Celly Organa

"And just then, in my head, a vision of my aunt Celly rose as clear as if she were standing in front of me. She smiled. Patience, Leia. Illumination comes like the sunrise. Slowly. Then all at once."

- Leia Organa, thinking of her dead aunt

Celly Organa was a Human female from Alderaan and a member of the House of Organa, one of the most popular and famous noble families of the galaxy. One of four children, she was the plump sister of Bail, Rouge, and Tia Organa. Although she was born into wealth and privilege on an idyllic planet, Celly Organa did not remain idle: in the years leading up to the Clone Wars, she served as Chairwoman of the Refugee Relief Movement's Alderaanian branch. Under her chairmanship, the movement established a new settlement on the site of Chianar, the cornerstone of which was laid in 22 BBY.

When her brother Bail, now Viceroy and First Chairman of the Alderaan system, decided to adopt a baby daughter called Leia, Celly joined him in the upbringing of his adopted offspring. As a tutor, she could not hide her exasperation at her niece's tomboyish nature, but she loved her nonetheless, and Leia Organa followed her father's footsteps, succeeding him as Senator of the Alderaan sector to the Imperial Senate. In 0 BBY, Celly Organa died along with most of her compatriots, when the Galactic Empire destroyed her homeworld with a superlaser shot of the planet-killing Death Star.

Early life
"Aunt Rouge, Aunt Celly, and Aunt Tia... Father's sisters. They never stopped trying to turn me into what they called a Proper Princess--and marry me off to some brainless twerp from one of the other ancient ruling Houses..."

- Leia Organa, musing on her girlhood

Celly Organa was a Human female from Alderaan, a planet that many considered the galaxy's paradise and the Galactic Republic's heart. A noblewoman, she was part of the princely House of Organa, whose origins could be traced as far as the colonization of Alderaan in 27,500 BBY. Her father, the Viceroy Organa, had also begotten three other children: Tia, Rouge and Bail Prestor Organa, his only son. When she reached the age of seventeen, Celly Organa became an adult in the eyes of the Alderaanian law. When she finished school, she was sent to a débutante ball on Coruscant, the jewel of the Core Worlds and the seat of the Republic government, in hopes she could find a groom of suitable lineage. Eventually, she started a family of her own. Her only brother, Bail Prestor Organa, went on to become the Viceroy and First Chairman of the Alderaan System and the husband of Queen Breha Organa, née Antilles.

Helping the refugees
"The first transport to Alderaan brought 500 new settlers, who helped in erecting pre-fab constructs in the Alderaanian grasslands. Many were visibly moved by the cooperation of so many to aid them."

- Extract from a HoloNet News report

In the last decades of the Republic, the number of people living below the poverty line on Coruscant became increasingly alarming. In an effort to counter this trend, the Refugee Relief Movement&mdash;or RRM for short&mdash;was founded. When the movement evolved into a resettlement agency, various new branches were established on various planets, and Celly Organa was appointed Chairwoman of the Alderaanian RRM. In the third month of the year 22 BBY, Alderaan loosened its immigration laws to allow thousands of refugees to find shelter, and the government donated one hundred hectares of plains on the site of Chianar to transform into a new village. Celly Organa supervised the construction commencement ceremony and greeted the first five hundreds new settlers. The Alderaanian diplomat Liana Merian and the former Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum also participated in the ceremony. When a journalist from the HoloNet News interviewed Celly Organa, the noblewoman advocated for more solidarity.

Bringing up Leia Organa
"A girl can only take so much pimping and posturing. I know my father and aunts mean well, but I didn't ask to be the Princess of the Royal House of Alderaan."

- Extract from Leia Organa youth diary

Two months after the inauguration of the Chianar settlement, the Republic went to war with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a separatist movement led by Count Dooku of Serenno. After the end of a devastating three-year conflict known as the Clone Wars, Celly Organa's brother decided to adopt Leia, the baby girl of the late Senator Padmé Amidala. Meanwhile, the former Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had shown his true colors, and he was carving an authoritarian Galactic Empire from the corpse of the old Republic. Celly and her sisters came to live at the Royal Palace of Aldera to help their brother raise his foster daughter.

Princess Celly and her sisters were tasked with drilling the young Leia Organa into a respectable high-ranking lady. However, baby Leia grew into a tomboyish girl with a fiery temperament. Wishing to tame their passionate niece, Celly and her sisters taught her the arcana of court etiquette. Additionally, they hired other tutors, including the Headmistress of the Alderaan Select Academy for Young Ladies, the strict Madame Vesta. For his part, the Viceroy worked in the shadows, contributing to the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, a gathering of factions opposed to the tyranny of Palpatine's Empire. The attempt at bridling their adopted niece was only relatively successful; when the ten-year old princess performed the "Dance of the Twi'lek Slave Girl" during a performance at the Select Academy, Celly and her sisters were collectively appalled. A few years later, the Organa sisters were further disappointed when a teenaged Leia refused to enter the Court marriage market before she could do so as a Senator in her own right.

Time went by, and Celly Organa witnessed her niece coming of age and succeeding her father as representative of the Alderaan sector. In 1 BBY, on the occasion of Senator Leia Organa's nomination, Celly, Rouge and Tia accompanied Leia to her first official levee on Coruscant, now renamed the Imperial Center. When the young Senator noticed the presence of jeweled Imperial concubines and asked about them, Celly took her aside and briefed her about the court's intrigues. Many years later, Leia Organa would remember that private conversation when she met again with Roganda Ismaren, a former Imperial concubine.

A planet's demise
"So I lay down in my bunk, and I thought about Alderaan. I couldn't think about Father or my aunts&mdash;that hurt too much. So I thought about the green fields and the blue flowers, and my favorite walk through the hills."

- Leia Organa

In 0 BBY, Wilhuff Tarkin, one of Palpatine's Grand Moff, chose to demonstrate the full power of the Death Star, a brand new moon-sized battlestation equipped with a planet-destroying superlaser. Since the Empire had grown suspicious of the Viceroy's true allegiance, Tarkin had the entire planet of Alderaan destroyed by the Death Star, with a captive Leia Organa being forced to watch. Celly Organa, a proud daughter of the House of Organa, died in the destruction of her homeworld, along with more than a billion of other beings. Despite the clear differences of opinion they had on many issues, Leia Organa immediately realized how much she would miss her Aunt Celly, her recommandations and her annoying riddle games. During one of her fist private conversations with the Tatooinian farmboy Luke Skywalker&mdash;who was in fact her estranged twin brother&mdash;Princess Leia started daydreaming about Celly advising her to be patient like she used to. Even sixteen years later, when Leia Organa had become the Chief of State of a democratic New Republic, she would remember her Aunt Celly lecturing her.

Personality and traits
"Coruscant's getting even more crowded each day. There's plenty of elbow room in the Republic, as long as worlds are willing to share."

- Cely Organa, Chairwoman of the Alderaanian RRM

Celly Organa was a plump Human female with a pink face. As was customary among Alderaanian adults, Celly had long hair that she would decorate with cut flowers. When her niece first attended the Emperor's reception, Celly's hair was fading with age, but she would still display complicated&mdash;and somewhat antiquated&mdash;hairstyles that included twirls, pearls, and small garlands.

Although she was born into luxury and prosperity, with the Organas' wealth seeming limitless, Celly Organa had genuine concerns for those most in need. At the time she presided over the Alderaanian RRM, she publicly stated there was enough space in the Republic for everyone to live decently, on the condition that everyone agrees to share. Celly Organa shared many things with her sisters, including a taste for iridescent earrings made from Old Republic bronze and her pleading for patience and reflection. Beside her undoubted qualities, she was also known for her personality quirks, such as indulging daily outbreaks of hypochondria&mdash;during which she would lie down in her chambers &mdash;and making riddles, a habit that usually made her niece very annoyed.

Behind the scenes
"It always bothered me slightly that in the original Star Wars (and I think of the films by their original titles), Leia sees her home–all her family, the place she grew up, everyone she knows—destroyed before her eyes, and then we just go on to the next thing. Who WERE these people that she lost? Who were her family?"

- Barbara Hambly

Celly Organa was first mentioned along with her sisters in Children of the Jedi, a 1995 novel written by Barbara Hambly and published by Bantam Spectra. When she saw Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Barbara Hambly was bothered by the rapidity with which the destruction of Alderaan was set aside. With the explosion of her homeworld, Princess Leia had lost everyone she knew and loved, but the action just went on to the next part of the story. Hambly sought to put a human face on the Princess' grief, which prompted her to create new family members. The author came up with a group of aunts, since royal sisters would have been much more likely to stay close to the court than Bail Organa's potential brothers.

Celly Organa was specifically mentioned by name five times throughout the narrative, which makes her the second most cited of Leia's aunts. Hambly envisioned her as the "classic middle child", older than Tia and younger than Rouge. In creating her character, she sought to portray Celly as sweet-natured and understanding. At the time of Leia's upbringing, her Aunt Celly was single, "either through widowhood, possibly divorce, or her own choice." Although Children of the Jedi suggested that Celly and her sisters tutored their niece in the absence of a mother, it contradicts earlier sources. In The Last Gift From Alderaan!, the fifty-third issue of the Star Wars comic book series by Marvel Comics, Princess Leia wondered whether her father was alone or "with mother" when Alderaan was destroyed.

Three years after the release of Children of the Jedi, Scholastic published Star Wars Journal: Captive to Evil, a Jude Watson novel retelling the events of Star Wars Episode IV from Princess Leia's point of view. In this story, the author elaborated a little further on Celly Organa's personality, mentioning her love of riddles.

In 2002, Celly Organa was erroneously mentioned as Alderaan's Minister of Education and Bail Organa's wife in sixty-seventh issue of The Official Star Wars Fact File. At the time when the Official Fact File was published, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith had not been released yet, and the character of Breha Organa, nee Antilles, had not been created. The same year, Bail Organa's sisters made their first pictorial appearance in The Princess Leia Diaries, a short comic from the Star Wars Tales series that was written by Jason Hall and illustrated by Chris Brunner. However, the three aunts went nameless in the comic, so it is impossible to put a face to Celly's name.

The 2010 reference book Star Wars Blueprints: Rebel Edition, written by Ryder Windham, stated that the late Queen Mazicia Organa was Bail Organa's mother. However, whether she was also the mother of his sisters or not was unaddressed.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Journal: Captive to Evil
 * Children of the Jedi
 * Star Wars Journal: Captive to Evil
 * Children of the Jedi