Pavane for a Dead Princess
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| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Pavane for a Dead Princess |
| Author(s): | Ellen Randolph |
| Date(s): | 1986, 1988 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | gen |
| Fandom: | Star Wars |
| External Links: | |
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Pavane for a Dead Princess is a Star Wars story by Ellen Randolph.
It was printed in Guardian #7 and reprinted in Sanctuary.
Author's Comments
From the preface to the zine Sanctuary:
"Pavane" had several questions behind it, and while attempting to answer them I ran into the vexatious problem of Luke and Leia. The novelization of JEDI tells us that Anakin didn't know his wife was pregnant before he left (left for where, and why? You see how these things get started!), but it is to be assumed that His Dark Lordship can count. What I tried to explain is how Vader can conclude that Luke is his son while remaining ignorant that Leia is his daughter — in this version, anyway, where Leia's birth was a matter of public record, as the births of royal children usually are. Given a medical technology that could reconstruct Vader out of what appears to have been a pile of spare parts, it's not unlikely that the concocted scenarios would be accepted. There was one for public consumption (Leia was premature and spent time in bacta to bring her to full growth and strength, which would explain why a child nominally only a few months old would appear to be rather older). There was another story for Vader if he ever got suspicious (the one Owen outlines to him, that Luke was a singleton taken early from his mother, who was forced into fertility again to bear Prince Bail's child, Leia). Besides all that, it was the only damned explanation I could come up with.
Reactions and Reviews
[zine] Ellen Randolph has more nerve than any other writer in the zine. There is no way I would let Marty Siegrist illustrate anything I wrote, for fear no one would bother with the words. But, that's what she's done in "Pavane for a Dead Princess", and brought it off. This is the best Birth & Fall story I've read so far. The plot and character relationships make sense (not easy given the facts we have to work with), and there is some excellent character development as Anakin moves down the path toward Vader. The story also offers an interesting reason for the separation of the twins. [1]