"Star Wars" will add its first openly LGBT character, author and editor Shelly Shapiro announced last week.
The upcoming novel "Star Wars: Lords of the Sith" will feature a lesbian character, Moff Mors.
Mors is an Imperial leader and the new gay character to be added to the franchise's official canon. Unlike previous "Star Wars" characters, her sexuality is not ambiguous.
"This is certainly the first [gay] character in canon," "Star Wars" editor Shelly Shapiro said. "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 recognise that there's a lot of diversity in humans."
The Mandalorian couple, Goran Beviin and Medrit Vasur, appeared in the "Legacy of the Force" books, but their sexuality was so subtle that some fans could not determine if they were gay. The Big Shiny Robot confirmed that the men were married.
A same-sex relationship is an option in the "Star Wars: The Old Republic" video game, but the franchise has largely been filled with heterosexual, white male characters.
Author Paul S Kemp also confirmed Mors' sexuality, and said that it was a natural progression for the popular series. Shapiro agreed.
"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," she explained. "It just felt perfectly natural."
The next "Star Wars" novel features a female Dathomirian Dark Jedi, Asajj Ventress, as the lead, and is written by a woman. "Lords of the Sith" will be released on April 28.
