The Courtship of Princess Leia

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The Courtship of Princess Leia written by noted science-fiction/fantasy author Dave Wolverton is several storylines in one: Leia is engaged to Isolder so that she can get a home planet for Alderaan expatriates. Han wins a planet in a sabacc game. Luke is looking for information on the Jedi. All of this takes them to the Hapes Cluster and to Dathomir.

While it may not be the most celebrated novel of the Expanded Universe, it introduced a lot of prominent material to it. Most prominently it introduced the Hapes Consortium (an independent, isolated, cluster of systems), Dathomir (a planet of force using witches), and New Alderaan. It was also the first novel to feature the future X Wing Series antagonist Warlord Zsinj, although he portrayed here as substantially different from what fans of that series may be used to.

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Tropes used in The Courtship of Princess Leia include:

• Absurdly High Stakes Game - Han wins the Planet-Of-The-Novel in a Sabacc game.
• All Amazons Want Hercules - Teneniel wanting Luke, who just happens to be the most powerful Jedi ever
• Cerebus Retcon / Historical Villain Upgrade - The X Wing Series did this to Zsinj, here presented as a rather one-dimensional Card-Carrying Villain.
• Combined Energy Attack - Inverted. The Combined Energy Attack heals Luke, rather than destroys him.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus - a "lost tribe" of Jedi in a book by a Mormon.
• Double Standard Rape (Female on Male) - Lampshaded by Luke.
• Fandom Nod - "King Han Solo"? Clearly a reference to Spaceballs
• Fan Nickname: Isolder IS Space Fabio!
• Fix Fic - The second part of the X Wing Series does this for Zsinj and Melvar and the ambiguity of whether the Iron Fist is destroyed or not. It also contains plenty of straightforward continuity nods to Leia's mission to the Hapans.
  • It also, perhaps accidentally, leaves room for Zsinj to have survived. In Courtship, Zsinj is on his bridge talking with Solo over the comm when Solo launches torpedos into the Iron Fist's bridge windows. In the X Wing Series, we find out that Zsinj liked to hang out in a complete duplicate of his main bridge with all control screens being echoed there so that he could watch over his subordinates shoulders without their knowledge. He also uses it as a stage for acting out his decadent leader persona for visitors without impairing the proper crew from running the ship. If Zsinj was in this bridge, he wasn't where the torpedoes hit and may have escaped. No such luck for Melvar though, who we see die on the planet surface.
  • Wizards of the Coast would create a proper reason for the Hapes' inexplicable higher tech by stating that several Confederate scientist and engineers fled to it after the Clone Wars.
• Foregone Conclusion - Han marries Leia in the end.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar - The B plot might as well be subtitled The Erotic Adventures of Luke Skywalker, as he gets to be seduced by a queen who tries to kill him and enslaved by an amazon.
• Harmless Villain - Played ridiculously straight with Zsinj
  • That's what he wants you to think...
• Kill Sat - The superweapon of the week is a cloaking device that surrounds the planet.
• Lady Land- Dathomir-Women run the tribes and the men are essentially slaves
  • The Hapes Consortium applies as well, with women at the top of the social structure.
• Lost Tribe - the Dathomiri
• Meaningful Name - Luke levitates both himself and the ship to a graceful landing, suggesting where the name "Skywalker" comes from.
• Nice to the Waiter: Luke again. Isolder doesn't like it.

Isolder: "You shouldn’t do this! The universe doesn’t work this way!" Luke: "What do you mean?" Isolder: "You—you’re treating those beasts as equals. You show my mother, the Ta’a Chume of the Hapes empire, the same degree of cordiality as you give a droid!" Luke: "This droid, these beasts, all have a similar measure of the Force within them. If I sense the Force, how can I not respect them, just as I respect Ta’a Chume?"

• Romance Novel - the Han/Leia plot
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale - Han wins a Planet in a pot of cards worth 1.6 Billion Credits. Luke's speeder got 2,000 credits at a used car lot (for a maximum of 1 credit to $10 US equivalent). An inhabitable planet is worth $16 billion? Even for one under imperial interdiction, that means Bill Gates could purchase 3 planets! The estimated price of Earth is 10 QUADRILLION. This is also ignoring the fact that Han started the novel with an amount of money that is unspecified, but certainly no more than the cost of his Millenium Falcon, so assuming he leveraged that at a starting bid, he went from owning 100k-1M credits to nearly 2B credits. What luck to increase your net worth by 3-10 orders of magnitude in one night.
  • Possible subversion if it was done on purpose, for several reasons: 1) the Sabacc player is a strapped-for-cash noble-ish owner, 2) said owner most likely knows that the planet is not only in a sector under Zsinj's control but also inhabited by pesky (and more-powerful-than-they-look) natives, hence driving down the value of the planet - after all, what good is owning a planet if you can't come in and collect taxes or colonize it?, 3) this takes place in a "galaxy far, far away" wherein inhabitable planets aren't exactly scarce, and 4) this particular game of Sabacc is quite clearly pegged as being the equivalent of getting a Royal Flush at the high-rollers table of the MGM Grand. So all in all, it could go against the trope and be more realistic. Granted, Dathomir is described as particularly inhabitable, but it is also remote (location, location, location) and mostly unknown.
• We Are as Mayflies - Mother Rell
• What the Hell, Hero? - The titular "courtship" refers to Han Solo shooting Leia with a brainwashing gun and kidnapping her. He's called on it at first, but the whole thing is all but forgotten by the end of the book, probably because it's so very creepy.
• Wicked Stepmother - Ta'a Chume
• Wicked Witch - Gethzerion
• You Fail Biology Forever - the origins of the Hapes Consortium - and how! The Hapes Consortium was originally a large band of Space Pirates that pillaged nearby shipping lanes, taking the most beautiful females they found on the ships back to there bases, and over time, having only beautiful women giving birth led to the entire Hapan race being extremely beautiful. Put very simply, just because your parents are beautiful, there's no guarantee that you won't have a face for radio.
  • It was never stated that every child born was amazingly attractive. However, those who were not physically appealing didn't do well on Hapes. Survival of the fittest came into play. Family embarrassments were likely stashed away. Hence why Hapans seemed radiant.
  • The Dathomiri probably qualify as well. When you're a placental mammal who only has one or two offspring at a time, polyandry is less stable than polygyny.