"It's strange to think of him going out and retrieving such things. He wears the mask of indifference very well, sometimes. But it's stranger," Ben admitted, feeling vaguely ashamed that he had given the matter such limited thought, "To hear you speak of your adopted parents. I don't really recall you speaking much about them. Alderaan, sometimes, yes, but not them... I suppose I always assumed it was too painful and didn't want to make it worse by asking."
Exposing fraudulent Alderaanian artifacts was something that some smugglers had down to a science. In the First Order, where they were things to be collected and bandied about as a tribute to how rare they were and how thoroughly Vader had wiped out a people, everything was examined intensely, so much so Ben was willing to bet some legitimate artifacts had been passed over for not meeting ridiculously high standards of authenticity. Bold traders would sometimes make claims they couldn't back up, but most everyone knew by now not to pretend to have anything of note from Alderaan, not in Republic territory, anyway. Respect for the Alderaanian massacre and Leia made such things too bad in taste to jest about. Fights had started more than once over such things.
The idea of wearing so much that was so expensive made Ben cringe. No disrespect to his mother's home was meant, but even as Kylo Ren he wouldn't have felt entirely comfortable wearing such things. "I see the wealth disparity on Alderaan was not an exaggeration, then," he noted wryly. "I am glad to hear you disliked it from the outset, or else I would see you in a new and unpleasant light."
He raised an eyebrow, surprised that something so vaguely described could pull so many memories and such information out. Truthfully, Ben did not know the ranks of various Houses or even the names of most. He knew that he didn't like it when Poe called him a prince as a child and he really, truly disliked it when Rey asked him if he was one as an adult. He knew his mother was royalty on some strange technicality, but to what degree, he had never really pried into. There was a lot of hurt in her when Alderaan came up when he was a child, and he learned not to ask, not when big looming nightmares like Vader were in the past and so much more important.
Ben hopes the little girl the tiara belonged to was an adult or offworld when it was removed from her possession. He hopes that it wasn't in her parents' keeping while they were offworld on a business trip and she was killed in the explosion. He hopes that she was an adult merely hanging onto it to give to a child of her own when Alderaan went up in that grand explosion. But he knows that's likely not the truth. Every Alderaanian artifact came with tragedies, with dead bodies, with despairing survivors selling their last possessions for safety or a place to stay. And that makes his gut twist. No one, noble or common or anything inbetween, should be reduced to selling the last remnants of their homeworld just to keep going. Yes, it was the reality of the diaspora - but until this moment, it hadn't ever quite seemed real.
"It was a pale blue star," Ben supplies softly, recalling it with new eyes. "A bit worn, clearly old as opposed to merely damaged. I would hazard a guess that it was the oldest Alderaanian thing I had ever held. The metalwork was very old-fashioned and employed a lot of etching of spikes and small stars into the metalwork, so that when it caught the light, stars glimmered. Even dulled, it was a thing of beauty."
Wait. He squinted at her, confused. "Alderaan had arranged marriages?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-08-13 10:15 pm (UTC)Exposing fraudulent Alderaanian artifacts was something that some smugglers had down to a science. In the First Order, where they were things to be collected and bandied about as a tribute to how rare they were and how thoroughly Vader had wiped out a people, everything was examined intensely, so much so Ben was willing to bet some legitimate artifacts had been passed over for not meeting ridiculously high standards of authenticity. Bold traders would sometimes make claims they couldn't back up, but most everyone knew by now not to pretend to have anything of note from Alderaan, not in Republic territory, anyway. Respect for the Alderaanian massacre and Leia made such things too bad in taste to jest about. Fights had started more than once over such things.
The idea of wearing so much that was so expensive made Ben cringe. No disrespect to his mother's home was meant, but even as Kylo Ren he wouldn't have felt entirely comfortable wearing such things. "I see the wealth disparity on Alderaan was not an exaggeration, then," he noted wryly. "I am glad to hear you disliked it from the outset, or else I would see you in a new and unpleasant light."
He raised an eyebrow, surprised that something so vaguely described could pull so many memories and such information out. Truthfully, Ben did not know the ranks of various Houses or even the names of most. He knew that he didn't like it when Poe called him a prince as a child and he really, truly disliked it when Rey asked him if he was one as an adult. He knew his mother was royalty on some strange technicality, but to what degree, he had never really pried into. There was a lot of hurt in her when Alderaan came up when he was a child, and he learned not to ask, not when big looming nightmares like Vader were in the past and so much more important.
Ben hopes the little girl the tiara belonged to was an adult or offworld when it was removed from her possession. He hopes that it wasn't in her parents' keeping while they were offworld on a business trip and she was killed in the explosion. He hopes that she was an adult merely hanging onto it to give to a child of her own when Alderaan went up in that grand explosion. But he knows that's likely not the truth. Every Alderaanian artifact came with tragedies, with dead bodies, with despairing survivors selling their last possessions for safety or a place to stay. And that makes his gut twist. No one, noble or common or anything inbetween, should be reduced to selling the last remnants of their homeworld just to keep going. Yes, it was the reality of the diaspora - but until this moment, it hadn't ever quite seemed real.
"It was a pale blue star," Ben supplies softly, recalling it with new eyes. "A bit worn, clearly old as opposed to merely damaged. I would hazard a guess that it was the oldest Alderaanian thing I had ever held. The metalwork was very old-fashioned and employed a lot of etching of spikes and small stars into the metalwork, so that when it caught the light, stars glimmered. Even dulled, it was a thing of beauty."
Wait. He squinted at her, confused. "Alderaan had arranged marriages?"