rhube:

Imagine the ‘New Hope’ is Princess Leia, not her farm boy twin. Imagine the tale starting with how the princess becomes a youthful senator, but when her idealism hits the corruption of the Empire, it doesn’t crumble, but is hardened into joining the rebellion, learning to fight: diplomat and princess by day, guerrilla fighter and leader of the resistance by night! She’s like Batman, but with less ego - she doesn’t need to grandstand, she just gets the job done.

Then, just as she has managed to obtain secret plans for the empire’s new weapon, her ship is captured. Knowing she cannot escape, Leia sneaks off to hide the plans aboard an old R2 unit. An innocuous looking vessel, but one she knows to have been trusted with some unusually sensitive missions in the past. Once the plans are secured, she gives herself up to act as a distraction.

Realising she won’t break, her captors threaten her beloved home world in order to make her give up her comrades. Unshaken in such terrible straights, she uses her quick wits to construct a plausible lie that will buy her world time. But the evil of her enemies is unfathomable - they destroy her world anyway.

Still reeling from the obliteration of her people and her home, the solitude of Leia’s cell is disturbed by a hopelessly naive-looking young man who says he’s here to rescue her. The whole plan seems ridiculously poorly thought through, but when he tells her that he’s here with the general to whom she had sent her plans she decides to risk trusting him. Seizing control of the situation, she rescues her rescuers and they escape (over the slightly-spoilt whining of the more handsome of the two men, who seems to object to a little sewage in the name of saving his life).

Blasting their way through storm troopers, she leads them to escape and gets them all back to the real rebel base in the nick of time so that the plans can be analysed and the weakness of the weapon (whose ferocious power she has now seen for herself) can be destroyed.

Her abilities as a shrewd tactician are put to the test as she becomes instrumental in planning the attack that will destroy the Death Star. Some instinct in her (maybe stirrings of the Force?) and a sense of indebtedness leads her to recommend the younger of the two men who made such a botch of rescuing her for one of the attack squads. It’s the right choice, and thanks to the plans she saved and her skillful planning, the day is saved.

A huge blow has been struck against the Empire, but the war has just begun…