Saga Did Luke know about Shmi?

I've read BFC several times...

never read the thrawn comic adaptation, but I've seen the pic.

 

I'm not so sure. I believe that the Organa family adopted Leia as their daughter so Leia probably grew up believing that Bail and his wife were her biological parents. I don't think she knew until Luke told her that he was her brother and that Anakin Skywalker was their father. To me the "In a way, I've always known" line was Leia saying that she could always sense a connection between her an Luke that she could never explain.

 

Except that in ROTJ Luke asks her, "Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?", which would imply that Leia had a mother who wasn't actually her 'real' mother - most likely Bail's wife, Queen Breha - and that she knew this.

I always took that to mean that the Organas were her adopted parents, and they probably made up some story about who her real parents were.

 

Hmmmm, I could think of another point of view. It could mean that Luke put that in there to see if Leia had any recollections of somebody other than Queen Breha. It may have Luke testing himself to see if his feelings on Leia being his sister were clear, and testing Leia to see if she had any form of "ability" (as I don't think the idea of Force recognition had been developed at the time RotJ was made). If she answered anything that Luke didn't expect, or was confused by the question, it would have given Luke the answer to both his questions and Luke wouldn't have required the conversation to go any further.

 

That's reaching. When GL, Lawrence Kasdan et al were writing the script for ROTJ, they weren't concerned with writing such subtext into the dialogue. It was written for a mainstream audience, and was meant to be understood at a very basic level.
If Luke asks Leia if she remembered her mother, then presses further with "your real mother", the clear implication is that Leia was brought up at one stage by someone who wasn't her biological mother, and that she was aware that this was the case.
Admittedly, the films never actually stated just who Leia's adopted parents were anyway - although virtually every other source did, she was the daughter of Bail Organa, viceroy of Alderaan.

All Luke asked Leia was if she actually remembered her real mother, simply because if she did remember, it was his mother, too. Whatever stories the Organas and maybe others had constructed didn't matter - he knew the truth. He just wanted to know something real about her, something a childhood memory might reveal.