The Sequel Trilogy needed a Male Princess

Note to readers, I still haven't seen Rise of Skywalker and am trying to keep what I've heard about it out of this post.  Imagine this as something written a year or two ago as I was thinking about this already that far back.  Then we can discuss in the comments if that film vindicates or fixes my concerns.

Dismantling traditional patriarchal gender roles requires more then just having women do what previously only men could, it also means allowing men to do and be interested in what previously only women were allowed to.  In the context of Star Wars that means allowing a woman to play the role of Luke Skywalker is only half the battle, you also need to allow a dude to be Princess Leia.

Now I know some people are inclined to argue Poe is the Leia of the new cast, his arc seems to be about being prepared to be the future leader.  But he's only being trained to be a military leader.

And that issue is precipitated by The Force Awakens making Leia merely a General now.  A lot of people who claim they understand the message of Revolutionary Girl Utena seem to come away thinking the words "Prince" and "Princess" are the problem.  To me making Leia only a General is making her less then she was before.  If you wanted to remove the feudalistic implications of such terms then call her Senator like her mother was, or better yet this long later make her the Chancellor of the New Republic.  But someone made the decision to just get rid of the New Republic, destroy everything the OT heroes fought for without even allowing us to visit it.

That's the thing, while Disney keeps throwing little bones to us Prequel fans, which sometimes I myself fall for, the fact that this Trilogy was chiefly designed to pander to the loud minority who hated the Prequels is shown by it's approach to politics.  It reacted to people's negative reaction to Prequel Trilogy politics by seeking to be even less political then the Original Trilogy was.  But guess what, the old EU didn't shy away from exploring the politics of the post ROTJ Galaxy, and the same hypocrites who hated on the Prequels loved all that stuff.

People keep saying The Last Jedi embraced the nuances the Prequels added to Star Wars because Luke is talking about how the Jedi failed.  But the idea that the Jedi code needed fixing was not that difficult to figure out from the OT alone, remember Luke saved the day by going against what his mentors wanted him to do.  On the one hand Yoda was teaching him the Jedi shouldn't use the force aggressively, but on the other they thought the way Luke was going to be their savior was by assassinating the Emperor.

The backstory Disney created for it's Sequel Trilogy is going against the messaging of the Prequels by saying that the New Republic's mistake was being too passive, that they demilitarized when they shouldn't have.  It's vindicating the narrative of those who say we can't just pull out of the middle east because then ISIS will take over or Turkey will massacre the Kurds.  As well as those in Japan who want to re-militarize.  I'm all for the New Republic having to deal with the same flaws as the old, but this is not that.

In AOTC Padme personally despised Count Dooku from the start (they must have met between episodes), but even though she doesn't like the Separatist movement and the Capitalists funding it her goal was always to vote against creating an Army no matter what.  She didn't know Palpatine was her real enemy till it was too late, but she still understood what the Jedi didn't.  Morally and Ethically Padme is the only character who's right in Episodes II and III, or at least not as wrong as everyone else.

The Last Jedi meanwhile is trying to teach us that tactically speaking there is more to winning a war then just killing the bad guys, which is nice and all, but still exists in a narrative that is contrived to not allow being Anti-War to be the right option no matter how much it wags it's finger at the profiteers who make money off selling to both sides.  I'm sorry Peter Coffin but the Prequels are far more Anti-Capitalist then the Canto Bight diversion, perhaps neither is truly Anti-Capitalist but the Prequels are a more meaningful critique of the Militarily Industrial Complex.

But let's get back to the gender issue.  Because Poe is only being set up as a successor to General Leia his function in the plot narratively is more the other half of the Skywalkers' in the first two trilogies, and maybe some Han, being an Ace Fighter Pilot and sometimes a military commander.  Because the ST lacks anyone of any Gender to be a Padme or a Leia or a Mon Mothma, or a Duchess Satine one wonders what the point of beating the First Order even is if they have no seed of what they'll build after?  They've made no attempt to actually argue agaisnt having a Galactic Government to begin with either.  I could argue The Phantom Menace makes that argument since Amidala wound up saving her planet with what she already had, which I think is the reason big Government EU supporting liberals don't like it.

Leia in the original trilogy is never really seen doing the political side of her job, but I can still imagine her doing all the same Senate stuff that her mother did.  I can't imagine Poe or anyone else we've met in these movies having the slightest clue how to set up a Third (hopefully more Communist this time) Republic.

Now you can argue that Leia and Padme were transgressive enough to begin with and that their wardrobe is the only thing that would make it unusual for a male actor to play them on stage.  But in the context of that being the most prominent male role among the protagonists while it's a woman who's having the Laser Sword fights with the evil space wizards is still way more feminist then having Finn and Poe go on the same conventionally male story arcs we've seen before while Rey does nothing but fail to flip the main antagonist and then move some rocks.

And The Clone Wars cartoon, as much as I'm more critical of it then most people, actually provided us a potential model for what to do since it essentially created a male Padme to be Ashoka's love interest (though I'm of course more interested in shipping her with Barris, I'm hoping both show up in season 2 of The Mandalorian) named Lux Bonteri.

However a useful comparison outside of Star Wars would be the current fall 2019 seasonal Anime High School Prodigies have it easy even in Another World, where a teenage boy who somehow became Prime Minister leads the party, but both actual action heroes of the group are women, a Samurai and a Ninja.




I want in this post jump break section to mention how in a way the Leia/Padme archetype is the most unique one in Star Wars.  I don't know if there's much basis in pre Star Wars fantasy and mythological precedent for the Princess in Distress being an actual leader.  And I think the popularity of Star Wars in Japan is why we have Princess Zelda, Peach Toadstool, Hilda and Ashe in video games and the various Padme like characters of the Mecha genre.  I'm actually annoyed how often Gundam keeps defaulting to Padme wannabees for it's female leads instead of just giving us a female Gundam pilot.  There is speculation that the Turn A protagonist could be interpreted as Non-Binary, I have still seen little of that one.  And so the ST deciding to just throw that role out entirely is a pretty major disregard for the legacy of Star Wars.