Yes, you make fair points about how limited Leia's role was in the films and how it seems completely adverse to her influence and supposed power within the Senate/Rebel Alliance which certainly doesn't seem very plausible. However outside of the films, in literature and radio adaptations her role is far stronger and demonstrates that she is in fact the more gifted and powerful of the siblings with the ability to save her brother once he has succumbed to the Emperor's will (although that section of the saga was even more poorly written than Jar Jar Binks' character). Like Yoda hinted, there is one other...