Fanfic / Of Queens, Knights, and Pawns

"I went to sleep on the worst day of my life and woke to find myself in the past on the second worst day of my life. As experiences go, I don't recommend it."

— Leia Organa, AO3 summary

Of Queens, Knights, and Pawns is a Star Wars fanfic by chancercraz.

The night after her husband's death, General Leia Organa goes to bed, exhausted. She wakes up on the shuttle to the first Death Star. She quickly realizes that this is her chance to change the past, to save Alderaan and so many others. She just has to play her cards right.

It gets complicated.

Scenes From the Middle Game shows events and scenes from the main series from other points of view.

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Of Queens, Knights, and Pawns provides examples of:

• Ascended Extra: Bail and Breha Organa, since Alderaan is saved, play a much larger role.
• Broken Ace:
  • Leia is a hypercompetent general, a more than competent combat pilot, a very skilled markswoman, a brilliant spy, and an exceptionally powerful Force User, despite her next to non-existent training. She is also constantly teetering on the verge of a complete mental collapse, chronically secretive, prone to working herself to death, and even with over 30 years of knowledge that Vader is her father, she has still not come to terms with it. And that's not even getting into the PTSD.
  • Obi-Wan, meanwhile, is one of the greatest Jedi Masters of his age, the only person ever to defeat Darth Vader in single combat, wise, charming, and a devious politician - Leia thinks with delight that people must have cried when they heard he was coming to negotiate something. He's also a textbook Shell-Shocked Veteran, with Rex matter-of-factly listing off his symptoms, and Leia, no stranger to precarious sanity herself, warns Ahsoka that if they push him too far about Anakin/Vader, he might go completely insane.
• Broken Pedestal: Learning the truth about his father's fate breaks Luke's faith in Obi-Wan, Leia, and the Organas. It takes time before he starts to forgive them for keeping it from him.
• Brutal Honesty: Vader rarely bothers lying and has all the tact of a battering ram.
• The Cameo: Leia sees Commander Orreillos arguing with an orange astromech while working in inventory.
• Character Development: Over time, Leia relearns to rely on others and to open up to them.
• Control Freak: Leia's Fatal Flaw, as pointed out repeatedly, is that she's extremely reluctant to reveal anything beyond what she has to, partly for tactical reasons and partly for personal ones. In the AU where both TFA Luke and Han come back with her, they manage to attenuate this and argue her down. Unfortunately, they're just about the only ones capable of doing so - though Luke and Han start being able to do this in the main narrative after she gets closer to both of them.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Bail does not approve of Han at all. It's only after Cymoon 1 that he even starts to respect him.
  • In Chapter 27 he has come to accept Leia's choice, and even makes a bet with his wife on when the two will become intimate. He also has the chance to utterly troll Han, who is generally terrified of the ex-senator.
• The Dreaded: Darth Vader, full stop. At one point Alliance High Command is trying to come up with a plan to use Vader's obsession of Leia to try and lure him into a trap where they can kill him, only for Leia and Obi-Wan to shoot it down on the basis he would just slaughter whoever they sent to kill him.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Han gets very drunk after Leia tells him what Ben did. While Bail is initially furious and disappointed at this, Leia explains the context, and considers it entirely appropriate.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Lampshaded. Leia notes that as bad a person Vader is, he loves his mother.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: A startling realization that Leia comes to as she uncovers the specifics of Vader's past (beyond the broad strokes she was initially aware of) and learns more about the people who knew him before his turn to the Dark Side. It's something she couldn't quite understand, and it's something even a couple of Vader's former loved ones and companions (namely, Obi-Wan and Rex) couldn't quite accept at first; they still love Anakin, and they have to accept that that extends to Vader—because no matter how metaphorically it's said that they're different people, Anakin and Vader are the one and same. They mourn the person he was, because they still care for the person he eventually became, though it meant they were mixed with other complicated emotions.
  • Leia also comes to accept that the way these people feel for Vader is very similar to the way she still loves her son.
• Everyone Has Standards: Hondo. By his own admission, he's not a good man, but he wouldn't betray a Jedi to the Empire.
  Hondo: But there are things even I wouldn't do.
  Derlin: Because you are so honorable?
  Hondo: Because I have to live with myself.
• Family Eye Resemblance: When Vader realizes Leia's his daughter, he notices her eyes are shaped like his mother's.
• Forgiveness: Leia eventually forgives Obi-Wan for his lies when she comes to understand why he lied.
  • Could possibly be leading up to one with Vader, as well, as Leia slowly undoes and alters her perceptions of Vader, being slowly but more willing to humanize him—though it's still unknown how far the author is going to take this. Also, what with Qui-Gon's conversation with Leia in the Chapter 28, where he mentions that Forgiveness isn't about deserving so much as it is hope, in the context of discussing Vader.
  • Word of God implies that this might be the case in a response to a comment under their "non-canon" AU one-shot (an AU to this AU, mind) where Luke is also sent back alongside Leia. According to the author, while the idea of Luke being sent back with Leia and making up for the lost time he had with his father is a fun idea (as he obviously had a more positive emotional connection with Vader), it's for that reason that they didn't make it into the main story. The author thinks that if Luke was included then it would only mean that Vader would be able to refocus his attention from Leia (who does not want anything to do with him) to Luke (who is very enthusiastic in getting to bond with him), and would mostly leave Leia be because of it. Instead, the author is intentionally writing the main story in a way that would force Vader and Leia together instead of staying out of each other's way, implying that they plan to build a bond or at least stronger connection between them in the future. How they worded it is somewhere along the lines of not wanting Luke to act as a buffer or to get between them because it would make it (even more) difficult for Leia to reach the point they eventually want her to reach in the main story—what that specifically means in regards to her relationship with Vader, the readers will have to wait and see.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Vader has the fact that Palpatine worked on him from the age of 9, while Obi-Wan was wildly out of his depth as both Jedi Master and Parental Substitute, and the Jedi as a while were unable to treat him according to his needs. It also gives him strong parallels to his grandson, Ben, which he points out right from the start (albeit in the more general context of them falling and being similar). Leia stubbornly refuses to acknowledge this for most of the story as it means humanising Vader.
  • Luke and Leia both struggle with having Vader as a father for different reasons. Luke, because his father was a slave who now makes slaves (among other things), and Leia because she wants to deny all connection to him... and because she's rather more like him than she wants to admit.
• Genius Bruiser: While Vader gives the impression to most of being an implacable engine of destruction, Leia tells Luke that when it comes to everything but people and emotions (and politics), he puts things together frighteningly fast. This is sufficient that she flat-out refuses to use Hoth as a base on the simple grounds that Vader might have got a look at the night sky in their shared dreams and could use that to figure out a star map.
• Good Parents: Bail and Breha are a source of comfort and good advice to Leia. Their main conflict is because she hasn't had them around for a long time. She does take exception though to how they glossed over the serious issues of the Old Republic, and the darker parts of the Clone Wars. While understandable while she was a child, it meant post-Endor she failed to see the warning signs with New Republic, or the threat of the First Order soon enough.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: When confronting Darth Vader, Leia decides to be as honest possible as Vader would be able to tell if she was lying. Subverted in that the conversation quickly falls apart due to Poor Communication Kills and long-standing resentment.
• Honorary Uncle: Leia comes to regard Rex as an uncle.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Leia refuses to discuss what nearly happened between her and Luke in the previous timeline if she's not drunk. When she does get tipsy and bring it, and separately Vader, up, Obi-Wan decides that he also needs to get absolutely hammered if he's going to have this conversation. The results are both hilarious and heartbreaking.
• Internal Reveal: Much of the drama is built off of who knows what about whom.
• The Lost Lenore: Han to Leia. More specifically, The Force Awakens Han, complicating everything to with the younger Han she has before her.
• Lovable Rogue:
  • Han, naturally, past and present - as Leia puts it, he's a scoundrel, but he's her scoundrel.
  • Hondo Ohnaka has aged into this - while he's naturally pulling some of his double-crossing antics, he takes things seriously, and as in Rebels, he has a genuine admiration, even reverence, for the Jedi. He outright erupts at the suggestion that he might sell out Jedi, especially old 'friends' of his, like Ahsoka and, indeed, Obi-Wan, who he is genuinely worried for when he hears that he's off world on a mission. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, is less than enthused at seeing Hondo again.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left ambiguous if the Han Leia encounters while dreaming is some kind of Force Ghost or just a figment of her imagination.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Leia is highly judgmental of people outside of her immediate circle, and this is pointed out on more than one occasion - including by Darth Vader, of all people.
  • Ironically, it's a trait she shares with Vader himself, whose circle of concern is pretty much entirely related to those he cares for, and as far as he's concerned, the rest of the galaxy can go hang.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Vader's narration veers between horrifying and tragic.
• No Social Skills: Vader has no idea how to act when not giving or receiving orders. Leia is both infuriated and baffled by this, complaining that whatever you think about either of them, neither Palpatine nor Obi-Wan lacks for social skills.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Leia fears how similar she is to Anakin. Qui-Gon also sees unfortunate similarities between them, although fortunately when he makes that comment she thinks he is comparing her to Bail. Obi-Wan outright has a Wrong-Name Outburst in a particularly emotional argument... but when tipsy, explains that she reminds him, as Luke does, of the great man that Anakin could and should have been.
• Old Master: Obi-Wan is in his late fifties, and one of the greatest Jedi Masters of his age. He's also not quite as decrepit as Leia initially thinks he is based on her glimpse of his fight with Vader on the Death Star, as he proves when he absolutely demolishes Grakkus the Hutt without breaking a sweat. As she later realises, on the Death Star, Vader was being uncharacteristically tentative as well, and deduces that both of them wanted to die - Obi-Wan because he couldn't bear to hurt Anakin again, and Vader because only death can free him, and Obi-Wan is the only person to have beaten him in a straight no-holds barred fight.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Han is very bad about this. He seems unable to make a good first impression. He also routinely does this within Bail and Breha's hearing.
• Papa Wolf: This attitude is one of the very few things Bail and Vader agree on (which is why Han is terrified of both of them). In Vader's case, as in canon, he takes it to truly homicidal extents and starts plotting to take down the Emperor simply to protect Leia.
• Pet the Dog: Vader's compassion is reserved more or less entirely for Leia, but even before he figures out her identity, when she asks about his professional opinion regarding her fallen son, instead of mocking her or dragging it out, he gives her a brutally but not cruelly honest (and, at least so far as he knows, accurate) assessment that Ben is gone and what is left would not show her an instant of mercy.
• Poor Communication Kills: Unspoken assumptions, misunderstandings, and secrets, are part and parcel for the Star Wars universe.
• Saying Too Much: Leia goes to tell Han she's from the future, she winds up also revealing her parentage and everything to do with Ben.
• Spirit Advisor: Qui-Gon Jinn, who manages to be even more oblique and infuriating than Obi-Wan was in the original trilogy. Leia in particular finds him particularly exasperating, though she does solicit his professional opinion. Obi-Wan, for his part, is amused when she's worried for a moment that he might take her insulting his beloved former Master personally, and explains that a) people used to call him much worse, b) he's thought much the same.
• The Spook: Vader to the Alliance.
  Draven: "The man has had nothing, and I do mean nothing, that has interested him other than doing the Emperor's bidding and hunting down Jedi. For two decades he’s been an impenetrable fortress as far as motivation goes. He can't be reasoned with, bribed, or frightened into abandoning his master."
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Inevitably, Hondo Ohnaka, who takes about zero seconds to make his impression, amusing Leia and fascinating Luke - who he chides for misunderstanding the Jedi of the old order.
• Stalker without a Crush: Vader plants a spy in the Alliance to gain information on Leia.
• Tempting Fate: Yet another of Han's bad habits.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Luke stops his Jedi training after learning Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader. He eventually resumes training, but for different reasons than before.
• That Man Is Dead:
  • Obi-Wan considers Anakin dead. This is denial, since he cannot cope with what Anakin's become, though it runs so deep that in each of the A Us, being forced to acknowledge that they are one and the same leads the legendarily composed Obi-Wan Kenobi into a full-on breakdown.
  • Vader informs Leia that it would be best of her to think of her son as this, before he figures out her connection to him, pointing out that if her son has indeed Fallen, then her son is gone and what remains won't show her a shred of mercy.
• Too Clever by Half: While Leia is very smart, and wiser than she once was, she doesn’t understand as much as she thinks she does, particularly when it comes to her biological parents.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • When Rex shows up, he wastes no times calling Obi-Wan out for Faking the Dead again. He does cool off significantly once he hears about Luke (and sees Leia, twigging to the connection immediately), and understands why. He is considerably less pleased when he finds out the truth about Vader, however.
  • Luke is furious at Leia, Obi-Wan, and the Organas when he learns Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker. Not just for the secret itself, but for keeping something he has a right to know from him for such a long time.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: During an argument, Obi-Wan accidentally calls Leia "Anakin". She’s horrified to learn she reminds him so much of her father. His later response when she brings herself to bring it up is horror, and then to explain that she, and Luke, remind him of the great man he could have been.

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