Any take on Luke as just a normal kid whining about freedom should probably account for the fact that he lives on a lawless desert planet controlled by gangsters who kept his father and grandmother as slaves
#like … every time i see a post about how much easier he has it than leia i’m #he absolutely does in some ways #but also leia’s family are wealthy and powerful while luke’s are eking out water from the air
This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.
It really is possible to talk about the ways Leia has been forced to grow up and Luke has been allowed to remain functionally a boy, without dismissing pretty much everything we ever find out about Tatooine and the Skywalkers, or the drastic differences in their opportunities and access to material luxuries. I promise, she’s a good enough character to stand on her own without misrepresenting Luke’s circumstances to prop her up.
