"Uncle Chewie mentioned that Father had sought things out for you on trips before, but neither of them ever indicated any of it was Alderaanian. Even well-made counterfeit items go for high prices on the black market to this day. He must have put in so much work just to get one genuine item, let alone all this..." Ben snorted, despite himself. "And he claims he 'doesn't kriffing care about relics'."
Ben was good with languages. Many who had the Force were. But Alderaanian was too scarce, its' vocabulary too lost. For people like Ben, Alderaanian names were somewhat identifiable if only because the survivors had clung to traditional names so fiercely in an attempt to preserve the past. But that was all they had. Names, some old fashioned ways of making food, and songs, the one form of art that could be passed down easily and orally.
His fingers just barely skirted the surface of the pearls for a moment, before shifting to feel their weight in his fingers. They were deceptively heavy, likely contributing to how hard they were to replicate. He let her put them away without a word, watching his mother's movements curiously. The broach was... he didn't have polite words for it, but he could not bring himself to mock it. "In its' own way, it is beautiful," he conceded.
He didn't sigh so much as exhale sadly, quietly. "Relics of Alderaan are highly valued in the First Order as trophies. They have been turned into things meant to showcase how little was left after Vader did his work. I assure you, while I cannot say for certain who has them, nothing was destroyed. The status they denote is too high for that. Two high-ranking officers once got into a blaster fight over a tiara with a paliirinite gem in it. A child's tiara; compared to all this, nothing more than metal with a stone." After a pause, he admitted, "I confiscated it. Officially. I tried to use the Force to pull some kind of memory from it, because I thought perhaps it could have been yours, at some point, but it had been passed through the hands of countless traders and merchants. And for all my searching, I never did find out what the seven-pointed star shape of the gem was supposed to mean, either. It was not in any database."
And it's symptomatic of a bigger problem, of how deep and wide the gaps in his knowledge are. It could have meant anything at all or nothing whatsoever and Ben was, despite having an Alderaanian mother, basically as uninformed as the Stormtrooper outside his door on the matter.
no subject
Ben was good with languages. Many who had the Force were. But Alderaanian was too scarce, its' vocabulary too lost. For people like Ben, Alderaanian names were somewhat identifiable if only because the survivors had clung to traditional names so fiercely in an attempt to preserve the past. But that was all they had. Names, some old fashioned ways of making food, and songs, the one form of art that could be passed down easily and orally.
His fingers just barely skirted the surface of the pearls for a moment, before shifting to feel their weight in his fingers. They were deceptively heavy, likely contributing to how hard they were to replicate. He let her put them away without a word, watching his mother's movements curiously. The broach was... he didn't have polite words for it, but he could not bring himself to mock it. "In its' own way, it is beautiful," he conceded.
He didn't sigh so much as exhale sadly, quietly. "Relics of Alderaan are highly valued in the First Order as trophies. They have been turned into things meant to showcase how little was left after Vader did his work. I assure you, while I cannot say for certain who has them, nothing was destroyed. The status they denote is too high for that. Two high-ranking officers once got into a blaster fight over a tiara with a paliirinite gem in it. A child's tiara; compared to all this, nothing more than metal with a stone." After a pause, he admitted, "I confiscated it. Officially. I tried to use the Force to pull some kind of memory from it, because I thought perhaps it could have been yours, at some point, but it had been passed through the hands of countless traders and merchants. And for all my searching, I never did find out what the seven-pointed star shape of the gem was supposed to mean, either. It was not in any database."
And it's symptomatic of a bigger problem, of how deep and wide the gaps in his knowledge are. It could have meant anything at all or nothing whatsoever and Ben was, despite having an Alderaanian mother, basically as uninformed as the Stormtrooper outside his door on the matter.