Discussion Post: Han Solo No More?

[redrikki]

I don't have time for a real meta this morning, so let's try something new. A discussion post! Today's topic:

Did Han Solo keep his maiden name after marrying Leia?

My gut instinct says no for a couple of reasons.

1. Star Wars has multiple examples of men taking their wives names when those wives are noblewomen who outrank them. Examples include Bail Organa and Alrich Wren.

2. Solo was a pun inflicted upon Han by an Imperial recruiting officer.

3. In TFA, when Finn and Rey asked him if he was Han Solo he answers "I used to be."

I rest my case. Make yours in the comments below.

Comments

[acidwitch]

They're married in Aftermath: Empire's End , (5 ABY) no name change there, still married in Bloodline (28 ABY) and he's still Han Solo, so there wasn't any waiting on the name change paperwork. In TFA, Maz refers to him as "Han Solo", which isn't any evidence of him still not having changed his name exactly, but she seems like the kind of person who would respect a name change.

However he feels about the fact that his last name was a pun by an Imperial, it's difficult to argue that it doesn't sound badass, and I doubt his ego could let him give up being "Han Solo: The Famous Smuggler and Rebellion Captain". I also don't think Leia would want him to take her name; it would create strange political targets on their heads even more than their getting married at all did. (Her name is complicated enough as it is, what with her being a part of a major royal house that doesn't really exist and her being a senator for, as far as my fifteen minutes of Google search and hunting through my copies of Bloodline and Aftermath goes, nobody. (Which super isn't how being a senator works - that should definitely be illegal. Maybe she's representing the Adleraanian Diaspora? But they'd be better represented by their resettlement planets anyway...))

[redrikki]

Good points.

Snorted aloud at the bit about Leia representing nobody. Politics in the new EU is so screwy. Where is Leia a senator of? How does she have the ability and backing for essentially form her own private army? Is she precisely the type of benevolent dictator her father would have loved to follow or is it just me?

[ljwrites]

Considering that she got elected more or less Chancellor, which was Palpatine's last job title before "Emperor," these are certainly valid questions. To be fair she is acutely aware of the juxtaposition, but she gets reasoned into it because someone worse could be elected in her place. Hmm.

[redrikki]

Star Wars politics often seem to be an argument about who has the right to wield power. Under the original Republic, power was seen as being the right of those born to wield it, i.e. hereditary rulers and those born with Force powers. Under the Empire, power belonged to whomever had the strength/ambition, etc. to seize and maintain it. Only a small group of people seemed to honestly believe that power should be vested within the people. Even Padme, the champion of democracy, dismisses this idea. When the people wanted to make her monarch for life, she refused because, as she said, the average person knows what they want, but not what is best for them.

Leia seemed to very much subscribe to this philosophy. As a woman born to nobility and trained to rule, only she can lead effectively. Only she can be trusted with power. She should be chancellor and she should have her own private army, because only she can be trusted to use them responsibly. And yeah, she's the hero, so the narrative more or less supports her on this without really questioning it, but it sure is an interesting position to take.

[ljwrites]

It's that contradiction that makes SW so fascinating and frustrating at the same time. It's a franchise that seems to have some kind of political stance on the right and wrong uses of power, but when it comes down to it it's really about the kinds of people that should have power. Heroes should have power and villains shouldn't, which tells us exactly nothing of course because everyone insists they are the heroes and their enemies are villains. Yeah there are the war crimes and genocides vs. resistance to tyranny and championing of democratic ideals as a marker, but if anyone thinks the two sides are necessarily mutually exclusive I'd like to introduce them to a nice lady called Aung San Suu Kyi...

I think the sequel trilogy represents a chance to break out of this loop, because as much as it's ragged on the sequel trilogy actually does show that relying on superpowered heroes of a special bloodline to save us all didn't work out. At all. Episode IX has the chance, following up on the premise of TFA and the continuation of the Skywalkers' fall in TLJ, to present a genuine alternative to relying on heroic figures and families. I sincerely hope it'll be followed through in IX.

[redrikki]

Interesting point about the narrative of the ST being about the problem of relying on a single bloodline to save everyone. When I watched TFA, I was struck by the very millennial feel of it. The boomers had had their revolutions (ant-war, civil rights, 3rd wave feminism, etc.) but left things unfinished in a way that fucked over the younger generation and now millennials had to fix things. The Alliance had overthrown the Empire, but failed to finish the fight and now the new generation had to fix things. Kylo seemed like a fun parallel for all those MAGA, insels, alt-right guys trying to reclaim what they see as their traditional rights and power and I was initially fascinated by this aspect of his character. Then fandom and TLJ pretty much soured me on him and the ST in general.

[ljwrites]

You remind me of this post that started as a gif post and veered, in Tumblr fashion, into a meta discussion on the Millennial-ness of TFA. Check out that whiner who's all up in their feels about KR's millennial-ness being erased, with more "Snoke manipulated Ben from when he was in Han's left nut" bs 😂

[redrikki]

Yeah, I think I've seen that before, or at least the first half. ::sigh:: on the Kylo Ren bit. They're all millenials, he's just the dark side of our generation.