Star Wars adds first lesbian character
The Star Wars novels are set to add the first canon lesbian character in the franchise’s history.
The long-running sci-fi franchise is set to add a new character, Moff Mors, in Paul S. Kemp’s upcoming novel Lords of the Sith.
Not much is known about Mors, except that she will be a mysterious Imperial character.
A description of the character by Big Shiny Robot says: “Moff Mors is an Imperial who has made some very serious mistakes but she is an incredibly capable leader and spends much of the book working hard to prevent absolute failure. She also happens to be a lesbian.”
Shelly Shapiro, editor of the Star Wars books, said: “This is certainly the first character in canon.
“But there was a gay Mandalorian couple, so it’s not brand new. It’s not something I really think about, it just makes sense.
“There’s a lot of diversity… there should be diversity in ‘Star Wars’.
“You have all these different species and it would be silly to not also recognize that there’s a lot of diversity in humans.
“If there’s any message at all, it’s simply that ‘Star Wars’ is as diverse (or more so because they have alien species) as humanity is in real life and we don’t want to pretend it’s not. It just felt perfectly natural.”
It is not known if the character will make the transition to the Star Wars film universe – with details of upcoming release ‘Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens’ kept closely guarded.
Cucumber creator Russell T Davies previously questioned the lack of diversity in Star Wars, asking: “There are whole vast empires where we don’t exist – there’s not a single gay person in Star Wars, in Star Trek, in Disney, in Pixar, and this stuff isn’t old, it remains current. There’s still a long way to go.”
