Star Wars: Leia, Princess of Alderaan

Star Wars: Leia, Princess of Alderaan is a Star Wars novel by Claudia Gray, published by Disney Lucasfilm Press on September 1, 2017, as part of the Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi publishing initiative. It chronicles the teen years of Princess Leia before the events of the 1977 film Star Wars, which introduced the character.

Plot

Sixteen-year-old Princess Leia Organa has her Day of Demand, where she demands her right to the crown, in line with Alderaan's traditions. She tells them of the three challenges she needs to do, the Challenge of the Body, in which she will climb one of Alderaan's famous mountains, Appenza Peak, the Challenge of the Mind, in which she is a senator-in-training on Coruscant, and the Challenge of the Heart, in which she will go to planets that need humanitarian aid and give the equipment and food they need. After the ceremony, she finds that her parents, Queen Breha and Viceroy Bail Organa, are too consumed by their duties to pay her much attention. As a politician-in-training in the Apprentice Legislature, Leia organizes her first humanitarian mission to the planet Wobani, a world whose people have been impoverished by the abusive governing of Emperor Palpatine's Galactic Empire. She outwits the Imperial supervisor and finds a legal way to liberate a group of refugees from the planet. After departing, she witnesses the aftermath of an attack on Calderos Station, an Imperial waypoint. Leia takes a pathfinding class with other junior legislators, who include Amilyn Holdo of Gatalenta, and the other Alderaanian apprentice legislator, Kier Domadi. Leia realizes that the Empire has covered up the attack, and her research into possible perpetrators leads to her discovery of a hidden base on Crait, and Bail's revelation that he and Breha are part of a secret cabal working against the interests of the Empire.