We’ve all seen the Death Star explode, twice. We cheer, the music swells, and the Rebellion wins another day. But buried in all that celebration is one of the darkest, most heartbreaking facts in Star Wars—one that barely anyone talks about. It’s not about the Rebels, or even the destruction. It’s about someone inside the Death Star. Someone whose story adds a layer of tragedy that completely redefines how we see that moment.
Tenn Graneet wasn’t a name you’d find in the movies. He wasn’t an admiral, or a Sith, or anyone with power in the halls of the Empire. He was a gunnery officer—one of the people behind the scenes who made the Death Star actually function. His job was technical, routine, and by Imperial standards, forgettable. But in the Death Star novel, he becomes something much more: the man responsible for firing the weapon that destroyed Alderaan.
What makes Tenn Graneet’s story so tragic is that he did feel guilty for the billions of lives lost because of his actions. In the Death Star novel, we see the beginning of that guilt take root. Before we get to that, though, we have to understand what he did. Graneet was the one who gave the order to fire on Alderaan. And just an hour later, he followed another order—this time to destroy the prison planet Despayre.
From the book “An hour and fifteen minutes after the first beam, Tenn fires the second one. The planet Despare, already scorched lifeless and beset with cataclysmic groundquakes and volcanism, began to shake like some tormented creature in its death throes…” after that Tenn got fired another beam on to the Despayre planet “An hour and nineteen minutes later, when Tenn fired the third beam that blew the charred and burned out cinder apart, shattering into billions of pieces, it seemed almost pointless. Everybody and everything on it had already been roasted, scalded, or drowned.”
After firing on both Alderaan and Despayre, something inside Tenn Graneet broke.
He wasn’t a true believer in the Empire, but he had always done his duty. Until then, he could tell himself it was just war. Just tactics. But vaporizing two entire planets—billions of lives gone by his hand—there was no way to justify that. The weight of it started to crush him. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even look people in the eye anymore.
The Death Star novel describes his torment in brutal detail: “He had sent the beam that killed at least a billion people, maybe more; he didn’t know what the planetary population had been. No doubt there was an up-to-date census in some datafile somewhere, but he wasn’t going looking for it. He didn’t want to know the figures. The bottom line was that he had done it. That knowledge was worse than gut-wrenching. Much worse. Tenn hadn’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since he’d done it, and he didn’t see how he ever could again.”
Tenn saw himself as the biggest mass murderer in galactic history. He knew that if the Rebels ever won, he wouldn’t stand trial—he’d be executed, and he wouldn’t blame them for it. The guilt didn’t just make him question his role—it made him question everything. His loyalty. His purpose. Whether he could do it again if the order came.
And then it did.
During the Battle of Yavin, Tenn was ordered to fire the superlaser again—this time at Yavin 4, the hidden Rebel base. But this time, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hesitated. The order echoed in his mind, but his hand froze. All he could do was tell his crew to “stand by,” stalling for seconds he didn’t have. Deep down, he was praying for something—anything—to stop him from pulling that lever again.
From the novel: “Tenn wasn’t a believer in anything more than he could see and hear and touch, never had been. But now he prayed for a miracle—for something, anything, to deliver him from the burden of so many more deaths. For something to stop it, somehow. With his free hand he activated the comm. ‘Stand by,’ he said, hardly knowing why he was saying it, seeking only to delay the inevitable as long as possible.”
And something did.
In that brief pause, as the countdown to fire ticked down, Luke Skywalker made the shot. The Death Star exploded. Tenn Graneet died at his station, the same one where he had once wiped Alderaan from existence. But in the end, his hesitation-the few seconds he gave up, paralyzed by guilt—helped the Rebels pull off the impossible. He didn’t die a hero. He didn’t die redeemed. But he died trying to stop himself from making the same mistake a third time.