Destruction of Alderaan

During the era of the Clone Wars, a trio of Jedi, consisting of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Ahsoka Tano, were transported to the realm of Mortis by a group of Force wielders residing there. These beings held the belief that Skywalker was the prophesied Chosen One, destined to restore balance to the Force and eliminate the Sith. The Son, representing the dark side of the Force, presented Skywalker with a vision of his future transformation into Darth Vader, a Dark Lord of the Sith. Within this vision, Skywalker witnessed future events, including the destruction of Alderaan, a significant world within the Galactic Republic. This vision led Skywalker to briefly embrace the dark side, but he ultimately rejected it, and his memory of the future was erased by the Father.

Throughout the Clone Wars, Alderaan, represented in the Galactic Senate by Senator Bail Prestor Organa, publicly voiced its opposition to the war against the Confederacy of Independent Systems. As the war concluded, Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith publicly known as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, reformed the Republic into the Galactic Empire. In the years that followed, the Empire viewed Alderaan as a hub of rebellious sentiment, cautioning Imperial citizens about the perceived dangers of the planet and its alleged threat to the security that the Empire claimed to provide to the galaxy. Alderaan became a key founding member of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, the Rebel Alliance opposing the Imperial regime. During the Galactic Civil War, the Rebels successfully acquired the technical specifications for the Death Star, a mobile battle station capable of destroying entire planets, during the Battle of Scarif.

Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, who served as both Governor of the Outer Rim Territories and the Death Star's commander, solidified his control over the battle station during that battle. His rival for power, Director Orson Callan Krennic, was killed in a test firing against Scarif's surface, eliminating remaining rebel forces. The Rogue One team, however, succeeded in transmitting the plans to the orbiting Rebel Alliance Navy before their demise. Subsequently, Tarkin ordered the Death Star to Rango Tan, commanding Imperial weapons technicians such as Chief Gunner Endo Frant to fire on the world as a test of their obedience. Aware that the world was home to a pre-hyperdrive society who had been neutral in all recent conflicts, as Tarkin made Chief of the Imperial Navy Admiral Conan Antonio Motti tell all aboard about the culture, many of the gunners refused to fire. As such, Tarkin assembled the 168 gunners in charge of firing the superlaser and spoke directly with Frant, explaining how dangerous the Rebellion was. He made all 168 gunners agree to follow orders the next time around.

Princess Leia Organa, the adopted daughter of Bail and secretly the daughter of Darth Vader, was charged with delivering the stolen Death Star plans to Kenobi, who had retreated into exile on the desert planet of Tatooine. The princess was captured during a battle above Tatooine, but two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, managed to escape her ship, the Tantive IV, and successfully delivered the plans to Kenobi. The Jedi Master, accompanied by Luke Skywalker—secretly Vader's son and Leia's twin brother—and the two droids, embarked on a mission to bring the stolen plans to Bail on Alderaan. They contracted the services of the Millennium Falcon, captained by the smuggler Han Solo and co-piloted by the Wookiee Chewbacca, to provide passage to Alderaan.

Following her capture, the princess was taken aboard the Death Star, where Darth Vader subjected her to interrogation and torture in an attempt to uncover the location of the Rebel base, situated within the Great Temple on Yavin 4. Despite the torture, Leia refused to divulge the Rebellion's location, drawing on her powers of the Force. To compel her cooperation and demonstrate the Death Star's power to the galaxy, Tarkin ordered the station to set course for Alderaan.

Upon the station's arrival at Alderaan, Leia was escorted to the Death Star's overbridge, where Tarkin threatened to annihilate the planet if she refused to comply with the Empire's demand to reveal the Rebellion's location. Leia was torn between protecting the Rebels and saving her homeworld and its inhabitants. Consequently, she provided Tarkin with false information, claiming that the Rebel base was situated on Dantooine. Despite Tarkin's belief in her statement, he still intended to utilize the weapon. Seeing Dantooine as too remote to effectively showcase the Death Star's power, he identified Alderaan as the ideal target, a realization that Queen Breha Organa also came to as she watched the battle station from the planet's surface.

Tarkin had also noticed Frant sign in relief at not needing to destroy his homeworld, which Tarkin took as a sign of weakness that needed to be dealt with. Tarkin issued the order to fire upon Alderaan. Although Frant and several other gunners hesitated, they ultimately complied. However, bio-trackers installed within their helmets, done at the request of Tarkin after the Rango Tan test, caught their hesitation. The Death Star's superlaser obliterated the planet in a matter of seconds, unleashing a shockwave in all directions. This act of destruction fulfilled the vision that Anakin had experienced on Mortis years prior. As a result of its destruction, all that remained of the planet was a debris field. The two billion inhabitants of the planet, including Viceroy Bail Organa and his wife Breha, were killed.

Bail and Breha were present in the Royal Palace in the capital of Aldera at the time, and saw the Death Star eclipse the sun beforehand. Bail then immediately realized what was about to happen when he saw this, and he and his wife died together, hoping that their daughter was still alive, as the last they had heard of her was that the Tantive IV had been destroyed. Leia's old toy droid L0-LA59 "Lola" was also destroyed. The magnitude of the destruction generated a significant disturbance within the Force, which Kenobi sensed aboard the Millennium Falcon. Although he couldn't pinpoint the exact nature of the event, he perceived the collective anguish of millions of voices as they were silenced—the moment of the planet's demise.

With the station's visits to Jedha and Scarif having been kept secret from most of the crew, all Imperials aboard the Death Star were ordered to watch Alderaan's destruction either by eye or on a screen. Thane Kyrell, Ciena Ree, Nash Windrider, and Jude Edivon, recent graduates of the Royal Imperial Academy, were present on the station and witnessed the destruction. Horrified by the Empire's ruthlessness, Kyrell later defected to join the Rebel Alliance. While sharing Thane's horror, Ree was unable to abandon her oath to the Empire and would remain loyal even until the Battle of Jakku five years later. While the Alderaanian Windrider was distraught by the destruction of his homeworld, it ultimately led him to rededicate his life to the Empire.

He eventually rationalized his homeworld's destruction as necessary to the security of the Empire, and became ruthlessly dedicated to upholding its tyrannical rule. Meanwhile, Edivon rationalized that the destruction of Alderaan saved many lives from being killed in a war, though she herself struggled to accept this. Despite Edivon's prediction, the planet's destruction only strengthened the Alliance's resolve to overthrow the Empire and avenge the billions murdered. She later identified a flaw in the Death Star's design, but failed to convince her superiors to order an evacuation. Jude later perished during the Battle of Yavin.

Following Alderaan's destruction, Imperial forces investigated Leia's claim that the Rebels were on Dantooine. Although they found the remains of a base, it had been abandoned for some time. On Dantooine, they also encountered the rogue archaeologist Chelli Lona Aphra, who was shocked to learn of the power of the Death Star. She also deduced it would have multiple gunners, thereby keeping those aboard from feeling guilty about destroying a planet by allowing them to reason they were not at fault. Following the Destruction of Alderaan, Tarkin went to deal with the several gunners, including Frant, who had hesitated before firing. After failing to convince the resistant gunners to agree to his ideals, Tarkin had the gunners tossed out the airlock.

Meanwhile, the Millennium Falcon had entered the debris field and was captured by the Death Star, forcing its passengers and crew to find a means of escape. While Kenobi disabled the tractor beam that trapped the ship, Luke set off with Solo and Chewbacca to rescue Leia. They fought their way out of the Detention Level and returned to the Falcon, where they witnessed Kenobi engage in lightsaber combat with Vader. To give the Rebels a chance to escape, and to achieve immortality, Kenobi allowed Vader to kill him. The Rebels escaped to the base on Yavin 4, where the Empire followed them. Having analyzed the Death Star plans, the Rebels mounted the Battle of Yavin, in which Luke destroyed the Death Star, killing Tarkin and all Imperial personnel onboard.

In the days after the planet's destruction, word spread that Alderaan had been destroyed. Alderaanians who were off-world at the time took to calling their world's destruction The Disaster. Vigils were held amongst the Alderaanian immigrant population on Level 3204 on Imperial Center, the capital planet of the Empire, in order to grieve for the missing and dead Alderaanians. When it became apparent through official government statements and pirated newsfeeds that the Empire had destroyed the planet, the vigils turned into riots, with calls for justice and revolution against the Empire. At first, many rioters were killed. Soon, however, Imperial stormtroopers and Coruscant underworld police arrested first-generation Alderaanians, justifying the arrests by saying that they needed to be questioned due to reports of so-called Rebel spies attempting to foment rebellion. Rumors suggested that second-generation Alderaanians were being given the benefit of the doubt and relocated.

Many Alderaanians in service to the Rebel Alliance began wearing a tattoo of the Rebel Alliance starbird called a tear beneath their eye following The Disaster. The symbol was common enough that Imperial troops were able to recognize such fighters as Alderaanian on-sight. Meanwhile, Darth Vader ordered the Imperial Military to annihilate any surviving Alderaanians.

Following the Battle of Yavin, Evaan Verlaine, a pilot in the Rebel Alliance and one of the surviving Alderaanians, informed Leia that the Empire had begun targeting the remaining Alderaanians. To preserve what was left of her people and her culture, Leia set out with Evaan to locate and save her people from the Empire. Several weeks later, the Rebel Alliance assaulted Cymoon 1 in order to destroy Weapons Factory Alpha, perhaps the largest weapons factory in the galaxy. During the assault, Leia ordered Solo to kill Vader in order to avenge the death of Kenobi and the destruction of Alderaan. Vader survived the attack, however, with only minor injuries.

When Leia announced her and Han Solo's engagement to Mon Mothma, Mothma told Leia that she wished Bail and Breha were there causing Leia to think of the loss of her parents as well as the loss of Alderaan.

During the New Republic Era, two prominent figures of the First Order, Kylo Ren and General Armitage Hux, landed on a tropical planet inhabited by Bylsma, an ex-Alderaan Guard who survived The Disaster as he was offworld. When he told Hux about the destruction of Alderaan, the General showed a sadistic smile.

In 28 ABY, Leia cited the destruction of Alderaan as one of the main reasons for which she couldn't forgive her father, even posthumously, to Senator Ransolm Casterfo from Riosa. Six years later, following the Battle of Crait, while trying to convince the Mon Calamari to join the Resistance and fight against the First Order, Organa acknowledged that what she was asking them would require a kind of sacrifice as she had done several times over the years, silently remembering when the Death Star destroyed her homeworld.

The Disaster was first depicted in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and was first identified in the 2014 short story "One Thousand Levels Down." On the Star Wars Databank, The Disaster is identified with the name Destruction of Alderaan.

An early abandoned plot point for the 1983 film Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, according to A New Hope producer Gary Kurtz, had the surviving Alderaanians crowning Leia Organa as their Queen, isolating herself. Luke Skywalker was left on his own, as Han Solo's death was also in the plot, and it would give way to the then differently planned sequel trilogy.