Everyone has heard of the Alderaan tragedy. Grassy plains and alien ruins, distinguished universities and celebrated museums, soaring thranta's and dazzling glimmerfish were all obliterated in an instant by the Death Star's super laser, leaving only a ragged debris field fittingly called the Graveyard. For thousands of years Alderaan was famous as a world of unspoiled beauty and a center of art, culture, and education. The earliest colonists refused to pave their new home with ferrocrete-one Coruscant was enough for them. Instead, cities were built into canyon crevasses, beneath the polar ice, and on stilts in the shallow saline seas. The rolling plains and gentle breezes attracted some of the greatest artists and philosophers who ever lived. Some sought inspiration in the Castle Lands (empty dirt mounds left by long vanished aliens), while others used the endless fields as their canvas in vast "grass paintings." Though Alderaan had long been a democracy, it still retained a royal family: House Organa. The Organas, ruling from the capital, Alderaan, took an active role on the Old Republic government and helped oversee the voluntary demilitarization of their world after the bloody Clone Wars. After Palpatine's rise, Bail Organa became a founding member of the Rebel Alliance, and his adopted daughter, Leia, followed in his footsteps. 

But Princess Leia was captured above Tatooine by Darth Vader and brought aboard the newly completed Death Star. Grand Moff Tarkin had planned to use his new weapon on Alderaan-as an example to other free-thinking worlds-but now he could also finally crush the Rebellion. The princess was brought to the control center and led to believe that she could save her homeworld by divulging the site of the secret Rebel base. Leia named a location, but it made no difference-the defenseless planet was obliterated. Tarkin, however, made a disastrous error. The callous murder of billions struck angry-not fear-into the galaxy. New allies, seeing the Empire's true face, flocked to the Rebel banner. Imperial spokespeople put their best spin on the story, initially claiming Alderaan had destroyed itself with titanic internal detonations. When a pirated holoclip exposed the lie, the Empire claimed that it's action had been necessary to prevent the release of "Bail Organa's biowar virus." Few, save the staunchest Imperial loyalists, believed that. Today Alderaanians who were safely offworld during the incident make regular pilgrimages to the Graveyard. Among the drifting rocks they leave flowers, poems, and mementos of their lost loved ones. The survivors leave with a new determination: the galaxy must never forget. 

All of this comes from the Essential Guide Book published in 1996.

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