CT How did Leia remember her mother at all?

During the "Return of the Jedi" when Luke asked Leia about her mother (actually both Luke and Leia's mother since they are siblings), Leia mentioned that she was young and did not remember much, but said her mother was beautiful.
At the end of "Revenge of the Sith", Luke and Leia's mother, Padme Amidala, died right after giving birth to Luke and Leia. So how could Leia remember anything at all about her mother? Being a newborn infant, there was no way Leia could of developed any memory of Padme just seconds after childbirth before Padme died. If Leia did have the ability to have visions of her mother, then why didn't Luke since they are twins of the same mother?

 

Obviously, the only way Leia could've remembered Padme was through the Force ("things you will see.. the future.. the past.. old friends long gone"). It's fair to ask why Luke didn't had this "memories", but I think it's safe to say that Leia grew up in Alderaan with Bail Organa, who probably did have a portray/hologarphic recording/whatever.. of Padme, who was a fellow senator. Those imagines could've triggered those "memories" (remember that Leia says she remembers "images really", and that she was "beautiful, kind, but sad", which can be deduced from a portait, actually).

And yes, obviously that wasn't Lucas' intention back in 1983, but what of it? I don't believe he should've structured the PT in a way that it didn't contradict anything SUGGESTED by the CL, forgetting narrative logic. It was impossible to have Padme survive the PT and never see her again in the CL. Her death was necessary to create the pathos and drama of Anakin's fall.

 

the force.

 

She watched V for Vendetta.

 

It's because Padme really faked her death and visited her daughter several times when she was a child.

 

Or Thor, wondering why her mother was interested in Captain Kirk's father.

 

Really this makes no sense at all particularly since the twins are only minutes apart. It's anyone's guess since via the films we have no idea.

 

Like the theory about the portrait Inspired by reading of super duper fics by Taramidala and Pandora about handmaidens and particularly Sabe, it would be interesting to theorize that Sabe visited Leia on Alderaan and because of the resemblance to Padme, there could also have been a Force-nudge.

 

My dad was a pimp

My guess is that Leia had a stronger connection to her mother through the memories of the people who knew her mother, like Bail. Where as Luke grew up on a planet where most had probably never even heard of any Queen of Naboo.

 

In TESB, Yoda says that Force users can see the future or the past. TPM established that one doesn't have to be trained to have these visions and that they come in dreams sometimes. Leia, not knowing that she is Force sensitive, thinks of them as memories and Bail and Breha never said otherwise.

 

The Force did it.

 

This.

The correct answer is "we don't know"

 

Agreed with above. The Force can be used too often as a dues ex machina solution to explain the inexplicable. As we all know, GL rewrote the script 20 years after and it was an awkward plot hole if anything. I bet if he could, I bet GL would rewrite the lines from ROTJ as more about Leia remembering feelings and emotions instead of visual descriptions of someone.

 

I thought all that Leia remembered were vague memories.

 

I think Leia might be remembering her foster mother. In ROTS you see Bail hand Leia over to a woman after he got back to Alderaan. Perhaps she died when Leia was still a child too?

 

Not as far as we know - she's referenced as dying with Leia's foster father in ANH, in the newcanon Princess Leia comics, as I recall. The line "your real mother" implies that Luke knows Leia knows she's fostered.

 

Ah, yes you are correct.




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"Kind" and "sad" isn't a visual description. The only visual description she gives is that Padme was "beautiful".

 

She watched the Prequels.

 

Perhaps we'll know in 224 days?

 

I know her pain...

 

True, I did paraphrase a bit - and I had just read the novelization where Leia's internal monologue was revealed. In the novel she knew enough that Luke was asking about her real mother and not her adoptive parents. It also wouldn't jive that Leia remembers things at childbirth that Luke, more trained in the force, cannot. It goes on to indicate Leia remembering her mother dying while Leia was in infancy, not at childbirth, and associates her mother with a hiding in a trunk, and visions of running. It does make mention of how Leia's memories of her mother are dream-like or a distorted vision, however, but again who in this forum can remember clearly of their own first years in infancy?

Again, since Padme was only semi-concious by the end of RoTS instead of running or hiding in trunks, I assume this was a plot hole, and if GL could, he'd go back and change the scene in RoTJ so that Leia would give a more accurate response.

 

Sure, Lucas would've scripted the scene differently if he had done the PT first, but I still wouldn't call a plot hole (besides, the fact that Leia remembers her mother is a detail that doesn't have anything to do with the plot; better call it an inconsistency!).


It would be really interesting to see the reaction to that scene of someone who has seen the Saga in chronological order: is it something that feels wrong and takes the viewer out of the scene? or is it just a magical moment in which Leia can remember "feelings" about Padme?

 

I think it's because, as seen at the end of ESB when she senses Luke, and in ROTJ when she knows Luke survived the second Death Star's explosion, Leia's Force abilities seem to be more emotion-based, whereas Luke is much more traditional in the way he uses the Force. I am guessing, like others have said, that she sees flashes of Padme in Force visions, much like she seemed to with Luke, but didn't know what they were until Luke told her she was Force-sensitive. She may not have known Padme, but a lot of times when it comes to family or others significant to a person, people (and animals) just know, so it's not that unusual, so this explains how she knew it was Padme but did not suspect the Force's involvement. I hope they explore this angle of emotion-based use of the Force in future films, because it would add to and deepen the concept of the Force as a whole.

 

It would be common knowledge that the Organa's adopted a baby, and they would have told Leia before she heard it from other sources. Originally Momma Skywalker was going to go with Leia and live in hiding on Alderaan, before dying a few years later.