It is the home planet of Princess Leia Organa, one of the lead characters in the film series, as well as former Rebel shock trooper Cara Dune.

The draft script opens with a scene in which an "eerie blue-green" planet called Aquilae is threatened by an armed space fortress.

[2] In Lucas' 1975 draft, Adventures of the Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars, the capital planet of Alderaan is described as a floating city in the clouds, "suspended in a sea of cirrus methane".

A planet described in Lucas' draft script as being "under siege by the Imperial Legions of Alderaan" and which is later destroyed is named as Ogana Major.

[3][4] Early sketches commissioned by Lucas from conceptual illustrator Ralph McQuarrie show a design which very closely resembles Cloud City, as featured in the later sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.

[5] In Lucas' third draft, the Imperial City of Alderaan has become the home world of the Sith Lords, and Darth Vader holds Princess Leia captive here.

Lucas continued to hone his script, aided by screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz; names of planets and characters were revised and the narrative was improved, and by the fourth draft, scenes on the Imperial capital planet had been moved to a space station called the Death Star and the peaceful world destroyed by the Empire had taken the name Alderaan.

The battle station's commander, the Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) orders the Death Star's superweapon to be fired at the planet as both a test of the superlaser at full power and as a message to the rest of the galaxy that the price of any type of resistance was extermination.

The adoptive father of Princess Leia, Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) is seen piloting a starship to the planet's surface, which is shown as a mountainous, alpine region covered in snow.

[7] The planet is not featured in the 2016 film Rogue One, but the character Bail Organa makes an appearance, stating that he will return to Alderaan to wait for his daughter, Leia, to bring the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In various stories, Alderaan is presented as the home of the characters Tycho Celchu, and of Ulic Qel Droma who fought in the Great Sith War in 4000 BBY.

[21] In Michael A. Stackpole's 1998 novel, I, Jedi, Alderaan features as the sanctuary of the Caamasi when their home world of Caamas is devastated by the Galactic Empire.

[28] Human life on the planet is evidenced by a number of cities, built to harmonize with the natural environment such as on canyon walls, on stilts along the shoreline or under the polar ice.

The destruction of Alderaan is considered by some as an artistic depiction of the danger of nuclear weapons during the Cold War[31] and some claim it is used as a pop-culture example of inadequate political and military action leading to negative effects.