10 More Important Star Wars Details That Are Almost Never Mentioned

Fans often mention that Leia just doesn't seem quite devastated enough when she witnesses Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) use the Death Star to destroy her home planet of Alderaan, in turn killing roughly 2 billion people, including her adoptive parents.

Yet this was ultimately explained away by a 2015 canon novel, A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, which offers up a retelling of A New Hope's story with a ton of additional detail.

Among this, the novel features scenes which focus on Leia angrily grieving Alderaan's destruction in her cell, and that she ultimately decides to turn her grief into righteous courage to fight back against the Empire.

Basically if there was somehow any doubt, Leia is absolutely devastated by what happened to her homeland, but following all the political training she's received, she tries to keep up a brave front and transform her negative feelings into a force for positive rebellion.