She was my first princess, and she is still the image I carry in my mind when the word princess arises in any context. The year was 1977 and I was eight when Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was released. I watched in awe as Princess Leia and Luke and Han and Chewie zoomed across the big screen. A few years later when The Empire Strikes Back was released I would learn that my heroes could be cut and they could bleed and they could lose, but in that first movie they seemed indestructible. Darth Vader couldn’t catch them. The trash compactor couldn’t smash them. No matter how many blasters were aimed at R2D2 none of them would ever hit him. And the Death Star… well let’s just say it was no match for my heroes.
As a little boy I identified with Luke—even though I really wished I could be as cool as Han. And, of course, I fell in love with Leia, and by extension, Carrie Fisher. She was beautiful to be sure, but she was far more than just beautiful. She was tough and sharp-tongued and quick-witted. She was a rebel bad-ass who could take it and dish it out with the best of them, and was also more than a fair-shot with a blaster. She survived the worst torture that Vader and that sinister, floating, needle-carrying bot could dish out, and still didn’t give up the location of the rebel base. She watched her planet get blown from existence and still did not break. Even after what must had been a soul-shattering experience she was game enough to carry-on. It was she, not Han or Luke, that led them to escape through the trash chute, and it was she that ultimately brought them and the plans to the rebels giving the galaxy that “one-in-a-million” chance to defeat the Empire. In other words, she was an ideal princess for a new age.
How appropriately ironic that this princess of mine would—Sleeping Beauty-like–slumber for thirty-two years only to awake again in the aptly named Force Awakens episode of the Star Wars saga to thrill us once more. And, if she was less prone to wise-cracks and swinging across chasms, then so was I. She may have been sadder and wiser, but she was still my princess, and every time she was on screen I was reveled in her presence there. I also knew more about her. From her many autobiographical books like Wishful Drinking, and semi-autobiographical books like Postcards From the Edge, I knew that Fisher herself embodied many of the traits I admired in Leia. As Brian Jay Jones wrote in his new biography, George Lucas: A Life, “Fisher had a wicked sense of humor and a foul mouth — fueled at times by a drug habit she managed to keep mostly hidden — and she had no trouble at all playing a tough-talking princess.” If anything, the knowledge that she, like so many, had struggled to find their place in the world, only helped to make her more real, and more identifiable.
Today my princess left this world. Like all great fairytale characters she will live on forever in the stories she left behind, and she will continue to bring joy to millions, but knowing this doesn’t make today feel any better. She was my princess, and I will miss her. Rest in Peace, Carrie. Wherever you are may you live happily ever after, and may the force be with you—always.
Jack Heckel 
That was amazingly well written, sir.