Writer Paul S. Kemp will be introducing the first official LGBT character in his upcoming Star Wars novel Lords of the Sith.
According to Big Shiny Robot, the character will be named Moff Mors, and is described to be “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.” The site completes the description of the character by stating, “[Moff Mors] also happens to be a lesbian.”
The editor of the Star Wars books, Shelly Shapiro, disclosed that there were gay characters before, but this one’s a first in canon.
“This is certainly the first [LGBT] 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.”
Lords of the Sith is scheduled to release April 28th, 2015.
