Tantive IV

The starship's hull was mainly colored white, as with many CR90 corvettes, and distinctly painted with dark red lines. The interior walls of the craft's corridors and chambers were also adorned in a similar fashion, excluding the maintenance shafts lined with the escape pods, which bore bare pipes without any paneling.

As a vessel of state, the ship featured dining rooms for hosting state dinners, as well as conference centers suitable for negotiations with interstellar dignitaries. Bail Organa had a personal office aboard.

A cluster of structures was present between the stern's eleven engines and the central section topped with four cannons. This cluster sported a ventral passenger entrance lift that extended onto a landing platform, from which passengers descended. Atop this tower was another affixed cannon. Between the central structure and the cockpit located at the head of the corvette was a cannon tower that protruded both upwards and downwards. The Tantive IV also carried four 8-passenger-capacity escape pods, in addition to eight smaller, 4-passenger-capacity ones.

The ship was used by Bail as a mobile headquarters during his duties as the senator of Alderaan, during and after the Clone Wars. Organa took it to Toydaria in order to negotiate with King Katuunko about the possibility of using his world as a staging ground for a Republic supply mission to Ryloth. One year after the rise of the Galactic Empire, it was briefly broken into by Ahsoka Tano in her quest to speak with Bail. She had R2-D2's assistance in this, as the astromech droid secretly opened one of the corvette's airlocks so Ahsoka, wearing a spacesuit, could slip inside. It later assisted with the evacuation of Raada.

In 5 BBY, the Spectres returned C-3PO and R2-D2 to Bail aboard the Tantive IV. The two droids had been on a mission to prevent a shipment of T-7 ion disruptor rifles from falling into Imperial hands, and had encountered the Ghost crew in the process.

When Leia Organa turned sixteen and had her Day of Demand, she was able to requisition the ship for use on relief missions. She took the Tantive IV on her first mission, to Wobani, where she wound up evacuating 100 refugees under the pretense of hiring them as crew for the corvette, unwittingly destroying Bail's secret negotiations to relocate the suffering planet's population. Leia took the vessel on several more missions while completing her Challenge of the Heart, including to the planets Chasmeene and Chal Hudda. During this time, Bail still used the ship for rebel business, including to the rebel base at Paucris Major. The Viceroy evacuated from Paucris in the Tantive IV after Leia arrived warning of the impending arrival of an Imperial fleet in the system.

Shortly before the Battle of Scarif, the Tantive IV was on a mission in which it was severely damaged, requiring extensive repairs to its hyperdrive, engines and weapons. It was in the drydock aboard the Profundity undergoing those repairs when the rebel fleet was forced to scramble to Scarif. Leia had boarded the corvette with the intention of traveling to Tatooine to meet with the exiled Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, the battle breaking out before she could leave. Near the end of the battle, the Tantive IV barely managed to launch from the crippled Rebel flagship and escape the battle with the stolen schematics of the Death Star before Darth Vader could board it to recover them. The crippling of the flagship also damaged the corvette's own electrical grid, leading to its shields and weapons being only partially available.

The Tantive IV immediately set course to Tatooine. The crew did everything in its power to keep the ship running due to the damage, which complicated their escape; while jumps to lightspeed generally left a ship untraceable, the ship's damaged hyperdrive left a unique energy signature that the Empire could follow. Unknown to all, the protocol droid U-3PO had also been secretly reprogrammed by the Empire to serve as an unwitting spy amongst the House of Organa. As the droid happened to be aboard the Tantive IV, the Empire could also track the droid to find the ship.

Captain Raymus Antilles planned to ditch the corvette on Tatooine and acquire a new ship to complete their journey. Eight minutes—three-quarters of a parsec—short of their destination, their hyperdrive motivator gave out, and the Tantive IV was intercepted by the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Devastator. In the following battle, the main reactor of the Tantive IV was shut down, and Imperial stormtroopers boarded the ship. Antilles gave the order for the civilians aboard to launch in the escape pod. After her capture, Princess Leia briefly spotted the ship docked within one of the hangars of the Devastator.

During the battle, R2-D2 and C-3PO, the former carrying the stolen plans, escaped to Tatooine on one of the ship's escape pods. Gunnery captain Bolvan ordered Lieutenant Hija to not fire on the escape pod after detecting it carried no life-forms. On those same orders, Lieutenant Ciena Ree also relented from destroying the pod. Bolvan had thought destroying a target without life-forms would harm a possible promotion due to a lack of kills. Upon realizing the escape pod likely contained the plans, Bolvan and Fleet logistics liaison Arvira conspired to cover up his failing by shifting the blame. The Empire then announced that the corvette had been destroyed in a catastrophic meteor collision.

When Bail Organa returned to Alderaan, following the news of the dissolution of the Imperial Senate, he told his wife, Queen Breha Organa, that the Tantive had been lost, presuming that their daughter was dead. Breha, however, refused to believe the tragic news and over the next few days she and her husband would send out scouts to try to recover the wreckage. In their final moments they reassured one another that Leia was alive.

Decades after the end of the Galactic Civil War, Leia, now leading the Resistance against the First Order, recounted her experiences, thinking that she never learned what happened to the crew of the Tantive IV.

Many years after the end of the Galactic Civil War, a former Imperial senator discovered the remains of the Tantive IV lying derelict in a hangar in the Yarma system. Sympathetic to Leia's cause, the senator repaired the former consular ship and returned it to her as a gift. Leia used the vessel as her personal flagship from the Resistance base on Ajan Kloss.

Given the lack of barracks on the moon, most of the Resistance support crew lived and slept aboard the Tantive IV when not on duty; it was also used as a generator for the Resistance base. In 35 ABY, the starship was used by the Resistance in the decisive battle against the Sith Eternal on Exegol and was piloted by Nien Nunb and Urcos Furdam during the battle. It was briefly disabled when Sith Lord Darth Sidious released a storm of lightning into the air, alongside the rest of the fleet. The attack destroyed one of its engines, setting off numerous secondary explosions and sending it plummeting to Exegol's surface as General Dameron watched in horror, resulting in the loss of the ship.

The Tantive IV first appeared in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, and holds the distinction of being the first ever ship to appear in the franchise.

The design of the ship was originally to be used for the Millennium Falcon, but it was found that both the name and the spacecraft were too similar to the Eagle Transporter from concurrent television series Space: 1999. Thus it was modified and used for the Tantive IV, which had less screen time and didn't have a bird-related name.

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