Luke Skywalker

Luke Skywalker is the main character of the Star Wars films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He is the son of Anakin Skywalker and the twin brother of Princess Leia, and in the expanded universe of Star Wars novels, he eventually marries Mara Jade.

In the films he is played by Mark Hamill. A full character synopsis can be found at Wikipedia.

In Canon
Luke Skywalker's story is nearly a point-for-point classic portrayal of the monomyth, otherwise known as the Hero's Journey.

He does go through significant character development, transforming from the naieve and somewhat whiny kid of A New Hope to the determined hero in The Empire Strikes Back, and finally into the wiser and more stable Jedi of Return of the Jedi.

Overall, he is a nice, sensible kid who handles stress well. He can even be considered a little of a dork where starships and speeders are involved. It's notable that he doesn't lose his good humor and will to fight, even when defeated or in shock. Secretly, he was angry and resentful to his father (now Darth Vader) until he faced him down before the Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi.

In Badfic
In badfic, rather than being the son of Padmé Amidala, Luke is sometimes the son of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, or simply a clone of the former.

There is an awful lot of father/son fluff fic concerning Luke and Anakin. While goodfic can be found, some of it is tiresome, and ends up trivializing the choices of Anakin Skywalker-- or even 'making it all better' without consistant character development to allow something like that to happen.

In this vein, there's fic about if Anakin never fell and instead raised Luke and Leia with Padme as a big happy family. Needless to say, if this happened, the entire plot of the movies NEVER happened, and what is left is a big dreadfully dull mess.