'My great-great-grandmother's portrait hung in the university up until the Revolution.
By then, the truth of their romance had been reduced to a simple fairy tale.
And, while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after,
the point, gentlemen, is that they lived.'
Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998)
There are many legends in the galaxy that is far, far away. Some roam amongst the stars, singing of great battles fought within the vast cold space that stands between them. Others keep to the planets which reside within that region. While their protagonists and environments differ from world to world, changing to fit weather, season, landscape and beings, there is one quality which remains the same within all of the tales; that of endurance. No matter how dark is it before the dawn, nor how long lasts the sound of their enemies fury, those who still stand when the last lyric is sung or the ink is left to dry, have learned to survive, to endure, perhaps even to live.
One such tale belongs to Tatooine, the twin sun planet in the Outer Rim Territories. It is a world which has given birth to many legends, like the slave boy who won the Boonta Eve Classic, or the Hero with No Fear, a young Jedi Knight who bravely served the Order during the twilight of the Republic. A desert world, it has a harsh, unforgiving climate, which few beings choose to settle within. For eons it has been under the rule of a wretched hive of scum and villainy, gangsters, smugglers and pirates, drawn to the world by virtue of its location, the Outer Rim being far away from the reach of lawful justice.
For a time that power had belong to the Republic, a governing body of many worlds and species, once glorious and just, whose light slowly diminished over time, until it became like a flickering candle, flared briefly into life by the odd Jedi or brave young Queen or Senator, whereupon a great evil guttered the last flame entirely.
The darkness that rose in its place came to be known as the Empire, who aside from placing a governor under their purview upon each world, rarely decided to trouble the status quo, unless there was any credit to be gleaned from such an endeavour.
It was during the Empire that the following legend of endurance began. It started with the arrival of a new homesteader and his family, who came to settle upon a moisture farm not far from the land belonging to the Lars and the Darklighter families. He seemed to be an old pioneer, with a beautiful young wife and two children, twin babes, a boy and a girl. Devoted to each other, the family kept to themselves, rarely venturing beyond their farm, except when they needed to trade their wares.
For twenty years the family remained unchanged, save for the twins growing up, the boy resembling his father, the girl a beauty like her mother. Both a little more impulsive and adventurous when compared to their parents, who carried a haunted sadness about them, which few dared to inquire further about, beyond the assumption that they both lost a great deal during the last days of the Republic, for their accents originated from planets nearer to the Core than to those within the Outer Rim. While they rarely went further than their farm, the twins were often seen at Tosche Station, or flying recklessly through Beggar's Canyon in crafts they had build themselves from scraps.
One day the girl brought home a husband, a former smuggler for Jabba the Hutt, who settled down into the life of a moisture farmer more quickly than anyone thought. Three children soon arrived; another set of twins followed by a boy.
The son took longer to find his wife, having once entertained dreams of leaving Tatooine to join the Imperial Academy and become a pilot. No one knew why he gave them up, those who ventured to guess thought it was probably because of his sister's marriage to a smuggler and ex-Imperial Academy member, or perhaps the death of his best friend Biggs Darklighter in the Rebellion's battle against the Empire at Yavin.
Like his sister though, one day he came home with a woman whose eyes were green and her hair was kissed by fire. They settled down to moisture farming, raising their own twins and a girl.
Two houses were build either side of the original, far enough away for to give each household a break from the others when needed, but still close enough to not feel that they were leaving their homestead.
Their parents lived to see all of their grandchildren born, their haunted sadness gradually flickering from view, replaced by the quiet contentment of simple farming.
The farmstead passed on to their children and then their grandchildren, as the Empire continued to cast its shadow over the galaxy and the Rebellion grew in size and strength. None of them cast their lot in either side, though both forces could have easily used their talents, remarkable pilots that they were, as well as masters of other gifts, not seen since the days of the Republic, that led the Tuskens to steer clear of them and the Lars and Darklighters to debate over the existence of their mysterious 'force.'
This was not a tale about heroes or martyrs however, it was a legend about the endurance of a family, who not only survived despite all the odds, but who lived.
"The past is already written. The ink is dry."
Game of Thrones Season 6.
© Danielle Harwood-Atkinson 2021. All rights reserved.