Hey, I saw your Bail post and am wondering if you e read Leia: Princess of Alderaan? Lots of good Bail content!!
I have not, no, and frankly I don’t have any intent of reading it, at least right now. While I know there’s a lot of (purportedly) good Bail (and Breha!) content in it, I have some...issues with that book.
1) It was written by Claudia Gray. I cannot stand that woman’s writing. At all. Point blank. Full stop. She drives me up a fucking wall. She doesn’t understand characterization, she doesn’t understand theme (even when it’s STARING HER IN THE FACE), she doesn’t understand how not to make a good, righteous, and noble woman into an asshole (looking at you, older Leia in Bloodline). Because of that I kind of am boycotting all of her Star Wars books.
2) Not gonna lie, I absolutely despise what canon has done to Breha. Like, it makes her out to kind of be an idiot for one thing. For another thing...why did you have to take away one of the only literary/media representations of a woman who had had multiple miscarriages (for an unspecified reason but could have been one of many, none of which is talked about in media), and then adopted because she couldn’t conceive for natural reasons? Why did you have to take that away, Disney? Why? Why did you have to make her infertility a byproduct of an accident? And I have seen absolutely zero discussion and commentary surrounding her pulmonodes, so I’m not even inclined to give it the grace of saying “Well, they were just making her disabled in another way”. I’ve literally never seen someone call her disabled. So even if she is disabled--because I’m abled, and so I don’t get to say what is or isn’t disability--I guess my point is that it seems it was done in a way that makes it incredibly difficult for people to connect with her in any way, shape, or form, because her disability is so far removed from anything that can happen to people in this world. Which if I’m wrong, I’m wrong; I’m just judging from what I’ve seen and heard in the fandom (or not seen and heard, rather).
3) Some of the spoilers I’ve heard about how young Leia is handled irk me to no end. :) But then, that’s not a surprise, given how Claudia Gray handled adult Leia in Bloodline :)
Those are the main reasons I don’t want to read it. Will I eventually? Probably! There’s so little Good Bail and Breha content in this world that I’ll probably buckle and cave eventually. But for the time being, I have decided against it, and that’s why.
But thank you for asking <3 (And I mean that genuinely, lol, I’m very touched that you thought to ask!)
