This yearning reaches a local peak in measure 4 when it hits the flattened submediant. This is Leia's vulnerability and yearning, the private side of the woman who, in public, is the leader of the Rebellion. ( Marion's theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark is another good example.) The melody's second component, and the one Williams develops more fully, outlines a falling third using an eighth and two 16th notes, and keeps the tune hovering around the unstable second, third and fourth scale degrees. While large melodic leaps traditionally imply heroism and confidence - Otello's "Esultate!" in Act 1 of Verdi's Otello comes to mind - Williams tends to use the major sixth for his love themes. The first is an upward leap of a major sixth, from the dominant to the mediant. The melody of Princess Leia's theme is built of two distinct cells that reflect her character's inherent contradiction. Beneath her tough exterior is a living, breathing human being, subject to her desires and emotions. But as the theme is developed, Williams consistently visits the flat side of the key (especially the flattened supertonic and submediant), whose instability underlines the other important facet of Leia's character: she's the film's romantic lead. Williams set Princess Leia's theme in D major, a key associated with overachievers and negotiators (according to Paolo Pietropaolo's Signature Series), which Leia certainly is: at 18, she became the youngest senator ever of the Galactic Empire and would later be instrumental in establishing the New Republic. A transcription with harmonic analysis of Princess Leia's theme from John Williams' score for Star Wars IV: A New Hope.