r/StarWars • u/XWAmovie • 3h ago
General Discussion Mon Mothma's call to arms after the destruction of Alderaan...
...is where? Is it in any media that you've seen? She must have made some kind of public statement.
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u/wookieebastard 3h ago
Kinda crazy how much younger she looks in Andor vs Rogue One.
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u/Constant-Still-8443 3h ago
Stress of being part of the Rebellion ages you
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u/Atharaphelun 2h ago
Also, hair and fashion. She went from Core Worlds haute couture elite to Citadel grand maester after her Senate speech.
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u/PhysicsEagle Admiral Ackbar 2h ago
From Mon’s perspective:
Scarif happens, the Rebellion expends a huge fraction of its fleet to extract the plans. She knows Leia has them.
Leia vanishes. The Official Story is her ship was waylaid by pirates with no survivors. Mon is canny enough to see through the story and conclude Leia is either dead or captured and the Empire is back in possession of the plans; the sacrifice at Scarif was for nothing.
The Senate is permanently dissolved. Palpatine has finally consolidated enough power to not even bother with the veneer of democracy anymore. A large portion of the Rebellion was hoping merely to use the threat of force to bring the Emperor to the negotiating table and restore power to the Senate. That hope is gone now.
Alderaan is destroyed, Bail Organa is dead. The Death Star is as powerful as had been feared and the Rebellion’s key planet is no more. (It’s not stated, but there’s a very good chance that Mon knows Chandrilla is next on the list). Remember that Mon does not know about Luke and Han.
From her perspective the Rebellion is basically done; they pinned all their hopes on Scarif, and it led to disaster. They have no way to stop the Empire from destroying any rebellious planet, their founder (and her good friend) Bail is dead, their fleet is decimated, and it’s only a matter of time before the Empire learns the location of Yavin from Leia. What sort of message would she give out?
And then a farm boy and a pair of truckers show up at the base in an Winnebago with Leia and the plans. Then the farm boy and the truckers actually destroy the Death Star using the plans. That’s when Mon makes the speech, when she actually has a hopeful message to rally the Galaxy to. “If can beat that we can beat anything!”
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u/XWAmovie 1h ago
YES YES!!! For anyone that had been unconvinced this was the time to accept
1. the Empire is evil and
2. the Empire can be beaten. A prime moment to recruit hundreds of worlds to the rebellion.So I'm surprised this time hasn't been covered in any official story yet.
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u/ricree 11m ago
I've plugged this blog post a lot here, but it really deserves it:
Finally in 0BBY, the Empire makes its disastrous move: deciding that the best course of action would be to intimidate the "princes" by beheading one of them (Alderaan) as an example to the others, while disbanding the senate and essentially abolishing princely rule. But like Ferdinand II marching into Bohemia and the Palatinate in 1618-9, this assertion of direct imperial power ends up triggering a more general revolt of the princes (intensified, of course, by the fact that the Empire loses the Death Star almost immediately, meaning the threat meant to keep the princes in line while their administrations were dismantled had vanished).
From that point, the Empire actually unravels quite quickly: slow, grinding centralization had taken two decades from the end of the Clone Wars to the Battle of Yavin, but from the Battle of Yavin to Endor is just five years. The problem is a classic feature of military-tributary empires: an army can intimidate many enemies, but it can only fight one, so once the state has to turn potential force into deployed violence, the intimidation value of those armies collapses
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u/greatgeek5 55m ago
The spiritual successor to Andor I like to outline in my head sometimes (basically a grounded war story mostly centered around Andor survivors) is definitely starting off with a thriller arc focused on Rebel command's perspective during RO--ANH.
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u/OfficialAli1776 3h ago
Iirc, the 3rd act of ANH happens over a day, so she probably just didn’t have the time considering everything else that was going on
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u/Senior-Albatross 1h ago
When they did release a statement, it must have been along the lines of
"Palpatine the terrible tyrant was lying about that energy project the whole time, it was actually a terror weapon meant to destroy planets and the monster used it on the peaceful planet of Alderaan! Billions lost in an instant to the monstrosity we have warned you about! Yet though great courage and sacrifice, brave and valiant operatives of our coalition secured plans to the station in the face of great hardship! Now we can confirm that we have destroyed the terrible weapon by exploiting a critical flaw revealed within the design by those hard won plans. Our pilots have freed the galaxy from this terrible tyranny, and struck a telling blow for freedom and the restoration of democracy! Join the rebellion today to help us fully rout this threat and ensure the galaxy may be freed forever from such barbarity!"
I bet Mas Amada didn't want to be in the room when Papa Palpatine was listening to it.
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u/Laurent_Duhamel 3h ago
A They used their control over the media to spin the story.
B The Empire simply announced it: that it had completely destroyed a planet. And that really threw a wet blanket on anyone who wanted to challenge the Empire.
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u/SadowSon 3h ago
She didn't have time to.
Also somewhat didn't need to.
The gap in time between the destruction of Alderaan and the destruction of the Death Star is less than 48hrs.
Alderaan had only recently been converted from a gleaming planet to a shiny new scrap heap a few hours before the Millenium Falcon turned up - it literally occurs while they are halfway through transit. Official sources say that it takes up to 24 hours for the Falcon to get from Tattoine to Alderaan.
The whole messy rescue on the death star takes an hour or two at most. It's not something you can really spend an extended amount of time doing because the risk just ever increases of getting caught (And they nearly DID...)
The Millenium Falcon then gets to Yavin 4 in only a few hours. As I vaguely recall, the rebel alliance didn't even know that Alderaan had been cratered yet.
Most important thing to do? Figure out the real threat this thing poses. Grab a posse together to try and blow up this station. How fortunate that the Leia brought the plans with her! Well the tech guys are going to need a few hours to go over this thing... so Mon Mothma starts preparing her next speech to denounce the Death Star and begin a call to arms.
When suddenly... OH NO ITS HERE NOW!!! Turns out the Falcon was tracked. Whodathunk?
But wait, we have a fleet! That'll protect the evacuation! Oh... wait... no it wont. Admiral Raddus got absolutely toasted by Vader. We'll send Blue squadron! Wait, no... they got shot down over Scariff. Okay so WHO is available? It's... the reserves and a farmboy volunteer.
But then, they succeed! Against all odds - even after that dratted farmboy turned off his targeting computer. Word spreads quickly. Not only is the Empire willing to blow up a planet to maintain order no matter how many innocents get caught in the crossfire but WE BLEW UP THEIR PET PROJECT!
Rest is history...
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u/PhysicsEagle Admiral Ackbar 2h ago
Yavin knew about Alderaan. General Willard tells Leia when she gets there “You're safe. When we heard about Alderaan, we feared the worst.” I expect the Empire broadcast that wide and far “we’ll do this to you too if you defy us any longer.” That’s the whole point of the Tarkin Doctrine. Or as Doctor Strangelove said, a doomsday machine isn’t of any use if you keep it a secret.
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