The Courtship of Princess Leia

• 1. Introduction

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  The Courtship of Princess Leia arrived in 1994 as one of the more audacious entries in the Star Wars expanded universe. Its author, American writer Dave Wolverton, took on what might have seemed like a straightforward assignment: explain how Han Solo and Princess Leia finally got married. What he produced instead was a story involving planetary abduction, a witch-ruled world on the edge of freezing to death, and a rogue warlord who controlled nearly a third of the galaxy. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list in both hardcover and paperback, continuing a streak that had begun with Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire in 1991. How does a smuggler-turned-general win the hand of a head of state? What planet does Han win in a card game? And what is waiting in orbit around that planet when he and Leia arrive?

• 2. Warlord at the Edge

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  Warlord Zsinj was not the Emperor, and not Darth Vader, but he may have been more dangerous to the fledgling New Republic than either. After the Battle of Endor destroyed both the Emperor and Darth Vader along with much of the Imperial fleet, a power vacuum formed. Zsinj stepped into it. His strategic cunning earned him the loyalty of almost a full third of the entire galaxy, a figure that made him a threat on a scale neither the Imperial Remnant nor the New Republic could ignore. Both factions dedicated significant forces to stopping him, yet he kept slipping away. His secret was a mobile stronghold where his flagship, the Iron Fist, one of the few surviving Super Star Destroyers, could be repaired whenever he was nearly cornered. Han Solo had been hunting for that hidden fortress from aboard the Mon Remonda. When the novel opens, Solo is returning, weary, to the newly captured Coruscant, expecting a reunion with Leia.

• 3. A Proposal and a Card Game

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  Han Solo dropped out of hyperspace expecting Leia's embrace and found a fleet instead. Multiple Imperial Star Destroyers, Hapan Battle Dragons, and a Hapes Nova Class battle cruiser were waiting in the Coruscant system. The Hapes Consortium had sent a delegation, and its gifts to Leia were extraordinary: a dozen Star Destroyers, a Hapan Gun of Command, a bonsai-like plant said to promote longevity and intelligence, and the hand of Prince Isolder, son of the Hapes cluster's ruler Ta'a Chume, in marriage. Leia nearly accepted. Han, gripped by jealousy, wandered into a cantina in the lower reaches of Coruscant and joined a high-stakes sabacc game. An opponent ran out of money and wagered something unusual: the deed to an entire habitable planet called Dathomir. Han took it, convinced he had found a gift that could match Isolder's fleet. Leia informed him that Dathomir sat squarely in the territory controlled by Zsinj, making the deed essentially worthless. Isolder then offered Han a Nova battle cruiser if he simply walked away from Leia. Han snapped.

• 4. Dathomir and the Witches

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  Han used the Gun of Command, the very weapon Isolder had gifted Leia, to abduct her. He fled with her and Chewbacca aboard the recently refitted Millennium Falcon, destination: Dathomir. Isolder gave chase with his Hapan fleet. Despite Han's head start, Isolder arrived at Dathomir only shortly after, guided by Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, who used his Force abilities to find a shorter but safe path through hyperspace. What greeted them confirmed Han's worst fear about the deed: the Iron Fist sat in orbit, accompanied by other capital ships and the orbital shipyard Han had spent so long trying to locate. The Millennium Falcon was forced down to the planet's surface, where it was captured by an Imperial garrison Zsinj had stranded there years earlier. Luke and Isolder landed separately and discovered the ruins of the Chu'unthor, a star-borne Jedi training academy. Yoda and other Jedi knights had previously failed to retrieve its library because of interference from the Witches of Dathomir and their dark counterparts, the Nightsisters. The vessel had been sealed so thoroughly that only a lightsaber could open it centuries later. Before Luke and Isolder could do much more than explore it, a Dathomiri witch captured them both and enslaved them.

• 5. The Nightcloak Ultimatum

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  Zsinj's plan for Dathomir was precise and ruthless. He had built a device called the nightcloak, an interconnected network of geostationary satellites that reflected all solar emissions back into space. Left active, the nightcloak would slowly freeze Dathomir, killing every living thing on the planet. Zsinj offered the Nightsisters' leader, Gethzerion, a deal: deliver Han Solo to him for torture and execution, and he would give them an Imperial shuttle to go wherever they wished. Refuse, and the nightcloak stays on. With Han already in the hands of the stranded Imperial garrison and Luke and Isolder enslaved by a witch, the position looked bleak. What followed was an infiltration: Han's group broke into the Imperial garrison, recovered the Falcon, and flew it into the ongoing Battle of Dathomir above the planet. Han then did something unexpected. He deliberately let the Iron Fist capture the Falcon in a tractor beam. Once the ship was inside the Iron Fist's deflector shields, Han broke free of the beam lock and flew the Falcon across the superstructure of the massive vessel, all the way to the bridge. Two concussion missiles killed Zsinj and knocked out the ventral shields. The Hapan fleet's ion cannons disabled the Iron Fist, and Zsinj's empire crumbled shortly afterward.

• 6. Reception and Legacy

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  Reviews for The Courtship of Princess Leia ran predominantly positive. The Hamilton Spectator and the Milwaukee Sentinel both praised the novel; the Milwaukee Sentinel's reviewer wrote that it continued what they called the "stellar tradition of George Lucas' Star Wars movies". Trade reviews leaned positive as well. Publishers Weekly acknowledged that parts of the book disappointed, but argued that "the novel raised expectations for Wolverton's future works once he moves on to other things". Tor.com later placed the book on a list of recommended starting points for Star Wars fiction, describing it as "one of the craziest Star Wars novels ever written" and suggesting that after reading it, no other path to Han and Leia's marriage would feel plausible. The novel's invented locations took on lives of their own. The Chu'unthor received a mention in the 2010 reference book The Jedi Path. Dathomir became a recurring location in The Clone Wars, retroactively established as the homeworld of both Darth Maul and Asajj Ventress, replacing Rattatak as her origin world. The Witches of Dathomir appeared again in The Book of Boba Fett, when Boba Fett, having received a rancor, explained his wish to ride it "like the witches on Dathomir." Following Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2014, the novel and all other spin-off works created up to that point, excluding The Clone Wars, were reclassified as non-canon.