Princess Leia Organa is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists in the Star Wars franchise, portrayed in films by Carrie Fisher. Introduced in the original Star Wars film in 1977, Leia is princess of the planet Alderaan, a member of the Imperial Senate and an agent of the Rebel Alliance. She thwarts the sinister Sith Lord Darth Vader and helps bring about the destruction of the Empire's cataclysmic superweapon, the Death Star. In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Leia commands a Rebel base and evades Vader as she falls in love with the smuggler Han Solo. In Return of the Jedi (1983), Leia helps in the operation to rescue Han from the crime lord Jabba the Hutt and is revealed to be Vader's daughter and the twin sister of Luke Skywalker.

The prequel film Revenge of the Sith (2005) establishes that the twins' mother is Senator (and former queen) Padmé Amidala of Naboo, who dies after childbirth, while their father is Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, who falls to the dark side of the Force and becomes the Sith lord Darth Vader. Leia is adopted by Senator Bail and Queen Breha Organa of Alderaan. In the sequel trilogy, Leia is a founder and General of the Resistance against the First Order. She and Han have a son named Ben Solo, who adopted the name Kylo Ren after turning to the dark side of the Force and became the lead enforcer for the First Order. In The Rise of Skywalker (2019), it is revealed that Leia was briefly trained as a Jedi by her brother sometime after Return of the Jedi. In the film, Leia is the mentor of Rey, the last remaining Jedi. Leia dies towards the end of the film but returns in the epilogue scene as a Force ghost alongside Luke.

One of the more popular Star Wars characters, Leia has been called a 1980s icon, a feminist hero and model for other adventure heroines. She has appeared in many derivative works and merchandising, including the now-noncanonical Star Wars Expanded Universe, and has been referenced or parodied in several TV shows and films. Her 'cinnamon bun' hairstyle from Star Wars (1977) and metal bikini from Return of the Jedi have become cultural icons. Fisher was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress twice for A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. Fisher later received two Saturn Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, the first for The Force Awakens and the second being a posthumous nomination for The Last Jedi.

Leia was created by Star Wars creator George Lucas, who in 1999 explained his early development of the main characters:

The first [version] talked about a princess and an old general. The second version involved a father, his son, and his daughter; the daughter was the heroine of the film. Now the daughter has become Luke, Mark Hamill's character. There was also the story of two brothers where I transformed one of them into a sister. The older brother was imprisoned, and the young sister had to rescue him and bring him back to their dad.

In the rough draft of Star Wars, Leia is the spoiled teenage daughter of King Kayos and Queen Breha of Aquilae, with two brothers, Biggs and Windy; Biggs returned to the fourth draft as a childhood friend of Luke. Leia was at one point "the daughter of Owen Lars and his wife Beru ... Luke's cousin–together they visit the grave of his mother, who perished with his father on a planet destroyed by the Death Star." A later story synopsis establishes Leia as "Leia Antilles", the daughter of Bail Antilles from the peaceful world of Organa Major. In the fourth draft it was established that "Leia Organa" came instead from Alderaan.

Fisher was 19 when she was cast as Princess Leia, with actresses including Amy Irving, Cindy Williams and Jodie Foster also up for the role. In 2014, InkTank reported that the extended list of "more than two dozen actresses" who had auditioned for Leia included Glenn Close, Farrah Fawcett, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Sigourney Weaver, Cybill Shepherd, Jane Seymour, Anjelica Huston, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, and Terri Nunn. Asked about Streep in 2015, Fisher said, "I've never heard that one. But Jodie Foster was up for it... that one I knew the most. Amy Irving and Jodie. And I got it."

On Leia's 'cinnamon bun' hairstyle, George Lucas stated that "In the 1977 film, I was working very hard to create something different that wasn't fashion, so I went with a kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look. The buns are basically from turn-of-the-century Mexico." Lucas later noted that Leia's mother, Padmé Amidala, wears a similar-looking Hopi hairstyle in Revenge of the Sith. A photo depicting famous Mexican revolutionary Clara de la Rocha wearing a similar hairstyle exists in the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art archives. In 2015, Mental Floss cited research suggesting that while female Mexican revolutionaries did not have such elaborate hairstyles, young marriageable Hopi women did, and their "squash blossom whorls" superficially resemble Leia's hair buns. Leia's hairstyle may have also been inspired by that of Queen Fria in the 1939 Flash Gordon comic strip "The Ice Kingdom of Mongo", and scientist Barnes Wallis' wife Molly (played by Ursula Jeans) in the 1955 war film The Dam Busters. Comparisons have also been made to the 4th-century-BC Iberian sculpture Lady of Elche, as well as the 1920s "earphones" hairstyle.

Composer John Williams created a musical leitmotif for Leia which recurs throughout the Star Wars saga. "Princess Leia's Theme" was recorded as a concert suite (4:18 length) for the score of the 1977 film.

In his early story development for The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas intended for Luke to have a twin sister—not Leia—who would be the focus of another episode. Following the production of Empire, Lucas was burnt out and decided not to make his planned sequel trilogy. Needing to explain the identity of the other potential Jedi mentioned by Yoda, Lucas decided that Leia would be revealed as Luke's twin.

In the second draft of the Return of the Jedi screenplay, Obi-Wan tells Luke he has a twin sister. She and their mother were "sent to the protection of friends in a distant system. The mother died shortly thereafter, and Luke's sister was adopted by Ben's friends, the governor of Alderaan and his wife." Fisher explained in 1983: "Leia's real father left her mother when she was pregnant, so her mother married this King Organa. I was adopted and grew up set apart from other people because I was a princess."

Anthony Breznican of Entertainment Weekly describes Leia as a "diplomat, spy, warrior, undercover agent". Mark Edlitz calls her "a smart, feisty, brave diplomat and warrior" in The Huffington Post.

Fisher told Rolling Stone in 1983:

There are a lot of people who don't like my character in these movies; they think I'm some kind of space bitch. She has no friends, no family; her planet was blown up in seconds ... so all she has is a cause. From the first film [Star Wars], she was just a soldier, front line and center. The only way they knew to make the character strong was to make her angry. In Return of the Jedi, she gets to be more feminine, more supportive, more affectionate.

She said in 2014:

I would rather have played Han Solo. When I first read the script I thought that's the part to be, always wry and sardonic. He's always that. I feel like a lot of the time Leia's either worried or pissed or, thank God, sort of snarky. But I'm much more worried and pissed than Han Solo ever was, and those aren't fun things to play ... I had a lot of fun killing Jabba the Hutt. They asked me on the day if I wanted to have a stunt double kill Jabba. No! That's the best time I ever had as an actor. And the only reason to go into acting is if you can kill a giant monster.

Next onto our swap:

Post THREE (3) or more pictures or gifs to each of your THREE (3) partner's profiles with the theme "Princess Leia" or "Star Wars". The pictures that you choose may be the SAME OR DIFFERENT between all of your partners. Please choose pictures that you think THEY will enjoy!

Only people with well filled out profiles may participate in this swap. I will be checking the night before partners get assigned. If you get 3 pictures from your partner on "Princess Leia" or "Star Wars" you have to rate them a 5. The heart on the rating is for if you like what they sent.

To leave a photo on someone's profile use this code ! [ ] ( Put image here ) With NO spaces & paste the picture's link between the curved parenthesis.

Practice on your own profile first to be sure it looks good because you can easily delete there.

Pick images that are size 300 wide or smaller to be sure they fit. I go to Google images to get my pictures.

Hover over images to see their size because there will be some larger sizes there too. If you really like something click on it and go to the words SEARCH BY IMAGE and click on that. THEN go to the word SMALL and see if there is one 300 size. There are other tricks in the group thread; AN EASY way to get a small PIC from a BIG one;-)

You can find moving pictures at http://giphy.com/

You can also find gifs at google, just type in topic gif 300 x 300.

Please write the TITLE OF THE SWAP ON YOUR PROFILE DECO MESSAGE too! This makes it easier for partners that are in a lot of these swaps to rate it.

Any problems, feel free to contact me.

I want to thank @anrtist for allowing me to borrow SOME of her wording.

Requirements:

1. A well filled out profile. I will check the night before partners get assigned.

2. You need to login at least two days prior to sign-in date.

3. Your dashboard must be up to date.