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There’s something I discovered during my relentless quest for Star Wars trivia that I thought was pretty interesting: all throughout the making of the first six Star Wars films, George Lucas couldn’t have biological children, his were adopted.

(God, you can imagine what would have happened if he’d been a cisgender female throughout any of that, we wouldn’t be able to move for ‘how much of Star Wars was Lucas’s reaction to her infertility’ articles…)

Anyway, time and technology moves on and Lucas actually can have children now, but I just find it interesting how Star Wars, a saga that focuses almost entirely on parents and children, was written by someone who in the eyes of many, even now, wouldn’t be considered a ‘proper’ parent. Did that influence his writing of Luke and Leia as the children of adoptive parents? Was he drawing on his own experiences when he wrote the scene where Bail adopts Leia? And is that why, even though Star Wars does put a lot of emphasis on bloodlines and the like, it also has quite a strong ‘family is what you make it’ theme?

(So, uh, how much of Star Wars was Lucas’s reaction to his infertility, is apparently what I’m asking.)