Poe's mutiny from mucking up their escape plan too much.
  • Disney Death: In the first act of The Last Jedi, Leia is seemingly killed by a direct blast to the control room from the First Order. Although she's sucked into space, she manages to propel herself back onto the main ship and survives, though unconscious until the final act.
  • Downtime Downgrade: She and Han officially became an item at the end of Return of the Jedi and got married between the events of the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy. However, by The Force Awakens, they are separated, their grief over their son falling to the dark side having apparently driven them apart. Leia states they both "went back to the only things they were ever good at" (she leads the Resistance, whilst he went back to smuggling). Despite this, it's obvious they still love each other, with Leia stating to Han "No matter how much we fought, I always hated to watch you leave". Leia even hints she wants them all to be a family again, urging Han to try and bring their son home. Unfortunately, Kylo murders Han, dashing any hope of him and Leia becoming an Official Couple again.
  • Dramatic Space Drifting: After the First Order attacks the Resistance, Leia's body is shown drifting among the debris in space. She is able to bring herself back to the survivors.
  • Ethereal White Dress: In The Rise of Skywalker, the last time we see Leia is as a Force Spirit, wearing her famous white dress and headcover. Essentially, a Book Ends for her outfits.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: She spends most of The Force Awakens with her hair in a simple braid, switching to more formal yet practical updos after Han dies. Supplementary material explains that these hairstyles include Alderaanian mourning braids.
  • Face Death with Dignity:
    • Even when it looks as though all hope is lost on Crait (the First Order has the Resistance cornered in the old Rebel base and none of their allies in the Outer Rim are coming to help), she shrugs and says “we fought to the end.”
    • When she uses the last of her energy to reach out to Kylo Ren, she is perfectly calm even knowing she probably won't survive, simply lying down.
  • Foil: She could be seen as one to Snoke. Leia is the leader of the Resistance, while Snoke is the leader of the First Order. They're both cunning leaders who operate more from behind the scenes rather than fighting on the front lines, are both strong in the Force, and are both desperately seeking Luke Skywalker. However, while Snoke styles himself as Supreme Leader, Leia takes the simple military rank of General. Snoke spends most of his time sitting in his throne and giving orders to people via holograms, while Leia is more actively involved, attending meetings and stationing herself either on the bridge of her starship or in mission control. Snoke is feared by his men and abuses them, while Leia is respected and looked up to by hers. Snoke dresses in gaudy clothes and makes sure everyone notices him, while Leia dresses in modest or practical clothing that doesn't make her stand out much. Snoke uses his Force powers to hurt and humiliate people, while Leia uses hers mainly to defend herself or reach out to people. Finally, in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is expected to kill Leia (his mother who still loves him), but he chooses not to out of love for her, while Snoke (his master and the one who corrupted him) believes he cannot and will not be betrayed by Kylo, only for him to turn on and kill him when he least expects it.
  • Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Leia did eventually accept her father Anakin's redemption, but it took her a long time, and she remains deeply affected by his atrocities as Darth Vader (which is understandable, considering several of those atrocities directly affected her on a very personal level). She still thinks of Bail Organa, her adoptive father, as her 'real' father and didn't even tell Ben who his biological grandfather was for much of his life.
    • When she did die, it is mentioned that she accepted her father's love for her like she never had before.
  • Four-Star Badass: She's a General by the time of The Force Awakens. Considering her position as founder and main leader of the Resistance, it's likely the equivalent of US's General of the Army, making her rank higher than other officers with the title General.
  • Generation Xerox: Like her biological father Anakin, Leia gave up being a Jedi after receiving a vision of a loved one dying in an attempt to save them, only for it to be in vain in the end. She also loses her spouse and gives her own life to save her child. The difference is that she remains opposed to the dark side even as this all happens.
  • The Good Chancellor: She would no doubt have become this if she was elected "First Senator" of the New Republic in Bloodline. Sadly, she is forced to withdraw her application and subsequently quits politics altogether after being outed as Darth Vader's daughter.
  • Good Is Not Soft: Leia is the Big Good of the galaxy now, but you still don't want to mess with her, even if you're on her side. She slaps Poe for his reckless stunt with the Dreadnought and just minutes after waking up from her coma, she puts a stop to Poe’s mutiny by stunning him without a word and then holding the rest of the crew at gunpoint. She's also delivered some truly scathing Reason You Suck Speeches in her time and dishes out a particularly humiliating punishment for Lady Carise after she crosses her.
  • Happily Married: Zig-Zagged. She and Han were married for over two decades. While they loved each other, their relationship was far from perfect due to Han's restlessness, their various duties and work commitments, and personality clashes. When their son turned to the Dark Side, the strain was apparently too much and they became estranged. However, it's telling that despite this they remained married for around six years afterward and it's obvious when they are reunited that they're still in love. Leia urges Han to try and bring their son home, wanting them both back with her, and she is devastated when he dies.
  • Her Heart Will Go On: After Han dies near the end of The Force Awakens. Though she's obviously heartbroken, she keeps fighting the good fight and puts up a largely stoic demeanour for the Resistance, only openly grieving in private.
  • The Hero Dies: One of the main heroes of the Skywalker Saga, she dies in The Rise of Skywalker, becoming one with the Force after using up her energy to bring Kylo Ren/Ben Solo back to the Light Side of the Force.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: She willingly uses up all her energy reaching out to Kylo with the Force, in an attempt to stop him and Rey from killing each other. It affects both of them profoundly; Rey can't bring herself to kill Kylo and heals a wound she'd dealt him, while it also triggers the start of Kylo's Heel–Face Turn.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Many people distrust her since the fact that she is Darth Vader's daughter became public knowledge. Others view her as a Windmill Crusader, continuing to fight battles that ended three decades ago.
  • Hope Springs Eternal: She is a believer in this and encourages it in others.
    Holdo: When I served under Leia, she told me that hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it...
    Poe: ...You'll never make it through the night.
  • Horrible Judge of Character:
    • The novelization implies, and Pablo Hidalgo later confirmed to be true, that she knows Snoke on a personal level and allowed him to get close to her family. It took her a while to realize his deep evil.
    • She is also proved tragically wrong when she believed Han would be able to get through to their son. On the other hand, The Rise of Skywalker suggests that in the end, she was right - Han did get through to Ben, even if it was just in memory.
  • I Am Not My Father: She ends up saying this when she is outed as Darth Vader's kid in Bloodline.
  • I Have No Son!: Initially averted; she is still convinced there is light in Kylo Ren. But near the end of The Last Jedi, she confesses to Luke that she believes her son is gone for good. However, Luke encourages her not to give up on him just yet, saying "no one's ever really gone".
  • Informed Attribute: In The Rise of Skywalker, her leadership abilities and strategic brilliance are talked up by the heroes, but not directly shown due to the limitations of the footage that they had available; Finn says that Poe is "for damn sure" no Leia, and even Poe himself admits to Leia's corpse that he'll never be able to live up to her as a general. However, these qualities are not seen by the audience. Leia is unable to win popular support for the Resistance cause, which Lando does very quickly.note  In The Last Jedi, after Leia recovers from her injuries and resumes direct command, the Resistance is soundly defeated and nearly wiped out. Of course, the fact that the Resistance was able to recover by The Rise of Skywalker to be a small but functional militia compared to almost everyone fitting on the Millennium Falcon indicates that she still had tricks up her sleeve.
    • To a lesser extent, one would think that with all of Leia's amazing abilities in the Force (surviving a huge explosion and flying through space, teaching advanced Force techniques, calling out to others from several light years), the First Order would be more wary of her. Yet, at no point do any them fear the damage she could cause.
  • The Leader: Of the Resistance. Fits all types except for Headstrong, mostly being Charismatic and Levelheaded.
  • Legendary in the Sequel: Leia is apparently regarded as a Living Legend by the time of the sequel trilogy (not quite at the same level as her brother, who has a mythical status in some parts, but still quite renown). However, as she states in the page quote, she doesn't necessarily agree with this view. And after she was outed as Darth Vader's daughter and tried to warn people of the First Order threat, she became well-known for all the wrong reasons.
  • Life's Work Ruined: Leia has spent virtually her entire life trying to restore peace and democracy to the galaxy. By Bloodline, however, she's started to realize that the New Republic is falling apart due to infighting; within several years, the Republic is left decimated when the First Order destroys the Hosnian system, taking out their fleet and the Senate. The First Order then quickly conquers the galaxy with apparently zero resistance. Leia being Leia, she takes it in stride and continues fighting via the Resistance. When Leia dies, the situation for the galaxy is quite bleak, since Palpatine is still in business with the largest fleet ever assembled, but she gave her life to be the fulcrum in her son's Heel–Face Turn, paving the way for the Resistance to succeed even though she didn't live to see it (on the mortal plane, anyway).
  • Love Redeems: Her Heroic Sacrifice out of love for her son is the catalyst that begins Kylo Ren's return to the Light Side of the Force.
  • The Maiden Name Debate: Leia kept her adoptive surname of Organa even after she married Han Solo (although their son went by Solo until his Face–Heel Turn). In Legends, she was known as Leia Organa Solo following her marriage, though this doesn't seem to be the case in Canon.
  • Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Heavily downplayed, as she certainly does not deny her son's fall to the dark side, but Leia is adamant that Snoke was primarily to blame and that Kylo is not beyond redemption. By the end of The Last Jedi, she seems to be losing this hope (considering that Kylo has, among other things, murdered his own dad and taken Snoke's place as Supreme Leader), though Luke tries to encourage her otherwise. It turns out her initial belief was right, as Kylo makes a Heel–Face Turn in The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Mangst: An uncommon female example. No matter how terrible her life gets, Leia never seems to break down and cry about it. Even when she senses Han's death – at the hands of their own son, no less – she simply sits in a corner, looking quietly distraught. After the evacuation of D'Qar, she's only shown brooding over everything in private. And when she senses Luke's death, she only pauses for a moment to let it sink in before stoically carrying on.
  • Mentor Archetype: She's a downplayed one to Poe (it's made more explicit in The Last Jedi), trying to teach him how to be a good leader. She also becomes Rey's Jedi teacher following Luke's death.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: She has served as Poe's mentor for many years, grooming him to one day take command from her, and later served as Rey's teacher in the Force by the time of The Rise of Skywalker. She passes away by the third act of that film.
  • Morality Pet: A downplayed one to Kylo Ren. He can't bring himself to kill her in The Last Jedi and clearly still cares for her despite his fixation on 'destroying the past' (the novelization even indicates he would've used the Force to stop his wingmen's missiles from reaching her ship, if he hadn’t been caught off-guard first). However, this doesn't stop him from trying to destroy everything and everyone else she cares about. In the end, however, her Heroic Sacrifice to bring Ben back to the Light Side of the Force affects him deeply and does, alongside Han and Rey's love for him, does redeem him.
  • A Mother to Her Men: If her interactions with Poe and Holdo are anything to go by.
  • My Greatest Failure: She regards sending her son Ben away to train with Luke as this in The Last Jedi, stating she believes that was the moment she "lost him".
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling:
    • During The Force Awakens, she senses two monumental events. The first is the destruction of the Hosnian System by Starkiller Base, and the second is Han being killed by Kylo Ren.
    • In The Last Jedi it is learned that both she and Luke retained their connection through the Force, and it is inferred she knew that Luke had projected himself to Crait. She also was able to feel her brother become one with the Force.

    N-Y 
  • Near-Death Experience: In The Last Jedi, she is caught in the blast when First Order TIE-fighters blow up the bridge of her ship. Using the Force on pure instinct, Leia not only manages to survive being almost blown up, but also survives several minutes in the vacuum of space until she can propel herself back to survivors for medical treatment.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In Bloodline we find out that she turned down the Governorship of Birren, a title that her adoptive father was sure she would gladly accept. This leads to her political rivals finding out about her family's dark secret and ending her attempts to reform the New Republic and prevent the next war.
    • Her plea to Han to bring their son back ends up getting him killed. Although to be fair, even if she didn't request it, he still might have ended up trying.
  • No Body Left Behind: An unusual example; when Leia dies in The Rise of Skywalker her body is initially visible, but after her son dies and his body vanishes, Leia's body fades as well, both of them becoming one with the Force. Her death is similar to her father's in this regard, given that he didn't vanish until around the time that his armor was being cremated.
  • Not Quite Flight: When she "flew" toward the Raddus, what she was actually doing was using the Force to pull herself back toward the ship, something that likely couldn't have happened if she was on a planet with actual gravity. Then again, we did see Rey float in Rise of Skywalker.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: When Leia is filled with impotent rage at being unable to save Casterfo from an almost certain death sentence, she realises this was quite possibly how Anakin Skywalker felt and why he turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader in order to save those he cared about.
  • Oh, Crap!: She has a subdued moment of this in The Last Jedi, when the First Order somehow manages to follow the Resistance even after they jumped to hyperspace.
    Leia: They've tracked us through lightspeed.
    Leia: Yes. And they've done it.
  • Older and Wiser: In terms of her temperament, the years have caused her to mellow out. While she does slap Poe at one point, it's only after an unauthorized maneuver he took that resulted in the loss of many Resistance soldiers. Aside from that, she is much more approachable and warmer to others than she was when she was younger. While she also stunned Poe when he attempted a mutiny against Holdo, he otherwise forgave him and his conspirators as she knew they meant well.
  • Only Sane Woman: Of all the officials of the New Republic, she was the only one who wanted to continue investigating the Amaxine warriors' secret backers and believed that Casterfo was innocent. However, with her heritage revealed, she had no power to do so, which led to the creation of the Resistance. When the First Order revealed itself, she could only convince a few senators to give the Resistance support.
  • Parental Substitute:
    • Towards Rey, though she doesn't latch onto her as quickly as she did to Han. Leia comforts Rey after Han’s death and speaks to her in a motherly way at the end of The Last Jedi, encouragingly telling her they have everything they need to rebuild the Resistance and the Jedi. She becomes a mentor to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker in place of Luke.
    • It's implied she's this to Poe Dameron. Poe clearly has a lot of respect for Leia and she is also very fond of him, even when he's being a Military Maverick. Poe's mother Shara Bey died when he was young and served alongside Leia in the Rebel Alliance, so she may well remind Poe of his mother.
  • Parents as People: It's obvious Leia loves her son (even after his Face–Heel Turn), but it's implied that she could be unintentionally neglectful towards him, putting her work with the New Republic first and eventually packing him off to live with his uncle, leaving him feeling isolated and vulnerable to Snoke's manipulations. Leia herself acknowledges her failures as a parent, regarding her decision to send Ben away as the moment she "lost him". Her decision to not tell Ben about his relation to Darth Vader is also implied to have been a bad idea in hindsight; Leia only wanted to protect her son, but he subsequently finds out his family had been concealing this from him for twenty-three years, further breaking his trust in them.
  • Psychic Link:
    • Has one with her son, Kylo Ren, to an extent; in The Last Jedi they are able to sense each other during Kylo's assault on the Resistance fleet. The novelizations indicate that this connection was formed while she was still pregnant, as she could sense her unborn child through the Force (as well as sense a dark entity, implied to be Snoke, preying upon him). This connection even appears to persist after her death; it's not until Ben dies too that Leia becomes one with the Force.
    • She also retains her connection with Luke; after Luke reconnects with the Force, she wakes up from her coma when he reaches out to her and senses that he felt peaceful when he died.
  • Purple Is Powerful: General Leia wears a purple jacket for most of her scenes in Resistance and The Force Awakens, and wears a purple dress in The Rise of Skywalker. Even better? Purple is the colour of Royalty. When she needs to plan and fuck up all the First Order's shit, she puts on the clothes that make her royal and taps into all that royal knowledge she's been raised on.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: In The Force Awakens; particularly demonstrated when Finn tells her about Rey's capture. She says she will do "everything in my power" to help save her, even though Rey is of little to no tactical importance note , but first, he needs to tell her everything he knows about Starkiller Base. She's a bit more obstructive to the heroes in The Last Jedi, especially to Poe, but that's mostly because she's trying to protect them. In The Rise of Skywalker she has reservations about Rey, Poe, and Finn's plan to find Exegol, but allows them to go on the mission when they persuade her it's their best chance of stopping the Emperor and First Order.
  • Red Baron: By the time of Bloodline, her killing of Jabba the Hutt has earned her the title of "Huttslayer".
  • Refused the Call: Leia is very aware of and connected to the Force, and for a time did train to be a Jedi, but she never finished her training. After having a vision of her son's fate if she did, she eventually decided to focus on building the New Republic and raising a family with Han. Now that Luke is in hiding, Leia is too busy with the Resistance to find him herself.
  • Royal Blood: Downplayed from the original trilogy. Although Alderaan was destroyed, Leia is still apparently considered royalty by galactic society (her lineage particularly becomes an important plot point in Bloodline). She usually goes by her rank of 'General' rather than 'Princess' these days, though some people still occasionally refer to her by her royal title. In the case of General Hux, it seems to be used as more of an insult, but for people like Lor San Tekka (and, on a meta level, the fans) it seems to be a sign of respect and affection.
    Poe Dameron: The General's been after this for a long time.
    Lor San Tekka: Oh, the General? To me, she is royalty.
    Poe Dameron: Well, she certainly is that.
  • Sacrificial Lion: She's the first major character to die in The Rise of Skywalker, which has a profound effect on many characters. Rey goes into a Heroic BSoD and tries exiling herself until Luke talks her out of it, Poe ends up having to take command of the Resistance as per Leia's last orders, and it ends up pushing her son Ben to finally make a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Secret Secret-Keeper: Luke reveals in Rise of Skywalker that Leia figured out Rey's origins very quickly but chose not to say anything because as Darth Vader's daughter, Leia knew all too well the burden that Rey would be given when she found out that she is Palpatine's granddaughter.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: Many people are revolted by the discovery that she is Darth Vader's daughter and she is practically turned into a pariah overnight, forcing her to withdraw her application to become First Senator of the New Republic (similar to the position of Supreme Chancellor). This is in spite of the fact Leia has spent almost her entire life trying to bring down the Empire and has also suffered greatly at Vader's hands.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: While her screen time in The Rise of Skywalker is short due to tragic real-life circumstances, it counts — she's shown overseeing the Jedi training of Rey, helps assemble the Resistance for the climactic mission that Poe and Finn will lead, and convinces her son to change his ways before passing on.
  • Sole Survivor: Of the Resistance High Command aboard the Raddus, the rest having been killed when the bridge took a direct hit from the First Order (Leia herself only narrowly survived due to using the Force).
  • So Proud of You: She and Luke's force ghost appear to Rey at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, smiling proudly at everything she has accomplished in their family's name.
  • Spider-Sense:
    • On the day of the Senate building bombing in Bloodline, Leia has a sense of unease and danger all day. The warning note on her placemat at the banquet table was all she needed to act on that sense and evacuate the building.
    • In The Last Jedi, moments before the First Order fire missiles at the bridge of the Raddus she senses what's about to happen, bracing herself before they make impact.
    • In The Rise of Skywalker she senses Rey and Kylo duelling on Kef Bir, which prompts her to sacrifice herself reaching out to Kylo with the Force in a final attempt to save both her son and her apprentice.
  • Supporting Leader: In The Force Awakens, where she doesn't actually show up in person until after the halfway mark; she has a somewhat more prominent role in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Take Up My Sword: As Luke told her in Return of the Jedi, she had to carry their cause forward in the event that he failed. She manages to assemble the Resistance to fight the First Order, and help train the first of the new Jedi after he helped teach Rey.
  • Team Mom: To the heroes of the sequel trilogy - all of whom are decades younger than her - reassuring and emotionally supporting them when things look bleak and mentoring some of them (namely Poe)... though this doesn't stop her from slapping Poe across the face when his reckless actions result in heavy losses. By extension, she appears to be this to the rest of the Resistance too; many of them are shaken and uneasy when she’s taken out of commission in The Last Jedi and everyone immediately looks to her to lead them when she wakes up.
  • Tempting Fate: Her argument to Poe in The Last Jedi that "there are things that you cannot solve by jumping into an X-Wing and blowing something up" is ironically offset later on in the film's plot.
  • There Is Another: It turns out that Luke being the "last Jedi" is a bit of a misnomer with The Rise of Skywalker revealing that Leia nearly completed her Jedi training, only quitting on the very last day for the sake of her son's safety. She is a Jedi in all but name, and this conveniently gives Rey a new teacher right after Luke's death.
  • Together in Death: At the end of The Rise of Skywalker her Force spirit is seen standing with her twin brother Luke, both of them watching over Rey. Presumably, she was reunited with her son Ben in death, too.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: While she was never really a mean person and was in fact usually very kind, if stubborn and standoffish, she seems a lot more patient and forgiving in the sequel trilogy.
  • Tragic Keepsake:
    • Bloodline reveals she kept a lock of hair from her first boyfriend, who was killed decades earlier during the events of Leia: Princess of Alderaan.
    • Poe Dameron reveals she inherited several gowns that belonged to her late birth mother Padmé Amidala. Leia hoped that if she ever had a granddaughter, she might like to wear them. This is made doubly tragic given what we know becomes of Leia's son, Ben.
    • At the end of The Force Awakens, she begins wearing a distinctive ring after Han's death, leading some people to speculate it was a gift from him, possibly even her wedding ring (as she appears to be wearing it on her ring finger).
  • Widow's Weeds: After Han’s death, she begins wearing dark gowns, presumably as a subtle sign of mourning.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: As Luke informs her, Leia knew Rey was a Palpatine and trained her anyways because she knew Rey's innate goodness and nobility was stronger than any blood ties she might have to the Sith.
    Leia: [while embracing her] Never be afraid of who you are, Rey.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: It's revealed that Leia abandoned her Jedi training with Luke after she foresaw it would end in her son's death. However, Ben ended up falling to the Dark Side and later dying anyway (albeit after making a Heel–Face Turn).
  • Younger Than They Look: She was 53 in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and 54 in The Rise of Skywalker, but looked to be in her sixties.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: The novelization for The Last Jedi indicates that her injuries from being sucked out into the vacuum of space are much more serious than she initially lets on. This is later implied to be the cause of her death in The Rise of Skywalker, as Maz indicates that she's been using the Force to keep herself alive long enough either to see the defeat of the First Order or to break through to her son, and the latter act took the last of her strength. The novelization for that film outright confirms that Leia's been slowly dying and that she hears Luke trying to prepare her to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, which he helps her with after her passing.
  • You're Not My Father:
    • Unlike Luke, Leia is unwilling to forgive Anakin for his actions as Vader and refuses to acknowledge him as her father; she specifically says that to her, her father was named Bail Organa. That said, a part of her did come to accept, most likely due to her love for her brother, that she was a Skywalker, and her Force Ghost proudly smiles at Rey, when she chooses to carry on her family's name.
    • In contrast, while she loved Queen Breha Organa and would always think of her as her mother, she was more apt to accept Padmé Amidala as a parent than Anakin due to the memories and feeling because of her connection to her mother through the Force, knowing Padmé to have been a kind and noble woman, and a hero of the former Republic. She graciously accepts her mother's beautiful gowns as a keepsake at one point, before they were lost to her.

"We have everything we need."

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