Consider: Leia gets deified.
She just mysteriously knows things, and whenever youāre around, even when sheās screaming at you, she makes you feel like you can fight anything.
She has a kind of presence like Darth Vaderās but in the opposite sense. Vaderās like a force of demonic force of nature, but Leia is more like a barely restrained mother wolf, primal, protective, and carrying a legacy of something old.
Defectors getting grilled by Leia for the first time freeze up and have to keep from shitting a brick because she might be a head shorter than you and weigh less than an Artoo unit, but when she talks, you listen, like Vader himself came down from the heaven to growl at your incompetence.
Eventually, the alliance starts treating Leia as almost as a mythic figure in it of herself. But not like Vaderās death cult.
The stormtroopers start realizing this when they first see these insignias here and there, a hastily scrawled āLeia Organa blesses usā in aurabesh on the inside of a crashed X Wing. A decorative woman with a blaster painstakingly painted onto what what used to be a Nebulon B.
But they almost never see Lukeās insigniaās anywhere in these piles of rubble. Or any other form of deity.
Soon, the stormtroopers realize that all of Leiaās insignias are on the dead. And they scoff.
āOur deity keeps us alive, and blesses our fighting skills! Why pray to something that doesnāt bring you glory?ā
But the insignias keep showing up. And in fact, it looks like more of them are showing up every day. Still showing up on dead frigates and destroyed X Wings.
Until, one day, a particularly naive and superstitious stormtrooper and a particularly hardy prisoner of war were stuck in a prison block together.
āOut of curiosity, why do you paint that woman on your ship?ā
The prisoner of war laughed, and laughed long.
āTo get you to shoot at us, boy!ā
It wasnāt until that particular prisoner of war died in a breakout saving thirty fellow rebels that the stormtrooper took his meaning, and word spread like wildfire.
The stormtrooper corps, so superstitious, and so wary, began to realize why they see her image so much.
The ones who invoked her name werenāt unlucky, they just chose to die more often than the rest.
When theyāre fighting in the trenches, and they have them cornered, the rebel who pulls a grenade on himself to slow them down has āLeia Organaā stitched into the inside of his jacket.
When theyāre chasing a supply convoy, the Nebulons that run headfirst into Star Destroyers to buy time for the rest have Leiaās image sprayed onto their hulls.
When the rebels are bullied in the empireās many prisons, itās Leiaās name that rebels whisper prayers to before standing in front of the lead guard and saying āItās my fault, take me insteadā.
And still the stormtrooper corps and the Empire scoffs.
āSo, this woman is a goddess, is she? But you still die. How will that win a war?ā
Butā¦deep in the ranks of the stormtrooper corps. Among the innumerable privates who will always be forgotten, some begin scribbling āLeia Organaā on the insides of helmets, and chest pieces.
Eventually, the rebels begin to win.
And at some point, the rebels begin to realize that some of the stormtroopers have begun to scribble āLeia Organaā onto the inside of their helmets.
Theyāre confused, and wary. Itās not written anywhere people can see it, so itās not like theyāre defectors. The writing is usually in some easily removable ink, something that can be wiped into obscurity with the quickest of finger rubs. So itās not any permanent political statement. And itās very clearly Leiaās name on it. Usually with a second name right beside it.
Once they know what to look for, the rebels begin to see it scribbled more and more. Where once it was only one or two stormtroopers a battle, the farther they push against the Empire, they begin finding whole squads with āLeia Organaā scribbled in the creases and margins of their armor, always followed by a completely different name, or set of names.
Itās not until a particularly brave and naive Rebel guarding Imperial POWās asks them directly that they get an answer.
He cautiously holds out a helmet, asking the assembled prisoners why his generalās name is scrawled on the inside. In a shaky and uncertain voice, he speaks to the confused group.
āIt says āLeia Organa, please saveāā and he lists off the number written beside it. CT-and some several digit numerical code.
In response, a hardened stormtrooper, with scars gained years before anyone in the group had been born, breaks into tears.
The rebel asks if he knew who this belonged to, and the man nodded.
He tells the rebel that he begged his brother not to do it. They were the last two clones either of them had ever seen. For all they knew, they were the last clones in the entire galaxy.
They had talked before the battle, he had talked about how they were going to bring victory to the Empire together, one last time, and how nothing else mattered to them.
But then, his brother went quiet, and just responded:
āYou are the only victory I ever cared about.ā
And he scribbled āLeia Organa, please saveā¦ā on the inside of his helmet, with his brotherās ID number.
The rebel tells him his brother fought bravely, and the clone thanked him through his tears while the rest of his squad consoles him.
From then on, the quiet, the superstitious, and the grieving would comb the battlefield. Checking the inside of helmets and the edges of pauldrons looking for those telltale aurabesh symbols.
And they would go to the nearest POW camp, holding cell, or brig, reading off āLeia Organa, Please Let Me Saveā¦ā
And in every camp, in every cell block, there was always at least one person.
Not always a stormtrooper. Sometimes a technician, sometimes a pilot, occasionally an officer. Some rebels would swear on their life theyād seen it happen to an Imperial Admiral.
But always, there was at least one person who cried when the names were read out.
Some were lovers, some were siblings, some were parents, some were squad mates, and some were friends. The rebels didnāt always find out who it was, they were at war after all, and the rebels were their enemy.
Butā¦something about the tears often made people want to talk.
Because nobody in the Empire invokes Leia Organaās name to win a campaign.
Nobody invokes Leia Organaās name to survive a battle.
Nobody invokes Leia Organaās name to bring glory, or victory, in any military sense.
No. In the stormtrooper corps, you invoke Leia Organaās name for the only kind of victories that really matter.
Sending her prayers even a rebel goddess would heed.
You only invoke Leia Organaās name when you have someone you care about more than life itself.
And you only invoke her name if youāre willing to pay the price for her protection.
And the part the rebels found most surprising, through the hundreds and hundreds of names they read out, was that more often than not, that person those invokers paid to protect only found out how much they cared, when a rebel read their own name out in front of a cell block.
Vader was a god of battle.
Luke was a god of cunning.
Leia was the goddess of sacrifice.
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