CT How could Leia Remember her Mother ?

( ( ( through the force things you will see ) ) )
( ( ( other places ) ) )
( ( ( the future ) ) )
( ( ( the past ) ) )
( ( ( old friends long gone ) ) )
​

 

This ^^^^

 

That makes sense, but I always personally took the explanation in the ROTS junior novel, since it worked enough for me.

It describes baby Leia as making sure to memorize her mother's features, which at the time of her death, could certainly be described as "beautiful, kind and sad."

Interesting idea, though, I like that one too.

 

As I've posted elsewhere, I figure she had Force visions that she misinterpreted as actual memories. Not much more than that, I think.

 

I'm sure Breha would do something like that, and I think it's great. Furthermore, I'm not sure that it takes the Force out of the equation.


We'd need to read the whole story, but here Leia is holding on to an image, a feeling, a spark. Not a memory or an understanding, which are created in the brain. How else would a statue and stories create in her deep, vivid, lasting images of her mother without the Force as well? I feel the twice mentioned spark that Leia also has may be a reference to two things; the Force she inherited from Anakin, and the spark inside her mother refers to Padmé's inner qualities, which Leia retains the feelings of in her 'heart'.

Kind, beautiful and sad. These impressions Leia holds are of her mother's inner states and qualities. Her mother died holding on to the knowledge and hope that there was still good in their father, despite the tragedy of everything that occurred. That's compassion, inner beauty and sorrow.

It seems people overlook the fact Leia & Luke are not regular people, they're Force sensitives. Why in a fantasy story about the Force do people need something better than the Force?
Why can't Leia have the Force gift of retaining connections and impressions of people she has a strong connection with? If anything, I think it's a touching way to establish a bond between Leia and her birth mother.
How is this a stretch when Leia sensed Luke calling to her in ESB? In our world we have such notions as telepathy, why is it a bridge too far for SW characters to retain impressions from their own mother they lived inside of for 9 months and had their names spoken to them by? Scientists have come to understand how much of a lasting effect the inner states of the mother can have on the developing child, now add their Force sensitivities on top of that. A real-world-only justification to this scenario is more antithetical to the saga than the negligible line about when Leia implies her mother died.

Why does Leia have these images of her while Luke doesn't? Personally, I like how each of the twins came away with their own resonances Padmé left upon them. Leia with impressions of her inner qualities and Luke with the specific, albeit latent, sense of and disposition to see the good still in their father.

An additional explanation that works for me post-PT is that to protect her from learning too much about her birth parents, whenever Leia asked how old she was when she was adopted, Bail & Breha answered only with "when you were very young". Leia doesn't remember exactly when her mother died, but does have remaining impressions of the short time they were together. So she thus interprets these impressions gained "when she was very young" as more or less toddlerhood memories - not knowing she has the Force.

This line is very open to interpretation. Something Lucas would often do when not completely sure where he was going to go with a certain thing. A story this rich, taking place in such a vast, fully-functioning galaxy doesn't write itself overnight. Though I've tried, I couldn't build a whole galaxy like that. Cut some slack and enjoy the big picture and the underlying themes. One of which being... the Force.

I would say this new book is merely filling in additional details to what already works within the films - despite the fact that Lucas kind of changed the vague part about when the mother died. I don't see why Lucas has to remain married to relatively inconsequential lines like that. It's ultimately nothing that should take one out of the movie.
Did it give off a certain impression that fans sat with for 20 years? Sure, but idk... It didn't bother me. I didn't cement myself into my own head canon, I remained open to whatever Lucas thought was best. What's important is that the underlying themes such as humanity and compassion run through with the same impact, and with that Lucas touch.

I suppose right-brainers and left-brainers really do see some things differently sometimes and that's fine.

 

Maybe Leia had some old Polaroids.

 

This is silly. So Leia was remembering a statue? LOL.

There's no need for this. There's already a perfectly good explanation. In the actual films themselves.

"The Force did it" isn't a bad explanation when what is being explained is explicitly within the bounds of what the Force is known to be capable of. It isn't like this is some arbitrary capability being pulled out of thin air. It's a Force sensitive person having visions of the past. It's a totally trivial thing to explain with the Force.

 

I don't see anything that needs to be fixed. And I don't see anything wrong with Leia recalling vague feelings about her mother, via the Force after her birth. She is the daughter of a powerful Force-sensitive man. Also, it would be easy for Bail and Breha Organa to provide little tidbits about Padme, while Leia was growing up. And I don't recall Leia providing Luke with any real details about their mother in "Return of the Jedi". She made it clear in the movie that her memories were vague . . . just basically feelings.

I don't see the need for Disney to "fix" this aspect of Lucas' story. I get the feeling that the studio isn't going to stop here and in the end, they will ruin Lucas' saga in some effort to "fix" his work. And quite honestly, they're not exactly handling the franchise very well.

Luke simply didn't pick up on Padme's feelings. That's all. You know, the chance of nature.

 

You could maybe explain it away using the Force as the conduit to images of her mother, but not really feelings towards her. It's a stretch either way. The truth is that it is a plot hole. I think so anyway.

 

LUKE
But Han and Leia will die if I
don't.

BEN'S VOICE
You don't know that.

BEN
Even Yoda cannot see their fate. - ESB Script


The Force is capable of a lot, but it doesn't tell everything. Even Palpatine's visions weren't perfect.

"He will come to me?" Vader asked skeptically. This was not what he felt. He
felt drawn.
"Of his own free will," the Emperor assured him. It must be of his own free
will, else all was lost. A spirit could not be coerced into corruption, it had to be
seduced. It had to participate actively. It had to crave. Luke Skywalker knew
these things, and still he circled the black fire, like a cat. Destinies could never be
read with absolute certainty—but Skywalker would come, that was clear. "I have
foreseen it. His compassion for you will be his undoing." Compassion had always
been the weak belly of the Jedi, and forever would be. It was the ultimate
vulnerability. The Emperor had none. "The boy will come to you, and you will
then bring him before me."
Vader bowed low. "As you wish." - ROTJ Novelization

And Force sensing is not an exact science:

 

Because Luke was always more predisposed towards his father. He had a similar personality and grew up in extremely similar circumstances. He spent his entire childhood constantly wondering about him. It doesn't seem like he gave nearly as much thought to his mother until ROTJ.

Leia, on the other hand, was a lot more like Padme. She had a privileged, royal upbringing, and she eventually went into politics and became a senator. She had more of a natural connection to her mother, and so impressions of her mother came upon her much more strongly than they did with Luke.

And again, there's the whole thing where baby Leia's eyes are open while baby Luke's eyes are closed. It's a subtle signifier that Leia is much more conscious and aware of her surroundings than Luke, something which holds true all throughout her life. It's the same reason she tells Luke that, in a way, she's always known he was was her brother. Leia just seems to be more naturally tuned in to things.

A plot hole is something that has no reasonable explanation. Leia remembering her mother does. So it's not a plot hole.

 

I think Leia being the one to sense Padme's feelings happened on the roll of the dice. Or perhaps this was Lucas playing gender politics.

 

A plot hole can be something as simple as an inconsistency, and Leia vaguely remembering her mother despite her mother dying during giving birth to her is certainly that.

If you want to go down the Force route, Yoda tells Luke that though the Force he can see “old friends, long gone” suggesting that he would be able to see people with who he had some kind of relationship with when they were alive, which isn’t the case for Leia and her mother.

It’s a stretch to explain it thus, and so it is a plot hole in my opinion.

 

You're trying to make hard rules for something that has anything but, and you're reading an awful lot into Yoda's comment. Rey had visions of Bespin despite never having been there. She also had visions of Vader's breathing (Dead), Ben's voice (Dead), Luke, R2, Darth Ren, and the Knights of Ren despite never having met them, and thus having no relationship to them.

The Force does what it does in whatever manner it so chooses. The Force can show you the past as well as the future, and Leia didn't know she was Force-sensitive, so she mistook her Force visions as memories.

 

I'm not making hard rules because the concept is abstract as it is. However, each person is likely to have their own take on whether using the Force to explain away or depict events is consistent and reasonable, or a bit of a stretch and somewhat eye-roll inducing.

 

That's fine, but the films do give an explanation. Just because you don't like the explanation doesn't mean it's a plot hole.

You might as well argue that the Harry Potter films have a plot hole because magic isn't real....

 

Feelings for people are generally established through having known them. Leia did not know her mother any more than Luke did. If the Force is being used to establish this connection, then you might expect that Luke, being somewhat more adept at using it, might be able to recall her in this manner, but he doesn't.

The OT makes a strong allusion to the idea that Leia's mother did raise her for a time but died when (she) was "very young" i.e not in childbirth, but when Leia was at an age when she might vaguely remember her (aged four or five maybe) and remember how she felt about her. She even goes on to briefly describe her and her demeanour (beautiful, kind but sad) I think it is a bit of a stretch to suggest she remembers a person's character from a Force image or suchlike. These are the sort of things people say about loved ones who they actually knew and remember, even if vaguely.

For example, my grandad died when my youngest son was four, and he vaguely remembers that my grandad wore a breton type fishing cap, was kind, and smelled of cigarettes (he did, my Grandad was a champion smoker, which ultimately killed him) These are the sort of things you remember when you knew them, experienced being in their company and hold an actual memory of them.

It is an inconsistency of the overall story between trilogies, and my opinion is that it is a plot hole, in the general sense of the word.

 

I don't know about it being a "plot hole", but I agree about it being a deliberate change between trilogies. Like how Lucas put Ian McDiarmid in old-age makeup for AOTC, because his thinking then was that Palpatine's dark Force power was gradually corrupting his body, but in the first half of ROTS it's absent because Lucas decided to reveal Palpatine's full-fledged "Emperor face" at a dramatic moment in the narrative.

 

That's all well and good reasoning.....but it doesn't take the Force into account, and the Force is very much an important aspect of the Star Wars films. You can imply and infer all you want, but the Force easily explains Leia's visions/memories. Again, not liking the explanation doesn't make it a plot hole.

 

Why does it have to be not an inconsistency? Especially since ROTS was made over two decades after ROTJ. Frankly, it's astonishing there aren't more such "plot holes".

 

But if the Force can do whatever it chooses then the question becomes, why did it give Leia these memories and not Luke?
Was it just so that there would not be a plot hole? Is the Force aware that it is in a film and thus takes steps to ensure that there won't be plot holes?
Leia's "memories" of Padme are not shown to impact the story or the characters in any way.
So why does the Force do this? What purpose is served by fooling Leia into thinking she spent time with her mother?

And as for Leia mistaking her visions for actual memories.
There are a number of problems here.
She said she knows when he mother died, is she aware that Padme died in child birth?
If she does know when Padme died then that would conflict with her having memories of a mother that died when she was born.
If she does not know that Padme died in child birth and instead thinks that her mother spent some time with her. That causes a conflict with the fact that she came to Alderaan days old and that is what everyone there would know. So if she talks to Bail about her dreams about a sad but pretty woman and Bail figures out that this is Padme. He would tell her that her mother died in child birth. For him to make up some story that her mother lived on Alderaan for a time is impractical and could easily be proven false.
If he tries to say that she came to Aldreaan when she was 2-3 years old, that is also very easy to disprove.

No, magic in Harry Potter is no plot hole since that is part of the setting.
What might be a plot hole is if magic being used to say, stop bullets several times.
But later the wizards are shot at and none of them uses magic to stop the bullets and no reason is give as to why. That could be seen as a plot hole.

In Star Trek several times they establish that you can't beam through the shields. But from time to time, they do beam through the shields and no explanation is given why they suddenly can when it was impossible before.

What the films show is Padme dying in childbirth and Luke later saying that he has no memory of her, which makes sense, but Leia says she does remember her.
What she looked like, when she died, how she was like to Leia and that she was sad about something.
This causes a conflict but the films offer no explanation as to why this is.

What we have are various fan theories;
Bail showed Leia pictures and told her about Padme.
Leia is thinking about Bail's first wife.
The Force.
There are probably others.

The Force explanation has the above mentioned problem that is causes a conflict with Leia's actual life and that she came to Alderaan days old. Bail could fudge her birth date a little to make it occur before Leia was born in order to throw Palpatine off.
But he would not be able to spinn some tale about Leia's "mother" living on Alderaan for a few years nor would he have any logical reason to do so.

The Force explanation also has the problem that Luke has no memories at all.
And the idea that he was more focused on his father and lived in a place where his father used to live.
Luke has no memories of his father either.
If Luke had some "memories" of his father then this could work. But he has no memory of either of his parents. He is more curious about his father and thinks more about him. But that does not mean he "remembers" him. So this does not work.
And Leia never talks about her mother except when Luke asks her.

The backstory changed and now there is an inconsistency that is not explained.
Simple as that.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

But, with respect, isn't it fair to say that you are also inferring and implying that "the Force" was responsible simply because you prefer not to accept that this is an inconsistency between trilogies and something of a plot hole?