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"A Jedi," Mace said, trying his best not to sound skeptical. "You brother was an 'official' Jedi."
"The last Jedi," Leia said. "Probably. Technically there might have been some others that were missing and survived. But none of them revealed themselves after the war was over. So yes. The last official Jedi."
Since this was Leia Skywalker, Mace was pretty sure she knew what "official" meant. "So who trained him?"
"Pardon?" She should not have been offended by the question. It was perfectly reasonable.
"Which Jedi Master trained your brother. Officially."
All of this story was too much. She had told him it would be when he'd demanded it as his winnings for a frankly ghastly game of sabacc that he'd won by the skin of his teeth. He still didn't know what she had been planning to demand from him, and hoped he never would.
She'd still stipulated that if she told him the truth, he was required to believe everything she said.
Which, in hindsight, was fair.
(He should have known then this was a bad idea.)
Leia gave Mace a long look before dropping, "Obi-Wan Kenobi," like a grenade.
Great. He really didn't want to know that.
"Obi-Wan knighted Luke Skywalker," Mace repeated, feeling the grief of that down to his bones. After Anakin…well, Obi-Wan was loyal. And loving. It shouldn't have been a surprise. What was more surprising though was, "But not you?"
"He didn't knight either of us," Leia said. "He died. But he did start Luke's training. Yoda finished it. Mostly."
"Mostly?" Mace had developed a number of diplomatic skills over the years between his time as a knight and his position on the Council. They weren't as polished as he wished, but he knew he was in deep water and sinking if he'd slipped into automatically repeating things because he could not get better information from more complex questions.
"He technically didn't knight Luke either. But he didn't complain when Luke called himself a Jedi, so we figured it was fine."
"Not being acknowledged by the Grandmaster of the Order is…not ideal," Mace said, tipping towards real anger. The titles weren't a joke. They meant something, especially to those who had worked for them. Even if the Order was mostly dust, to not be acknowledged by Yoda…
"I mean, he was dead. His ghost was a bit less crazy than when Luke was training with him in the swamp, but he seemed pretty happy to be done being in charge and leave things to a new generation. He wanted the Order formally reorganized quickly, but he knew we hadn't finalized the New Republic yet, or gotten the support we needed for it. And his vision for the Order was for it to essentially fill the same role as before, so there wouldn't have been much point to more formality until we had a new government running."
After what could have been several seconds or maybe a few minutes Mace decided to take each piece of that one at a time. "Yoda was dead."
"Yes. He died after he finished Luke's training but before acknowledging him as a Jedi."
"He considered Luke's training done, but didn't consider him a Jedi?"
"Luke said he wouldn't kill Vader."
Well, being willing to kill a Sith Lord was a rather important quality for a Jedi to have, regardless of other training. "I see."
"But then Vader gave up the dark side and killed his master, so I guess Yoda decided that Luke's method was good enough."
No. Mace wasn't touching that one. "Yoda was…crazy?"
"I mean, I didn't really speak to him much. Not at all before he died. I thought he was cryptic and annoying, but not necessarily crazy. But Luke was the one who had to do handstands while blindly levitating boulders, and he hated humidity because he was always a Tatooine farmboy at heart. So I never argued with him over the details."
That didn't sound too crazy for training. Unconventional certainly. But if there were time constraints and limited resources… "You didn't have a new government?"
Leia had to take a deep, deep breath for that one. "We had a working council of systems who had representatives that had been members of the Alliance to restore the Republic that were willing to make new treaties when the Emperor died without any sort of heir established."
"That sounds…unwise."
"I think people assumed Vader would take over. More fool them."
Mace gave himself the grace of not imagining Anakin Skywalker in charge of the entire galaxy. "So there was no formal Order, but Luke was the last Jedi trained by other Jedi masters and acknowledged…posthumously…as a Jedi Knight himself."
"Sure, I guess."
"And you…weren't part of the fledgling order?"
It seemed like a dangerous question, but an important one.
Leia eventually said, "Luke offered me some training, once things settled down. But I was busy enough with trying to sort out what would happen to Alderaan's survivors and getting the new Republic up and running. I don't think he ever expected me to reach his level."
Mace didn't want to touch this one either, but it seemed…important. Especially given Leia's strange relationship to the Order here. "Alderaan?"
She'd mentioned she'd been raised there, but—
"Oh, it blew up."
She…wasn't joking. "Blew up?"
"Yes. The Emperor built a space station to blow up planets. Twice. We destroyed them."
"You and Luke?"
"The Alliance," Leia shook her head. "Although, now that I think about it, we probably could have, together. If we'd known some of the things we know now."
"We?"
Mace felt his stomach bottom out with the slow stretch of that smile.