Alderaan Ascendancy Contention

"You know anything about that?''" "''No more than any other Alderaanian. The question was whether the line of ascent to Viceroy should go to Bail Organa's father or one of the other family lines."

- Luke Skywalker and Winter, discussing the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention

The Alderaan Ascendancy Contention was a political conflict between the noble families of Alderaan, the House of Antilles and the House of Organa in particular, over which of them had the proper claim to the position of Viceroy. It took place sometime before the Clone Wars and the fall of the Galactic Republic. The mediation team sent by the Galactic Senate resolved the dispute in favor of the Organas, allowing a member of the family to succeed to the position. In addition, a marriage joining the houses of Antilles and Organa was arranged.

History
"After the third voting deadlock they appealed to the Senate to mediate the issue. C'baoth was one of the delegation they sent, which took less than a month to decide that the Organas had the proper claim."

- Winter

At some point before the Clone Wars, a political conflict between the high houses of the planet Alderaan arose. Known as the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention, it was the result of the inability of the noble families —among them the House of Organa and the House of Antilles —to decide which of them was entitled to the position of Viceroy. When the third vote on the matter did not yield a winner, the government of Alderaan appealed to the Galactic Senate for mediation. In response, a delegation including Jedi Watchman Jorus C'baoth was sent to resolve the case.

The crisis strained the relations of the houses of Antilles and Organa in particular. When the tensions between them erupted at one point, the intervention of Tash Scrambas, captain of the frigate Qel-Droma, proved instrumental. He refused to choose a side and cooperated with C'baoth in solving the conflict. In less than a month, the delegation came to the conclusion that the Organas had the rightful claim to the Viceroyship, allowing a member of the family to succeed to the position. In addition, C'baoth proposed a marriage that would join the Antilles and Organa families. Both parties agreed to the arrangement, and with the union of the two rivaling houses the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention was brought to a satisfactory end.

A focal event in the planet's history, the ascendancy contention was documented in the Alderaanian archives, with a group hologram of the Republic mediation team. Owing to its historical significance, all Alderaanians were familiar with the event at least to a certain degree, and it continued to be remembered among them even after Alderaan was destroyed by the Galactic Empire in 0 BBY. Nine years later, Winter recounted the event to Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, who, while conducting research on Jorus C'baoth, had found a mention of the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention in the records of the Galactic Senate on Coruscant.

Timeline
The exact timing of the Alderaan Ascendancy Contention has not yet been established. In any case, it must have taken place before or in 27 BBY, the year Jorus C'baoth died. Timothy Zahn, author of the 1992 novel Dark Force Rising in which the contention was first mentioned, originally placed the event in "11/70 pre-Empire date," which would work out to 89 BBY. In 2002, however, the Roleplaying Game Revised Core Rulebook retconned much of C'baoth's backstory, stating him to have been 38 years old at the time of the Battle of Naboo which took place in 32 BBY. This gives a birth year of 70 BBY, as opposed to 112 pre-Empire (131 BBY) mentioned in Dark Force Rising, meaning the other events of C'baoth's life as presented in the novel, including the ascendancy contention, are pushed later as well.

Taking into account the original dates given in Dark Force Rising, C'baoth would have been 42 years old when the contention occurred. If this is still the case after the changes made to the timeline, the ascendancy contention would take place in 28 BBY. Deducing from clues offered by official sources, the earliest likely date for the event seems to be around 35 BBY, when C'baoth was in his mid-thirties. Winter estimates in Dark Force Rising that in a hologram of the mediation team he looked approximately forty ("plus or minus five years, perhaps"), though she admits that determining age from a picture is difficult. A further hint to the timing of the ascendancy contention is provided in the Databank entry for Pello Scrambas, which states that Scrambas was 15 years old the day the contention ended. No birth year for the character is given, however.

Families involved
While all sources on the ascendancy contention mention the Organa family, it remains unclear whether there was more than one other family claiming the title of Viceroy. The wording in both Dark Force Rising and Dark Force Rising Sourcebook, the earliest accounts of the event, is ambiguous, and subsequent sources have not clarified the issue. The only source naming a family other than the Organas is the Databank entry for Pello Scrambas published in 2007, fifteen years after the ascendancy contention was first mentioned. Written by Aidan Hennessy (as "Darth NTM") and submitted through StarWars.com's Hyperspace feature, "What's The Story?," the entry elaborates on some of the contention's details, such as establishing the House of Antilles as a rival of the Organas and stating that the dispute ended when the families joined in marriage. This would imply that at least the final choice was made between the two. Since the mention of the House of Antilles does not exclude the possibility of other rivaling families, however, this article is written with the assumption that there could have been more than the two named families involved.

According to Aidan Hennessy, his Pello Scrambas entry was supposed to indicate that the marriage joining the houses of Antilles and Organa was between Breha Antilles and Bail Organa. This piece of information, however, was not included in the final Databank entry, possibly because of matters concerning the timeline as Hennessy himself suspected. So far, no official source has addressed the issue of between whom the marriage was arranged or contracted.

Appearances

 * Dark Force Rising