Wince.

He - leaves. With her brother. Without her.

She screams.

That gets the two people to try shushing and soothing her! Does not stop her extremely upset brother from being taken away.

She will cry for a very long time.

She can still feel her brother - he doesn't get muffled like her mother did. Doesn't seem to be actually hurt, even though he's confused and distressed and clumsily reaching out for her across the galaxy.

It's good that he doesn't erupt into agonydespairsuffering as soon as they're far apart; that was set as a precedent.

She reaches back for him. 

She gets hungry pretty quickly, because she is a baby. Starts crying louder and poking the nearby people with her hungerfeelings. Keeps reaching for her brother as she does this.

She's fed, and taken care of physically - and the new people can't reach back to her, can't really understand her pokes, but they cuddle her and sing to her. They try their best, and, elsewhere, someone is trying their best with her brother.

She appreciates the cuddling and singing a lot. She quiets down, but continues to be pretty distressed. She wants her brother to come back, she doesn't understand why he's not coming back. There will be more crying about this.

But cuddling and singing can soothe her to sleep.

Nobody returns her brother, not even as her ears and eyes work better, not even as she grows, not even as she learns that the two people who've adopted her call her Leia. Her brother stops spontaneously reaching out for her, eventually, the instinct fading. Her mother remains muffled and cold behind a wall of glass.

She grows up pretty happily, despite being constantly aware of her family members being very far away. She cried constantly as an infant, but she's a quiet toddler. Her adopted parents are very nice! They sing pretty songs and give good hugs and take care of her; she loves them just like she loves her family-who-is-far-away.

When she's three years old, one night before bed she asks her here-parents where her brother is.

"You don't have a brother, sweetie," is her mother's reply.

But she obviously does? Her parents should be able to feel her brother too, she thinks; he's very bright.

"Mmmyeah I do. Can feel him far away." She reaches for him a little, just to be sure that the sense is still there.

He's there!

Her mother frowns and glances at her father.

"Then you're a very special girl, and you should keep him a very special secret," her father says.

She'll accept this.

Can she have a bedtime story?

Yes!

This one is about a very brave Jedi who fights against slavery, even when people around her tells her that nothing bad is happening.

This is a very good story!!!

(Leia vaguely remembers Star Wars from back before-she-was-Leia, though not by name because she is three and it is difficult for her to remember the specific names of things a lifetime ago.

But she remembers that there were Jedi stories. She... doesn't remember Jedi stories being the only bedtime stories? But maybe her here-parents just happen to like them a lot more than other fairy tales, which is fine because Leia likes them a lot too.)

She continues to really like these stories as she gets older.

Her parents are happy to indulge her, though her mother does also tell her bedtime stories about Alderaan's history, and her father sometimes tells stories about brave non-Jedi who did the right thing even when it was hard.

Then, when she's five years old, it's time for formal history lessons! These are really heavily mixed in with language lessons and etiquette lessons and politics lessons. History starts with broader galactic history, including occasionally the role of the Jedi in the galaxy.

What.

Is the role of the Jedi in history not just 'to be stories that people make up and tell their kids.' 

Some people think the Jedi are a myth because even at their height they were very rare, but they did used to exist, and are very important to galactic history!

Oh.

Okay, so she's in Star Wars. (She remembers the name, now.) That makes - honestly a lot of sense, given what life is like here, but it also doesn't make sense because why does Star Wars exist. Does Hansel and Gretel have a world where it actually happened, or is that too simple of a story? What about all the other stories. How does this work.

She doesn't even know that much about Star Wars. 

She spends a few moments boggling over this and being very distracted from her history lesson, which she does her best to disguise, before she remembers that she is Princess Leia Organa.

That makes even less sense. She was somehow a character with a movie about her and an actress who played her; that's very confusing. But it makes more sense because being separated from her brother, being adopted, the magical way she's always felt things, that fits.

She knows her brother's name, now. That's nice.

Also her father is Darth Vader??? And her mother is - hm. She can't remember anything about Luke and Leia's mom except that she was played by Natalie Portman? And also Leia is pretty sure that the mom died, which doesn't make sense at all because her mother is definitely alive.

Possibly the Star Wars movies were just wrong about everything. (Leia really wants to be able to go tell Destian that, he would be so excited about all of this.) She will stop being distracted and try to pay good attention to her history lessons to figure out other places where Star Wars was wrong.

That's honestly a bit hard to figure out if she doesn't have the extended universe memorized, especially for a five year old being taught a curriculum that walks a careful line between technically relaying Imperial propaganda and actually endorsing it. The recent Republic was corrupt and the Jedi tried to take it over and they were stopped and the Emperor restructed the government for the """good""" of """everyone,""" also leading the Empire into victory in the Clone Wars.

Still, future lessons get into things more. Like the Clone Wars starting when the Separatists attacked Coruscant with an army of clones, which was repelled before they could break through to the Senate by Anakin Skywalker with her own army of clones. Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi, but was well beloved and probably not a traitor given she died a hero's death in the Clone Wars.

Oh. Anakin Skywalker being a girl does make a lot more sense, because Leia's mother is alive. Alive and probably Darth Vader, which is... upsetting.

But Darth Vader gets redeemed. She's pretty sure that is the whole point of Star Wars. Her mother isn't really evil.

Was the Emperor part of the corrupt recent Republic too? Because that doesn't seem like a good system of restructuring the government to not be corrupt.

The Emperor had been Supreme Chancellor, but was hindered in fixing the corruption while the Republic's political structure still existed.

If he had the power to restructure the entire government, shouldn't he have had the power to tell the people doing corruption to stop?

He needed the Senate to vote to convert the Republic into the Empire, first.