A Fan Suggestion For Princess Leia's Badass New Nickname Just Became STAR WARS Canon

When Star Wars fandom speaks, Lucasfilm listens.

Star Wars: Bloodline, an upcoming novel that centers on Princess (now General) Leia Organa, takes place between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens and explores her political maneuverings and the struggles she faced as The First Order came to power. It also bestows Leia with a badass new nickname ("The Huttslayer") which was suggested by a fan. EW spoke with author Claudia Gray about how that nickname was worked into the larger Star Wars mythos:

Leia encounters a criminal figure who is fascinated by her because she’s known as “The Huttslayer” in the underworld. He even has a holograph recording of her killing Jabba. What made you decide to revisit her time in that skimpy gold bikini?
Right around when I was working on this part of the book there was a movement that went around in some Star Wars fan circles – a lot of talk about how much people don’t like the ‘Slave Leia’ outfit. That’s her most powerless moment in the entire thing… It was a dancing girl outfit, but it gets called a slave outfit. I believe it was a young lady named Angie P, who said, “I petition that we call it The Huttslayer outfit,” and I was like, “That is a great name and that is going to happen right now.”

And now ‘Huttslayer’ is canon! 
Not only did I like recasting that outfit as a memory of Leia being really strong and kick-ass, but think about it – for a human being to kill a Hutt with her bare hands? That’s unbelievable. Anybody who would be able to pull that off would be remembered for it. That would be legend.

How would you say Leia feels about it years later?
She doesn’t regret doing it, but it’s not like something she took a lot of satisfaction in either. It was just an ugly thing she had to do.

That's pretty awesome (and obviously has shades of Jaime Lannister's nickname from Game of Thrones). But Gray didn't stop there. She also retroactively fixed one of the flaws of the original movie by explaining why Leia suddenly slips into an English accent, only for it never to be heard again:

There’s one part of the book that actually uses new logic to repair a flaw in the original movie: her shifting accent.
In interviews, Fisher laughs at herself for that scene she has with [Grand Moff ] Tarkin in A New Hope, because Carrie Fisher has an English accent in that scene, and she doesn’t in any other scene in the movie. She sort of laughs at her younger self for being so influenced by Peter Cushing. But I thought: I’m gonna use that. So there’s an explanation in [Bloodline] that she’s actually making fun of Tarkin. She’s mocking his accent in that moment. She remembers that’s what she was doing. So that moment has been explained. It’s no longer a problem.

It’s never too late to fix a plot hole.
Hopefully, Carrie Fisher would be pleased by that. It had a meaning the whole time.

For more, including how Leia's reacts to finding out Darth Vader is her father, read the entire interview at EW. Star Wars: Bloodline hits shelves this coming Tuesday.