(Absolving) The Guilt of Leia Organa
I’ve seen a lot of criticism of how Han and Leia have been handled in The Force Awakens/The Last Jedi, especially once it was revealed that they had been absentee parents and that had contributed to Ben turning into Kylo Ren.
Enter Senator Leia Organa, daughter of Bail and Breha Organa, sister of Luke Skywalker, Princess of Alderaan, General of the Resistance. Her adoptive father was one of the people who helped found the rebellion against the Empire and whose death helped convince many worlds to join it. Meanwhile her biological father was the Empire's key enforcer, and would give chunks of Alderaan to the rulers of planets who weren't showing their loyalty as a reminder of what would happen.
Can you imagine the pressure Leia felt to help fix the galaxy? To not only live up to Bail's example, but to right the wrongs that Vader caused? Can you imagine the obligation Leia felt to help the people who lived on planets that the Empire had abused? The guilt? Despite no one knowing her true parentage, she would have still felt an immense duty to those people, even if all she could do was sit down and listen to them. She was raised by Bail and Breha with the knowledge she would be expected to spend her life serving people, and there were times when she was growing up where they put their duty to their people ahead of her. She would have remembered that, and expected that Ben would understand some day, just as she had grown to understand.
How many times was Leia stopped in the street while she was out with Ben by someone who wanted to talk to her? How many times was she invited to a dinner or a tea or a reception where children wouldn't be welcome or Ben would have been bored out of his mind? How many times did Leia patiently talk to these people and accept the invitations because she didn't want to disappoint the memory of Bail and Breha? How many times did she accept because of her guilt over what Vader had done?
But Ben couldn't understand, because they didn't explain to him that Vader was his grandfather, that his mother was trying to assuage her guilt, and atone for his sins. From his perspective, she was too busy for him, she had other priorities, other things that were more important that he was.
Now she has to live with the guilt that her son resents her for being sent away. The guilt that sending him to Luke didn't work. The guilt that Han was not able to bring him home. The guilt that Han is never coming home. The guilt that he is complicit in an untold number of deaths. The guilt that people she asked to fight with her have died for her.
Leia is proof that you can try to do the right things, try to be the best person you can be, try to apply the same lessons to your child that your parents applied to you, and still have everything go upside-down and sideways. It is easy to look at Kylo and say “yeah, Leia and Han were terrible parents” but the fact that Leia leads the Resistance and feels guilty about how Kylo turned out tells us all we need to know.
Bad parents don’t think they’re bad parents. They don’t feel guilty about how their kid(s) turned out. They don’t try to do something about it. Leia did, and that is what ultimately absolves her.
