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Lucas and the Lost Bride: Swan Maidens in Star Wars

Five posts into my Folktale Types in Star Wars series, and I’ve finally hit the one that just breaks my heart: The Swan Maiden. Popular podcast What The Force made a splash in the Reylo community a few weeks ago when they posed a theory that used this common folktale as a basis for the idea that Palpatine as the “evil magician” would seek to turn Swan Maiden Rey for her feminine power, possibly even as a sort of romantic rival for Prince Ben Solo. Having delved a bit into the Swan Maiden tale type as part of my Orpheus and Eurydice post, I was intrigued by this idea and wanted to dive deeper to see if there were any further insights to be found. Not only did I find more, but…. I now believe that the Swan Maiden, or rather the universal psychology behind its enduring appeal, was the basis for Star Wars from the very beginning.

Trigger Warnings and Disclaimers: There will be discussion of infertility, miscarriage, divorce, domestic violence, and loss. I’m also going to be indulging in some armchair amateur psychoanalysis here, so take it with a grain of Crait salt since this is not my area of expertise at all. On a related note, some of my arguments are not terribly complimentary to Mr. Lucas, so if you’re sensitive to that, be forewarned.

For this analysis, I relied almost exclusively on In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender, by Barbara Fass Leavy. While her chapter on Orpheus’ Quest was extremely helpful in my first meta of this type, I found the full text of her book even more illuminating, as she gives a great overview of other scholarship on the subject by folklorists and anthropologists alike. Further, she approaches the subject from a self-described feminist perspective, deliberately seeking to provide a perspective that she believes is lacking in prior analyses of Swan Maiden folktales. Her thesis is basically that Swan Maiden tales are not romances at all, but stories of Woman as Other, and therefore of how she must always be either separated from or subjugated by Man. I don’t always agree with her take (which I find somewhat dated), but it’s a great starting point for discussion.

The Swan Maiden Folktale

The basic structure of Swan Maiden stories is as follows: A mortal man is the central character, and at some point in his adventures, he happens upon a beautiful maiden (often surrounded by sisters or other female companionship) who comes from an otherworld or fairy realm. She might be enchanted to appear as a swan, seal, mermaid, or another [water] creature, or she might be a nymph or goddess. Traditionally, the hero “captures” the maiden by taking something from her that is the source of her power or her link to the fairy realm. This stolen item might be her animal skin, or the pattern may be inverted as her captor places a mortal, domestic robe on her. She is then compelled to become his bride, sometimes willingly but often with much weeping and protest.

They live together for some time, and the couple may be happy but there is frequently a suggestion of the fairy wife’s wistfulness and longing for her home, for freedom. Even after she bears his children, there is a sense of the husband’s fear that she will flee if she is able. Eventually, the husband breaks a taboo, such as showing his nakedness to his wife, becoming violent toward her, or otherwise disrespecting her with his behavior. This may also coincide with the fairy wife retrieving the magical item that was stolen from her at her capture. The bond of trust thus broken, she flees back to the otherworld, abandoning her husband and usually her children as well.

Sometimes the story ends here and the fairy wife is lost forever, and other times it continues as the husband “quests” for his lost bride. However, the most common pattern by far is the permanent loss of the fairy wife. In the rare instances that she is recovered, this happens only by two means: either the husband reenacts his wife’s original abduction by recapturing her, which suggests it is not her choice to return with him and that she will be forever under his power, OR as I mentioned in my original Orpheus post, the perspective shifts from husband to wife and the story becomes a Search for the Lost Husband tale, which traditionally ends in the successful reunion of the couple.

Within this basic framework, there are a number of variations and motifs that commonly appear. As I mentioned above, the wife is often classified as an animal bride, which speaks to the bestial nature of woman feared by man. Further, she sometimes has two suitors: one her mortal husband, and the other her demon lover or incubus from the otherworld, her union with whom may in fact predate her capture. Because the loss of the fairy wife is usually final, it can be difficult to tell which husband the narrative intends to be the right match for her, and she usually doesn’t have the agency to choose, anyhow. If she stays with the demon lover, it’s because her bestial nature is her true form, and if she returns to her mortal husband, her flight still stands as an example of how she needs to be dominated and controlled. This stands in stark contrast to the beastly hero of Animal Bridegroom tales, where the assumption is that his human form is his true self and that his transformation is civilizing, emancipatory, and permanent.

Given this universal pattern for the Swan Maiden folktale, we can already see some elements of it emerging in the narrative of the Skywalker Saga. Before we get into that, however, I want to spend some time on the original swan maiden of the Galaxy Far, Far Away: George Lucas’ first wife, Marcia.

Marcia Lucas as the Swan Maiden

Marcia Griffin was a promising young film editor when she got a job mentoring a young George Lucas when they were both assistants to famed editor Verna Fields. Though George was painfully shy and introverted, the two spent enough time together on their work that love blossomed, and they started dating and eventually moved in together. George introduced Marcia to his friend Francis Coppola, who hired her to edit one of his early films, Rain People. Between that and editing another feature film, Medium Cool, Marcia’s career in Los Angeles was just beginning to take off when George proposed to her and convinced her to move to San Francisco with him so he could start his own independent filmmaking career.

Immediately, there are aspects of the Swan Maiden to Marcia. Firstly, the classic folktale bride often comes from a history of female companionship: she is usually surrounded by sisters, other maidens, or a matriarchal group of women. Marcia Griffin was the daughter of a single mother, and she had one sister. Her father, who had divorced their mother when Marcia was only two, was not a part of her life. In LA, she was beginning to succeed in film editing with the support and mentorship of other female film professionals. Part of the fairy bride’s “abduction” from her home world is that she is removed from this sisterhood, separated from the feminine influences in her life. This certainly seems to have been the case with Marcia.

Second, while I certainly don’t mean literally that George Lucas “captured” Marcia, the nature of that motif in the folktale is simply that the swan maiden leaves her own familiar world and enters her husband’s world, which is inherently foreign to her. Even in Cupid and Psyche or Beauty and the Beast variations, the bride’s choice to join her bridegroom in his world and be apart from her family is framed as a sacrifice, something that is not her ideal but is the best option under the circumstances. The few sources that are available suggest that George may have somewhat manipulated Marcia, asking her if she really loved him and wanted to be with him. In any case, moving to San Francisco was great for George’s career but effectively ended Marcia’s for a time. For some months after the move, she had no editing work and basically became a housewife, trying to support George by fixing him meals and encouraging him in his work. She was homesick, too, which is also a common trait of captured fairy wives. Many of the folktale brides chafe in their domestic roles, eventually resenting the mundane existence that they exchanged for their otherworldly former lives.

Another aspect of Marcia that made her like the swan maiden, if only from her husband’s point of view, was the fact that he felt she was somewhat “out of his league” at times. She was very beautiful, and already a successful professional when he was still a student. While George was so introverted and emotionless that it was often off-putting, Marcia was an optimistic extrovert who thrived in social situations and openly expressed her emotions. Even George’s friends expressed surprise that he had found such a wife: “‘She was a knock-out,’ John Milius remembers. ‘We all wondered how little George got this great looking girl. And smart too, obsessed with films. And she was a better editor than he was.’” The fairy wife’s otherworldly beauty and skill often contribute to her mortal husband’s feeling of unease, as he fears that she may recognize the imbalance and leave him.

When George’s first film THX 1138 bombed, Marcia encouraged him to try something the emotionally engaged the audience more. His somewhat cynical response was to film American Graffiti, which his wife helped to edit. The movie was both a crowd-pleaser and a critical success, making the struggling Lucases into overnight millionaires and gaining both of them Oscar nominations. Marcia began to gain more attention for her professional skills, and soon Martin Scorsese asked her to edit his first feature film, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. After a fruitful collaboration, Scorsese invited her back to be the supervising editor on his next film as well, Taxi Driver. While working on these films, Marcia frequently had to be away from home, and George, who was holed up writing his first draft of The Star Wars at the time, was less than thrilled.

His frustration with their separation seemed to be twofold: for one thing, his conservative upbringing had not prepared him for marriage to a successful career woman. “The Lucas family tradition had never allowed a woman to have an independent career--Gloria Katz notes, ‘That was actually a very big step for George; it was consciousness raising.’ George hated cooking and cleaning, and hired a housekeeper while Marcia was away.” And the other reason he didn’t seem to care for Marcia’s work was Scorsese himself, who had a terrible social reputation, especially with women: "’For George the whole thing was that Marcia was going off to this den of iniquity,’ Willard Huyck explains. ‘Marty was wild and he took a lot of drugs and he stayed up all night, had lots of girlfriends. George was a family homebody. He couldn't believe the stories that Marcia told him. George would fume because Marcia was running with these people. She loved being with Marty.’" Some sources say that Scorsese was flirtatious with Marcia, or at least that George thought so. Given this account, I’d argue that Scorsese is the first candidate for the role of demon lover to Marcia’s swan maiden (again, at least from her husband’s perspective). George saw his wife leaving to return to the otherworld, her home in LA, and there she would supposedly cavort with an unscrupulous lecher.

Marcia helped her husband write the final draft of Star Wars, then endured yet more separation as George traveled to Tunisia and England for filming. When the first editor on the film was a dismal disappointment, Marcia took over and along with two other editors, created the final theatrical cut. She is credited in particular with convincing George to keep several small character touches that charmed the audience, for extending emotional scenes for maximum impact, and especially for editing the final Death Star attack that is so iconic today. Despite a difficult production, Star Wars went on to become the most successful movie of all time at that point, and it garnered eleven Oscar nominations. Marcia won for her editing, which was a massive achievement, but George unfortunately did not win for writer or director.

After the exhausting schedule and runaway success of Star Wars, George and Marcia had planned to settle down and have a baby, but they were sadly plagued by infertility. Given that it’s an intensely painful and personal subject that people don’t even talk much about today much less in the 70s, it’s not surprising that the historical record is unclear on exactly what happened. However, the best that I can put together goes something like this: when George and Marcia married in 1969, she was ready to have kids right away, but he was not. It seems they may have waited for a while, but were trying by 1975, when Marcia was editing Taxi Driver. It sounds as though she had a pregnancy then that ended in a miscarriage. Some time after Star Wars was released, around 1978, the couple received the news that George was sterile, and they would never be able to have biological children together.

Every single account I’ve found about Marcia Lucas is written by a man, so I suspect they have no idea what this might have felt like, but I imagine a woman who had been ready for a baby for nearly a decade, had been trying for at least three years, and had experienced at least one miscarriage and maybe more, only to learn that she would never be able to have children with her husband. On top of all the other stresses the couple experienced, that must have been absolutely agonizing. With regards to the Swan Maiden tale, this sad fact relates in a particularly devastating way: in historic folklore, miscarriages were often thought to be caused by the wife’s unfaithfulness to her mortal husband in a tryst with the incubus or demon lover. In fact, the term “incubation” stems from this idea, when people had the superstitious belief that infertility could be cured by the incubus impregnating a woman. I certainly don’t think George Lucas had any such conscious thought to blame his wife and I’m sure he experienced as much pain as she did, especially knowing that it was he who was sterile, but as we will see, he certainly thought his marriage was threatened by a rival.

Around this time, the cracks in the Lucas marriage began to widen. George had always been dismissive and even derogatory toward Marcia, particularly impugning her emotionalism. She stated while they were still married: “But George just said to me, I was stupid and knew nothing. Because I was just a Valley Girl. He was the intellectual." Some time after their marriage ended, she shared more: “I was the more emotional person who came from the heart, and George was the more intellectual and visual, and I thought that provided a nice balance. But George would never acknowledge that to me. I think he resented my criticisms, felt that all I ever did was put him down. In his mind, I always stayed the stupid Valley girl. He never felt I had any talent, he never felt I was very smart and he never gave me much credit. When we were finishing Jedi, George told me he thought I was a pretty good editor. In the sixteen years of our being together I think that was the only time he complimented me." In folktales, this would represent a breaking of a taboo, as harsh treatment of her might cause a cruel husband’s fairy wife to flee.

Further, George never took the break that he promised his wife he would take. Instead, he kept working on the Star Wars sequels, often to such a point of exhaustion that he had to be hospitalized. He was also working on Indiana Jones with his friend Steven Spielberg, and on building Skywalker Ranch. Though the couple finally adopted a daughter in 1981, George would still be away for many weeks at a time working on various projects, leaving Marcia to manage both their daughter and the final stages of design and construction on the Ranch. This is how she met Tom Rodrigues, an artist with whom she developed an attraction. Marcia is open about this fact, but insists she was never physically unfaithful to George. She suggested to marriage counseling to him, which he refused, then suggested a trial separation, which he also refused.

Marcia complained that George was emotionally closed-off, cold, and struggled with intimacy. “[A friend] saw the Lucases at a party… just before the divorce and recalls: ‘I ended up in the corner with Marcia, chatting with her, and what she told me underscored a sense I'd always had that [intimacy] was not a gigantic part of George's life...She just sort of blurted it out that it was extremely isolating; it was like Fortress Lucas. I'd heard this from people who worked with him at that time. They would say, 'I can't stand it. He's brilliant, but it's so cold. I feel like I'm suffocating. I've got to get out of here.' Marcia told me she 'just couldn't stand the darkness any longer.’” For context, Marcia is quoted as making some recommendations during production on Star Wars to emphasize Han Solo’s “virility.” This suggests that sexuality was important to her, so it was likely another stressor in her marriage. In her book, Leavy suggests that many Swan Maiden tales express the husband’s anxiety that his wife will leave him because she is dissatisfied with his sexual performance. This is thought to be the origin of many sexually-coded taboos that are imposed upon the fairy wife, such as the idea that she may not see her husband naked, or that she may not see him in daylight.

In mid-1983, the Lucases finally announced their plans to divorce. They soon decided they would share equal custody of two-year-old daughter Amanda, but George somehow always characterized it as him raising her on his own. From the Empire of Dreams Making of Star Wars documentary: “I ended up getting divorced right as the film Jedi was finished, and I was left to raise my daughter.” This is significant in that it is consistent with one of the most distinctive motifs of the Swan Maiden: she frequently leaves her children behind when she flees her marriage back to the otherworld. While this is clearly not what happened, the fact that George viewed it that way demonstrates where he was psychologically following the divorce. To say that he was devastated is an understatement. Spielberg used the term “pulverized” and their next joint project, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, featured men having their still-beating hearts ripped out of their chests in one of the most famously-gruesome scenes of that era. George admits that the metaphor was a deliberate reaction to the divorce, and Hollywood legend has it that the scene was the origin of the PG-13 rating, so shocking was the imagery.

As an equal business partner, Marcia also took half of Lucasfilm in the divorce, costing George well over the price of another film and effectively halving his filmmaking empire overnight. He would claim in years to come that he did not see the divorce coming, would blame it on the “other man,” and would insist that his overworking was done for his family, but his later filmmaking efforts betray a good deal of guilt. I tend to agree with Michael Kaminski’s conclusion: “At the same time, the separation has a circular irony to it; George emotionally neglected Marcia for years in the hopes of securing his private empire, yet in the end this pushed her away completely, and when she left she took away the private empire that had instigated the process in the first place. His greed cost him his wife, and his empire. It is my opinion that Lucas chose to shape Anakin Skywalker's arc in the prequels in a similar manner because of his reflections on his own self-created loss.”

Like the tragic hero of the Swan Maiden folktales, George Lucas never recovered his lost bride after her flight. And I argue that he wrote their story with rather shocking fidelity in the Prequel Trilogy, featuring the most distinctive Swan Maiden in all of Star Wars: Padme Amidala.

Padme Amidala as Swan Maiden

As I mentioned in my Orpheus and Eurydice post, Padme is first recognizable as the fairy bride when Anakin says to her “Are you an angel?” Immediately, he has identified her as an otherworldly creature, a royal beauty who is clearly out of his league (notwithstanding that he’s a nine-year-old and all). In the films, Padme is idealized to the point that she seems a bit flat, a problem remedied in much of the animated and written content which has been released since then. But at least from George Lucas’ perspective, Padme was the ideal wife. Not the sassy, titillating, tough girl that Leia was in the Original Trilogy, but a sublime, ethereal, motherly figure. She was perfect bride for a tragic hero.

Padme hails from the lush, heavenly, water-soaked world of Naboo. Swan Maidens are nearly always water creatures and their capture often takes place by a body of water like a lake or stream. Naboo not only has such large oceans as to have an entire amphibious culture under the waves, but even the surface-dwellers live among massive waterfalls. Like Padme, but very unlike most of the other planets we’ve seen in the galaxy, Naboo is presented as the image of perfection, a dreamy landscape that reminds the audience that this is, after all, a fantasy. In this way, it is exactly like the fairy world from which the swan maiden comes.

One of the main parallels between Queen Amidala and the swan maiden is her bevy of handmaidens…. While I sadly have not yet read Queen’s Shadow, I understand it delves deeper into the culture of this unique sisterhood. In any case, Padme is consistently surrounded by female companionship when she is on Naboo or representing her homeworld on Coruscant. The queen feels a sense of kinship with and responsibility to her handmaidens, as they do to her. Compare this to one of the most famous examples of swan maiden tales, the ballet Swan Lake, in which Prince Seigfried first spots Odette among a group of swans who are also transformed maidens. When she agrees to marry the prince, Odette is thinking not just of herself, but of gaining freedom for all of her companions. This is why she takes the prince’s mistake so hard later - she feels she has failed the other maidens.

The capture motif starts almost immediately for Padme, with her first being taken captive by the Trade Federation during their attack. Soon, however, she is rescued by the Jedi, but as she has no option but to flee with them to beg help from the Senate, it is as though she is still a captive. This is also where the false bride motif first appears, as I mentioned in my Orpheus post. The queen’s decoy Sabe is dressed in a towering black-feathered gown, almost the precise image of the Black Swan. Later during the finale of The Phantom Menace, we see the real Queen Amidala in a white gown of soft layers, the visual counterpart to her double.

We come to realize that the villain of the saga, Palpatine, also comes from Naboo and exercises a level of manipulative influence over Padme. In this sense, he is the demon lover, the first husband of the swan maiden who often recaptures her from her mortal husband after the taboo is broken. I understand that in Queen’s Shadow, Palpatine’s malicious influence is much clearer, and yet it is far too late when Padme realizes it. While his relationship with Anakin’s bride was never depicted as romantic, Palpatine still qualifies as a demon lover character because his association with the swan maiden is always one of control, a power struggle. He offers her free rein of her heart’s desires if only she will remain under his power. Padme so desires to protect her people, to abolish slavery, and to be with Anakin that she remains blinded to what Palpatine takes in exchange, recognizing how he used her to gain power only when the Republic had already fallen.

On the shores of a secluded lake on Naboo, Anakin woos his reluctant bride, eventually taking her with him to Tatooine to search for his mother. This is another moment of “capture,” for even though Padme comes with him willingly, she is leaving her fairy world to enter the mundane sphere of her husband, where she is painfully out of place. On Naboo, she resisted Anakin on ethical grounds (“We’d be living a lie”), but on Tatooine and then Geonosis (dead planets), she fails to hold him accountable for his violent actions, in a sense losing herself. Notably, her wedding is the last time we see Padme on Naboo before she returns in death, which tracks precisely with the swan maiden tale. The fairy wife’s marriage marks her departure from the otherworld, just as her flight from the mortal world back to her home is often depicted as a literal or metaphorical death.

When Padme becomes pregnant, Anakin’s trauma from losing his mother (twice) resurfaces, and his anxiety over the possibility of losing his wife leads him to become ever more violent throughout Revenge of the Sith. This is extremely common in swan maiden stories, as the flight of the fairy wife frequently occurs right after she gives birth, usually expressing the historical fear of death in childbirth. Some readings even suggest that the husband’s anxiety is less about his wife’s physical safety and more about the loss of the life they had before children, and his fear about the unknowns of parenthood. Naturally, Star Wars takes a more literal approach, as Anakin is literally tormented by dreams of Padme’s death in childbirth.

Eventually, Anakin travels so far down the dark path that he comes to the inevitable breaking of the taboo. As mentioned above, this can take many forms, but in swan maiden tales it is most frequently the husband leaving his wife’s animal skin unattended, OR some direct mistreatment of her. Any form of domestic violence against the fairy wife, for instance, is almost guaranteed to result in her flight. And so it happens with Anakin: he Force-strangles his wife (which parallels the most common form of DV in the real world, manual strangulation), and the betrayal causes her death. Padme leaves behind her children and is interred back on the fairy world of Naboo, eternally separated from her husband. As I mentioned in my original Lost Bride post, this story type typically ends in tragedy like this: the swan maiden is not recovered, and the hero mourns her loss for the rest of his days.

Padme is by far the clearest swan maiden in Star Wars, and her story is sadly an almost exact expression of the tragedy of George and Marcia Lucas. She was an extraordinary woman tied to a mortal man whose fear overcame his love. Fortunately, Padme’s successors were poised to have greater success than she did in love and in folklore….

Leia Organa as the Swan Maiden

Leia is probably the least like the swan maiden of all the Star Wars leading ladies, but interestingly, she is also the one to most frequently experience the main motif of the folktale: the capture. The princess is captured or imprisoned so frequently throughout her story, it’s almost a little jarring when considered with her image as the modern emancipated woman. Still, there are certain motifs that are constant throughout her story, the most notable of which are the capture and the demon lover.

Princess Leia begins her story as another ethereal maiden from a lush and vibrant planet, Alderaan. Almost immediately, she is captured by this story’s demon lover, Darth Vader. Though he is later revealed to be her father, at the time of A New Hope, both the characters and the audience believe there is no relationship between any of the characters, so their roles as folktale archetypes may be different from their eventual position in the story. In any case, Vader takes Leia to the story’s underworld, the aptly-named Death Star. Remember that the capture can go either way: from the otherworld to the mortal world (like Padme), or the mortal world to the otherworld (Leia). There she is tortured with a device holding a needle, which in folklore is always a metaphor for sexual initiation. As I mentioned my Sleeping Beauty post, this tale is a subtype of the Quest for the Lost Bride, so the story is clearly framed this way from the beginning.

Meanwhile, mortal husband Luke (again, their sibling relationship won’t be known for two movies yet) learns of Leia’s capture and sets out on a journey to the underworld/Death Star to reclaim her. He brings with him Han Solo (who will of course turn out to be another mortal husband), and together they work to free the princess from Vader’s clutches. They return her to Yavin IV, yet another life-filled moon, which is an interesting contrast to the false moon of the Death Star. Moons in folklore are a feminine symbol, and in the swan maiden tale, they are usually associated with a transformation or revelation. While Leia never appears as a false bride version of herself, the light and dark “moons” of her story do appear to tell the story of feminine duality. In fact, the motif appears a second time in Return of the Jedi, with the second Death Star and the forest moon of Endor in the roles of dark and light moons, or underworld and mortal world, respectively.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Leia again experiences capture as Han Solo pushes her aboard the Millenium Falcon to escape Vader once again. With Han in the role of mortal husband by this time, the story more closely resembles the traditional swan maiden tale, with the fairy wife falling for her mortal husband and choosing to remain with him of her own free will. On Bespin, she is finally recaptured by the demon lover, as Vader lays his trap for Luke. However, this is where the story changes perspectives from husband to wife, as tends to happen in folktales when the destination is a happy ending. Instead of Leia being lost to the underworld forever like Eurydice, her husband Han is transformed and dragged to the underworld of Jabba’s palace, similar to the Eros and Psyche tale. Now, it is Leia who must pursue him and revive him from his enchanted slumber, a motif I discussed in detail in yet another folktale post.

Of course, the rescue of Han Solo appears to go somewhat awry at first, and Leia is yet again captured, this time by Jabba the Hutt. This time, we see a hint of the stolen garment motif, as the lecherous Jabba takes away her clothes and chains her to him. Getting in touch with her dark side, Leia is able to destroy this particular demon lover (ew), and escapes with Luke and Han. On Endor, Leia appears to have been captured by the Ewoks, though of course we know she went with them willingly (and the clothes change again, although with different intent). And finally, the princess is briefly captured by Stormtroopers before the Ewoks come to the rescue.

There is one more capture of Princess Leia which is an important part of the story, but which never actually occurs on screen, and this is the threat Vader makes when trying to turn Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi. At the thought of his sister recaptured and transformed into a dark version of herself (the false bride), Luke breaks and very nearly kills his father, choosing only at the last moment to turn fully into the light even at the cost of his own life. This scene, though beautiful and poignant, reminds us that the story is told from a masculine perspective, and that the fairy wife is a character who helps tell the male protagonist’s story of maturing into manhood. Return of the Jedi is my favorite Star Wars film, so I have no complaints about this, but it does make me glad that the final trilogy of the Skywalker saga tells the tale from a woman’s perspective….

Rey as the Swan Maiden

The story of Rey of Jakku is fascinating to me because it flips the swan maiden folktale on its head, “subverting expectations” long before Rian Johnson threw our heroine headfirst into a womb-like cave. Since The Force Awakens starts much the same as the previous trilogies, told first from Poe’s perspective and then from Finn’s, respectively, there’s no indication yet that the majority of the tale will center around a heroine’s journey. At first blush, Rey doesn’t seem much the swan maiden at all: she has no female companions, she occupies no magical otherworld, and she doesn’t seem the type to be captured, since she can clearly defend herself handily. She has somewhat of a chaste flirtatious banter with Finn, but he doesn’t quite fit the mortal or beastly husband, either. One could argue that her escape in the Falcon constitutes a kind of capture, but at no time does Rey seem to lack agency or the means of exercising her will.

Until, that is, she meets Maz, whom as I’ve said before is the Oracle in this story. Coming on the heels of her discovery of the Skywalker lightsaber and subsequent Force vision, her encounter with Maz makes it clear to Rey and the audience that her story is not one of rediscovering her lost family, but of finding a new sense of belonging ahead of her. This suggests that she will leave the world of the mundane and enter the otherworld, which is the pattern that the fairy wife takes in the Eros and Psyche variation of the swan maiden folktale. Suddenly, the familiar motifs appear in rapid succession: Rey is at a castle by a lake in a forest, just as most swan maidens are when they are discovered by the hero. She is pursued as the quarry in a hunt, with Kylo Ren in the role of the hunter, a common type for the captor of the fairy bride (Prince Seigfried was hunting when he discovered Odette). And finally, he captures her, sweeping her away in a distinctive bridal carry to his underworld lair. Kylo Ren is not, as it turns out, the mortal husband of this story; he is the demon lover.

The fairy husband or otherworldly lover can take many forms, just as the fairy wife can. He might be a true demon lover, in which case he is understood to be wrong for the heroine and dangerous to her (and to the interests of his mortal rival). He might also be an animal bridegroom, or the beastly husband to the heroine’s beauty, which usually indicates that he will be transformed back to his true princely form by the story’s end. He may be the heroine’s incubus, or the nightmare lover who represents all her dark sexual fantasies. And finally, he might even be a star, as the star-husband or star-bride is a common pattern in North American folktales. Demonic, celestial, or somewhere in between, the fairy husband is often a sure sign that the story focuses on the heroine’s journey rather than the hero’s.

On the underworld of Starkiller Base, Rey awakens from sleep and encounters her monstrous captor, immediately labeling him “creature.” Of course, he then removes his helmet, and Rey finds a handsome prince beneath the beastly skin. In the novelization, she recognized him when he chased her in the woods on Takodana: “She had seen this man before, in a daydream. In a nightmare.” There are other hints that Rey has seen Kylo in dreams before, and when he intrudes on her mind, he finds more dreams there of an ocean and island. Later, in The Last Jedi, their first Force Bond occurs just as Rey is again waking from sleep, and all of the bond scenes have a dreamlike quality to them. In fact, they often take place at night, and are visually coded with clear sexual imagery. All of this sleeping and waking and dreaming of both man and monster makes Kylo Ren a clear folktale figure: Rey’s incubus.

As mentioned above, the incubus is the dream lover of the heroine’s sexual fantasies. While those fantasies might be perfectly natural and healthy for a woman, female sexual appetites have usually been presented in folklore as dangerous, so the man who can satisfy those appetites is often presented as a demonic figure. Often, an incubus is blamed when a fairy wife begins to withdraw from her family, the suggestion being that she has placed her own base desires above the good of the community. If the woman is to retake her place as the good and pure bride of the tale, she must be recaptured from her incubus or he must be destroyed, to cleanse her of her deviant fantasies. If I may editorialize for a moment, I believe this is the dynamic at play in some of the fan arguments that Kylo Ren should die at the end of the trilogy: he is evil and Rey desires him, therefore if she is to remain the heroine of the story, he must die.

Of course, Kylo may not be JUST an incubus. He is, after all, also Ben Solo, which means that he has two forms: the beast and the man. When this is true in folktales, it is understood that the man is the true form concealed by the animal skin, which must be burned away or otherwise destroyed. However, this removal of the beastly skin to reveal the man underneath can also constitute the breaking of the taboo which leads to the separation of the couple. A common taboo is seeing the husband naked, which Rey very nearly does when the Force connects her to a shirtless Ben Solo. While it seems obvious that this was a deliberate choice on Rian Johnson’s part to indicate that Ben shows Rey his true self, we now know that Chris Terrio intends to continue this theme in The Rise of Skywalker: “When Ren takes off his mask, there’s a nakedness about him with Rey that he doesn’t express to anyone else.”

After Ben Solo extends a (naked) hand to her, Rey pursues him to the Supremacy, where the capture motif reappears as she is escorted to Snoke in restraints. Continuing the theme of revealing the true form, Rey calls Ben by his given name, yet another common folktale taboo that the heroine is forbidden to break. There are now so many broken taboos that the flight of the fairy bride is inevitable, and sure enough, when princely Ben proposes to Rey as the demon Kylo Ren, she flees his underworld back to the relative safety of the Resistance. As the story stands at the end of The Last Jedi, the fairy bride has left her animal bridegroom in his otherworld, choosing for now to live in the mortal world of the mundane. However, if the folktale pattern holds, she will not be satisfied there, and will soon begin to long for the otherworld again.

The Swan Maiden in The Rise of Skywalker

So this brings us to the theory raised by What The Force, that the appearance of Palpatine and Dark Rey in the trailers indicate that the final film of the saga will follow something of a Swan Lake pattern, with Palpatine enticing Rey to the Dark Side such that she must be retrieved by a redeemed Ben Solo. It’s definitely a solid idea, but I think that the variants of swan maiden folktales can offer us some surprisingly specific clues as to the path of this last film. First, let’s explore the folklore tradition behind the image of Dark Rey that appeared in the D23 sizzle reel:

Swan maidens are usually presented as beautiful, pure creatures, but there is also something inherently dangerous about them. The dominant capture motif alone speaks to the idea that woman must be possessed and subjugated, and the prevalence of sexual taboos indicate that her unbridled sexuality is fearful to the storyteller. The unmarried maiden is a target of the hero’s hunt for a bride, but the unmarried older woman is an evil witch. This is the “wild woman,” or the projection of the unrepressed feminine.These women are often the false brides of the swan maiden tale: a loathly hag, troll, or succubus who disguises herself as the swan maiden and fools the hero into marrying her. She is usually a male storyteller’s projection that splits the female image into the virginal bride and the man-eating witch. This is true even when the false bride appears in Search for the Lost Husband tales as the heroine’s rival for the prince’s affections.

It is difficult to trace the history of oral tales and whether they vary when passed down by women versus men. However, available evidence suggests that women have often told swan maiden tales not as a warning, but as a fantasy of escape, emancipation, and personal fulfillment. The escape from the mortal husband and his mundane world IS the whole point for women throughout history who have been sold into unhappy marriages, so there is little reason to have the heroine seek out her captor again. Notably, searching wives rarely pursue mortal husbands, but usually are seeking their lost animal bridegrooms instead. For men, on the other hand, the swan maiden story stands as a warning not to neglect or mistreat their wives, lest she run away and thereby cause the breakdown of the family unit. The false bride, therefore, is likely to appear to the hero as a contrast to his pure, true bride, but is unlikely to appear to the fairy wife herself. Then again, you could argue that the swan maiden’s story is one of transforming into the dark and liberated creature that will be truly free of her captor, so the false bride could represent the fairy wife’s temptation to flee her domestic life.

As applied to Rey, this suggests a few possibilities about her dark alter ego: if she appears, whether as vision, clone, or truth to Ben Solo, then she is indeed the classic false bride, the succubus, the Black Swan meant to draw him away from his true bride. In this case, Ben will need to be able to recognize light-side Rey as the real one, and will then be rewarded for his discernment. He could even recognize the true Rey within the Dark version. However, this centers so much of the story around Ben that it leaves almost no character growth for Rey herself, so I think it’s the less likely option.

If, on the other hand, Dark Rey appears in some form to light-side Rey, she will represent less a warning than a temptation to the power she could have if only she would let go of the affection and responsibility she feels toward her mythical husband. Given some of the cast comments about how “everyone has a dark side,” this seems much more probable to me. Seeing an emancipated version of herself, free of all attachments and therefore (so she thinks) free of the pain of rejection, could be a tantalizing concept for Rey, whom we know is positively drowning in her loneliness after her parents, mentors, and would-be lover all failed her. Resisting this temptation and willing herself to remain vulnerable, to keep her heart open to love and hope, would be the ultimate challenge for this character and a fitting ending for a saga of lonely Jedi falling to the Dark Side to protect their shattered hearts.

All of that said, it is a bit of a stretch to say that Dark Rey appears in the tradition of the false bride when she’s potentially not a bride at all, if she’s not specifically meant for Ben Solo’s character arc. In that sense, I don’t really think the Odette/Odile comparison is as apt as it seems based on the aesthetics. I could certainly be wrong and Lucasfilm may choose to have Dark Rey factor into the journeys of BOTH Rey and Ben, which would honestly be a masterstroke of folklore reference and archetypal psychology.

What about Palpatine as the “evil magician” and potential rival for Rey’s heart? Is there merit to this theory based on the folktale motifs? Well, we’ve already discussed the concept of the demon lover, whose relationship with the heroine frequently predates her original capture into the mortal world, and in this sense I do think the Emperor fits the bill. There are a lot of links between Rey and Palpatine buried in the films and expanded lore, most notably her origin on Jakku, which was the site of the Emperor’s “backup plan” if his Empire should fall, as well as possibly his lab which was tasked with seeking the key to immortality. The other distinct tie is in her musical theme, which is in fact a variation on the Emperor’s theme from the original trilogy. Further, if Rey turns out to be the mirror image of Ben Solo, who arose from the Light but fell to the Dark, then she may have her origins in the Dark Side and came the the Light. If so, there could be some kind of historical link between her and Palpatine, much as the swan maiden maintains a tie to her demon lover even after she has married another.

As I mentioned before, Kylo Ren too is a demon lover, specifically an incubus. Palpatine, on the other hand, might be classified as a revenant, or a dark lover that is returned from the dead. The revenant differs from the other enchanted husbands in that he holds no potential to transform into the loving spouse, but only to trick the fairy wife into leaving with him, thereby dragging her into death with him. Swan maidens are often lured from their mortal husbands in the belief that the revenant is a long-dead lover returned to the land of the living, and that her true place is with him. These fairy wives are fooled into following the revenant into Hell, and all of the characters suffer in their eternal separation and abandonment.

It seems very likely that Palpatine may make an offer to Rey which mirrors the ones Kylo made in the previous two films. Though it may or may not be darkly romantic in nature, Darth Sidious’ proposal may be very enticing to Rey if she is at an emotionally fragile moment. Her only hope in that scenario would be to keep faith in Ben Solo, and for him to show himself worthy of that faith by shedding his beastly skin and reclaiming his true identity. By recognizing and pursuing her true husband, Rey would in effect forget the revenant, and he would cease to exist.

The last point I want to make about some likely imagery in The Rise of Skywalker based on the trailers is a reference to a swan maiden tale subtype known as “The Orange Maiden” or “The Love for the Three Oranges.” In this story type, a man cuts into an orange, and a beautiful maiden emerges. She is desperately thirsty and begs him for water, but the man refuses, and she dies. The man cuts open a second orange and the same thing happens. Finally, he cuts open a third orange, and this time he offers her a drink, and the woman agrees to marry him. However, when he leaves her alone by a lake, she is impersonated by a false bride, who fools the bridegroom into marrying her instead. The heroine must then pursue the hero in a classic Search for the Lost Husband tale.

The cutting of the orange is typically a metaphor for sexual initiation, as the mythical husband penetrates the ripe fruit to discover the woman inside. Similarly, Kylo Ren enters Rey’s mind twice in The Force Awakens, and then continues to have sexually-coded encounters with her throughout their onscreen relationship. While I reject the idea that this was a deliberate rape metaphor, the allusion to him taking what was not offered freely is unmistakable.

As many have pointed out before, Rey’s element in the production design of the sequel trilogy is water, which is offered to her in progressively greater amounts throughout the films: Her first appearance in The Force Awakens shows her thirsting, drinking the last few drops from her canteen in the arid desert before rushing away to seek more sustenance. She next finds herself by a lake, and then in a vision in the pouring rain, facing none other than Kylo Ren. Later, Rey is surrounded by snow, another form of water (though not ideal for quenching thirst) as Kylo makes his first offer to her, which of course she cannot accept. In The Last Jedi, Rey is on an island surrounded by water, standing in the rain as she encounters Kylo yet again. Eventually, her association with water is so complete that she is submerged in it as she falls into the cave and emerges dripping. She fights Luke in the rain, then fights alongside Ben Solo on the Supremacy, afterward dripping with sweat and tears. At this point, Kylo makes his second proposal to her, which she again refuses.

If there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that Rey will be completely DRENCHED in the final film of the saga, surrounded as she is by a raging ocean during her duel with Kylo/Ben. This seems like a likely place for a third proposal to take place, one that will hopefully finally quench Rey’s thirst which it seems has yet to be satisfied through the previous two movies. The folktale suggests that the man must learn to care about and give the woman what she needs before she will consent to marry him; and so Ben Solo must learn what it is that Rey truly wants from him in order to make her an offer that she will accept.

However, if Ben and Rey come to some kind of understanding at the end of their Death Star battle, there must still be conflict to resolve. It is for this reason that I think one or both of them may flee the other in a moment of panic or regression, not yet ready to embrace their true self and unite with their soulmate. This would also be the logical moment for Dark Rey to appear in some form, to tempt our heroine and hero in their moment of greatest weakness, when they have been divided. Then one or both mythical spouses would need to pursue the other in order to overcome the lie that separates them.

Conclusion: Triumph of the Swan Maiden

Swan maiden tales represent the feminine ideal of both men and women, but with vastly different aspects. The Quest for the Lost Bride variation of the story is characterized by a deep anxiety that the fairy wife will leave her husband forever, and that he will never be able to retrieve her. To avoid this fate, he overcompensates by capturing and imprisoning her, but this in itself is a broken taboo which will eventually lead to the exact loss that the mythical husband fears. Feminine freedom is a fearful thing, so the masculine must possess and control it, with terrible consequences for both his family and society as a whole.

Meanwhile, the Search for the Lost Husband version of the tale is characterized by the feminine fantasy of freedom, of the agency to make one’s own choices about what she will do and who shall have her heart. As such, she does not shy away from the beast, nor from the demon lover. Instead, she embraces him and pursues her husband’s true form hidden underneath. But, she does these only from a position of freedom and independence: her pursuit of her desires must always follow her escape from her original capture.

The Skywalker Saga tells both of these stories, and the ninth film will show their natural conclusion: The matured masculine will accept the liberated feminine, and the two will unite to ultimately defeat death itself.

Given that swan maiden tales usually end in tragedy, why am I so confident for a happy ending? It’s very simple, really: just as it was natural for George Lucas to tell his story of loss, it will be natural for JJ Abrams to tell his story of unity and balance. Abrams has been married to public relations executive Katie McGrath for almost 24 years, and they have three children together. Further, they are accustomed to working through their differences, as theirs is an interfaith marriage: JJ is Jewish while Katie is Catholic. And finally, Abrams does not appear to be insecure or threatened by his wife, despite her achievements and the fact that she’s taller than him (and even more so in heels, he laughs). While of course we cannot know what their relationship is like behind closed doors, it seems likely that Abrams’ view of romance is much more mature and hopeful than Lucas’ would have been at the time he directed the prequel trilogy. To the extent that the artist’s perspective is expressed through their art, I would expect JJ’s final installment in the Skywalker Saga to be a charming and idealistic romance.

I realize this is a really long way to say “they’re right,” but I thought this deserved a deep dive, so I hope you liked it, dear reader, if you made it this far. If you have not checked out my other entries in this Folktale Types in Star Wars series, you can find those here:

The Search for the Lost Husband: Reylo as Eros and Psyche

More Search for the Lost Husband: The Burning of the Beast’s Skin in Star Wars

The Quest for the Lost Bride: Anidala (and Reylo) as Orpheus and Eurydice

More Quest for the Lost Bride: Sleeping Beauty in Star Wars

Still More Search for the Lost Husband: The Revival of the Prince in Star Wars

…. And if you REALLY liked my ramblings, please consider sharing them! I also deeply appreciate comments, if you have any. Thank you so much, lovely Reylos (and Reylo-curious newbies)!

Oh and by the way, George Lucas remarried in 2013 and seems very happy. <3

Edit: I know the WTForce ladies hate Tumblr but I’m tagging them anyway since this was really all about Marie-Claire’s idea: @theforcerevisited Sorry Twitter isn’t my thing, lovelies!

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