PT Who exactly knew Padme was pregnant?

How far along was Padme, by the way? Women with twins are usually bigger but the babies didn't look premature.

 

It looked as though Padme may have been in her third trimester. Her tummy was pretty big. She was wearing large Senate gowns to cover it so I am pretty sure that not many people knew. Most certainly Palpatine did not know or else he would have hunted the children until he found them. Perhaps Obi-Wan knew and had been discussing things with Padme all along. Padme seemed very open to allowing Obi-Wan to help them.

 

Sometimes people don't know things because they don't want to know them. Because they convince themselves not to ask obvious questions, or to not face or accept certain things they know deep down are true. That way, they have a certain kind of internal plausible deniability - "Well, I don't really know that's true, no matter how strongly I suspect it!"

So the questions are: Who knew, and who "knew" without allowing themselves to know.

In the first group are Padme, Anakin, and Palpatine.

In the second group is Obi-wan, and possibly Yoda.

 

I do not believe Palpatine knew because considering the type of character as portrayed in the films he would have made any attempt he could to wipe out any young force sensitive. If there is one Jedi left there is always that possibility to make more. Palpatine never makes any mention of a Skywalker offspring until two decades later after the destruction of the first Death Star.

 

There's theories that not only did Palpatine know, he made use of her pregnancy- giving Anakin visions of her dying in childbirth.

As to "young force-sensitives"- in the EU, when he found them, he favored corrupting rather than killing. Vader is not his only force-sensitive minion- he has quite a lot.

 

I am still not sure if George Lucas even accepts the Expanded Universe as Cannon. Most of what he says leans to that he does not. He uses some things from the Expanded Universe such as Coruscant as an example but not much else. Another example is that in the Expanded Universe Boba Fett is alive but GL says on the audio in the DVD for Return of the Jedi that Fett is dead.

All Force Sensitives can have visions not just that of the chosen one. I do not see much evidence that Palpatine knew in the prequel trilogy otherwise he may have tried to keep Padme alive in enough time to take the children himself and try to corrupt them from birth. However that is just theory and not concrete. The evidence I see from Anakin having dreams about Padme are similar to the ones he used to have about Shimi.

 

If Palpatine didn't know, then he was certainly offering Anakin an awfully specific solution to a problem he didn't know existed.

 

Hang on, does not Palpatine use the Dark Side to keep Vader alive after his battle with Obi Wan? Or am I thinking of something else?

 

That's debatable.

 

Does anyone think that Bail Organa knew? He was a really close friend to Padme.

 

Bail and Padme were political allies, but she didn't trust him enough to tell him that. Who knows if Padme even told her family.

 

I can understand that.

 

Palpatine definitely knew

 

Yeah..he straight-up said it to Anakin, and used it to turn him to the dark side, how could you miss that?

 

I personally think that everyone knew, but no one said anything. She was hiding it, but not very well. Palpatine knew because how else would Anakin have those visions?

 

Palpatine knew because how else would Anakin have those visions?
---

"he sees things before they happen,(____) it's a Jedi trait"

"it's my mother, she is in pain"

 

I personally feel like Padme's handmaidens, Artoo, Threepio, Anakin, and Obi Wan for a period of time knew.

There's a scene in ROTS where Obi Wan and Padme are exchanging dialogue about where Anakin is and his killing of the younglings. Before Obi Wan departs, he asks Padme, "Anakin is the father, isn't he?"

That question then could lead us to multiple conclusions, such as:
How long did Obi Wan know?
How did he know?
If he knew, did the council know as well?
Did he know about the marriage too?

Digging deeper into this isn't really necessary. The fact that he left that rhetorical question for Padme was just a sign that said, "Hey, I'm not dumb, I know what's going on and I only want the best for my brother."

 

There's a moment in Labyrinth of Evil where Padme is in tears because she's worried about being killed in the invasion of Coruscant:

That, to me, strongly suggests that Bail knows Padme is pregnant and that she is in a relationship with Anakin. I think it would definitely be a case of Bail working it out for himself, rather than Padmé telling him.

I think it's mentioned somewhere (can't remember where, a commentary maybe?) that 'in-universe' they put padding under Padmé's funeral garb to make it look as if she was still pregnant when she died.

I think Obi-Wan probably knew she was pregnant, but not that Anakin was the father until that moment in ROTS when he tells her what Anakin has done. Of course that conflicts somewhat with his seeming knowledge (again Labyrinth of Evil) that she and Anakin were still very close: he actually says to Anakin at one point that he "can't be married to both" (Padmé and the Order). I think the particular expression was just a poor attempt at an in-joke by James Luceno.

Basically with Obi-Wan I can't come to a firm opinion. He probably knew that Padmé was pregnant (if nothing else he spent enough time around her that he could probably sense the change in her), but I have an irresolvable conflict between my interpretation of the Revenge of the Sith scene (that he'd only just realised Anakin was the father) and the fact that if he knew she was pregnant he'd have to be pretty slow on the uptake not to click that Anakin was the father (i.e. what other man was she close enough to?)

I can't even use the "films trump expanded universe in the event of conflict" get-out, because this isn't something stated explicitly in the films

 

We can see this in the film.

 

I did, I saw it in the movie

 

Also, couldn't the people who lived in the Coruscant apartments see that Anakin was with Padme?

 

Labyrinth of Evil says that the pricier apartments in 500 Republica (which was itself a pricy apartment block) had private turbolifts. As an aristocrat from one of the galaxy's wealthier worlds presumably Padme had one of these. This obviously can't mean one turbolift per apartment, but perhaps the turbolifts only picked up one person/party at a time to enable senators and the like to come and go with some degree of privacy/security?

 

I definitely knew.

*pats self on back*

 

Hah, Padme lives in the pervert district. Dozens of sentients just holding binoculars from their windows. Well, Mrs. Amidalla, that's what you get for having your living room also be your front driveway and also your outdoor porch! Kinda hard to keep a secret marriage secret that way, ain't it?

 

It might hav been an open secret in the Senate. I think Dark Lord implied that many Senators knew tha tshe was expecting but they didn't ask her about it.

According to an issue of the Star Wars Insider RotS covers nine days. The last few scenes take place at different times though if I remember correctly.

And you will notice that depending on what she is wearing Padme looks really big. It really shows in her funeral dress. I know that she wasn't pregnant anymore but still.

I got the impression that Padme didn't see a medical profession of any type.

If she knew that she was having twins I don't see her keeping it from Anakin since in the novelization theyt had a quick disagreement whether the baby was a boy or a girl.