Destruction of Alderaan

The Destruction of Alderaan, known to the Alderaanians as the Disaster, saw the planet Alderaan in the Coruscant Core destroyed at the hands of the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War. Before the Disaster, the Rebel Alliance stole the plans for the Death Star, the Empire's deep-space mobile battle station. Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan was captured during an Imperial attempt to intercept the plans, and she was brought aboard the Death Star following her capture aboard the Tantive IV above the desert world of Tatooine. Once aboard, the young princess was tortured in the hopes that the Empire could extract the location of the Rebel base from her. Organa refused, and the station's commander, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, Governor of the Outer Rim Territories, threatened to use the Death Star to destroy Alderaan if she did not comply. Organa provided a false location, and although Tarkin believed her, he nonetheless destroyed Alderaan—and the billions of people living there—to demonstrate the station's power to the galaxy, and in doing so, the price of any type of dissidence.

The Destruction of Alderaan and the massive loss of life sent a great disturbance through the Force, weakening those who felt it. Alderaanians who were off-world at the time took to calling Alderaan's destruction the Disaster. Riots broke out in Alderaanian immigrant areas of the planet Coruscant, and the Empire killed many rioters and arrested many more immigrants. The Rebellion was ultimately able to prevent further planets from being destroyed when the Rebel pilot Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star during the Battle of Yavin. After the battle, Organa set out to find surviving Alderaanians in order to preserve what remained of the planet's culture.

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