PT Is Bail Organa a thief?

I know, I know. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

To start with, I never really liked how he seized the opportunity in RotS to claim the baby girl (Leia) before him, Obi-wan and Yoda could even talk and decide the fates of Luke and Leia.

But what about our beloved droids, Artoo and Threepio?

Threepio had become the property of Padme Amidala in AotC, Artoo was the property of Amidala and/or Naboo but practically ended up serving Anakin Skywalker.
Since both belonged to the same married couple that itself would be nothing to write home about.

Nevertheless, on Mustafar in RotS Artoo clearly abandoned his post (Anakin/Vader had ordered him to stay with Anakin's fighter) and joined Obi-Wan and Threepio on Padme's ship and left for Polis Massa, where Bail Organa (and his ship?) had already arrived earlier.

Possible that Threepio and Artoo returned Padme's body and her ship to Naboo. All we saw in the the final film was Bail's ship flying to Naboo, followed by the conference between him, Obi-Wan and Yoda.

We see Threepio and Artoo again in Bail's presence in a corridor of his ship and what happens next is this:

BAIL ORGANA: Captain Antilles.

CAPTAIN ANTILLES: Yes, Your Highness.

BAIL ORGANA: I'm placing these droids in your care. Treat them well. Clean them up. Have the Protocol Droid's mind wiped.

C-3PO: Oh, no.

Apparently everyone was under the impression that Artoo's and Threepio's previous owners had died, but with what justification had they now become the property of the Organa family?

 

Bail was an old friend of Padme's, so its not too far fetched to imagine that he would take them into his care after her death.

 

darskpine10

But technically speaking, didn't they belong to the deceased Padme and should they therefore not have gone to her family relatives on Naboo?

Quite possible that Bail Organa didn't want to put Padme's family into unnecessary danger, but Vader was certainly able to reconstruct where everybody had gone after they left him on Mustafar (i.e. to Naboo to deliver Padmes body) and he was probably eager to deal with his little droid...

The question "who owns" the droids isn't really answered in ANH or ESB, either. "Now" they belonged to Alderaan and Princess Leia but made it to Luke Skywalker. While Owen Lars may have purchased the droids in good faith, they still belonged to the princess, representing Alderaan.

At the beginning of ESB they serve both Luke ("master") and the princess. And in the beginning of ROJ Luke claims to be their master, but that could just be part of their plan, of course.

My general impression: Artoo stayed with Luke while Threepio stayed with Leia.

(what we didn't see in ROJ: "Father, I understand that Artoo and Threepio once belonged to you. Can I keep Artoo and Leia gets Threepio?" "Tell your sister that's right for me"...)

 

That actually comes as a surprise to me. I had read the book with the incident, but had forgotten it.

According to Wookieepedia - the book was one of Jude Watson's Last of the Jedi series - book 4: Death on Naboo:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ryoo_Thule

 

I always considered it to be for the children's protection. Bail is a senator and all of a sudden his daughter has C3-P0 as a personal droid. Bail has to be seen in public, so it would not take long for the Empire to notice. As for Luke's safety, there are some holes in how that went and wont post them here. Nothing in the force is random.

 

The ROTS novel suggests that Artoo was the one who put Padme back on her ship (with 3PO's help) in the first place:


C-3PO cautiously poked his head around the rim of the skiff's hatch.
Though his threat-avoidance subroutines were in full screaming overload, and all he really wanted to be doing was finding some nice dark closet in which to fold himself and power down until this was all over—preferably an armored closet, with a door that locked from the inside, or could be welded shut (he wasn't particular on that point)—he found himself nonetheless creeping down the skiff's landing ramp into what appeared to be a perfectly appalling rain of molten lava and burning cinders...
Which was an entirely ridiculous thing for any sensible droid to be doing, but he kept going because he hadn't liked the sound of those conversations at all.
Not one little bit.
She's hurt, Anakin... she needs medical attention... He shuffled out into the swirling smoke. Burning rocks clattered around him. The Senator was nowhere to be seen, and even if he could find her, he had no idea how he could get her back to her ship—he certainly had not been designed for transporting anything heavier than a tray of cocktails; after all, weight-bearing capability was what cargo droids were for—but through the volcano's roar and the gusts of wind, his sonoreceptors picked up a familiar ferooo-wheep peroo, which his autotranslation protocol converted to DON'T WORRY, YOU'LL BE ALL RIGHT.
He couldn't be entirely certain what the disagreement among the humans was concerned with, but one element had been entirely clear.
"Artoo?" C-3PO called. "Artoo, are you out here?"
A few steps more and C-3PO could see the little astromech: he'd tangled his manipulator arm in the Senator's clothing and was dragging her across the landing deck. "Artoo! Stop that this instant! You'll damage her!"
R2-D2's dome swiveled to bring his photoreceptor to bear on the nervous protocol droid. WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU SUGGEST? it whistled.
"Well... oh, all right. We'll do it together."


As for their precise status - there's a strong implication that Anakin and Padme intended them to be free droids - partners rather than property:



There are so few things a Jedi ever owns; even his lightsaber is less a possession than an expression of his identity. To be a Jedi is to renounce possessions. And Anakin had tried so hard, tried for so long, to do just that.
Even on their wedding day, Anakin had had no devotion-gift for his new wife; he didn't actually own anything.
But love will find a way.
He had brought something like a gift to her apartments in Theed, still a little shy with her, still overwhelmed by finding the feelings in her he'd felt so long himself, not knowing quite how to give her a gift which wasn't really a gift. Nor was it his to give.
Without anything of his own to give except his love, all he could bring her was a friend.
"I didn't have many friends when I was a kid," he'd told her, "so I built one."
And C-3P0 had shuffled in behind him, gleaming as though he'd been plated with solid gold.
Padme had lit up, her eyes gleaming, but she had at first tried to protest. "I can't accept him," she'd said. "I know how much he means to you."
Anakin had only laughed. What use is a protocol droid to a Jedi? Even one as upgraded as 3PO—Anakin had packed his creation with so many extra circuits and subprograms and heuristic algorithms that the droid was practically human.
"I'm not giving him to you," he'd told her. "He's not even really mine to give; when I built him, I was a slave, and everything I did belonged to Watto. Cliegg Lars bought him along with my mother; Owen gave him back to me, but I'm a Jedi. I lave renounced possessions. I guess that means he's free now. What I'm really doing is asking you to look after him for me."
"Look after him?"
"Yes. Maybe even give him a job. He's a little fussy," he'd admitted, "and maybe I shouldn't have given him quite so much self- consciousness—he's a worrier—but he's very smart, and he might be a real help to a big-time diplomat... like, say, a Senator from Naboo?"
Padme then had extended her hand and graciously invited C-3PO to join her staff, because on Naboo, high-functioning droids were respected as thinking beings, and 3PO had been so flustered at being treated like a sentient creature that he'd been barely able to speak, beyond muttering something about hoping he might make himself useful, because after all he was "fluent in over six million forms of communication."


The culmination of the Ceremony of Jedi Knighthood is the severing of the new Jedi Knight's Padawan braid. And it was this that he laid into Padme's trembling hand.
One long, thin braid of his glossy hair: such a little thing, of no value at all.
Such a little thing, that meant the galaxy to him.
And she had kissed him then, and laid her soft cheek against his jaw, and she had whispered in his ear that she had something for him as well.
Out from her closet had whirred R2-D2.
Of course Anakin knew him; he had known him for years— the little droid was a decorated war hero himself, having saved Padme's life back when she had been Queen of Naboo, not to mention helping the nine-year-old Anakin destroy the Trade Federation's Droid Control Ship, breaking the blockade and saving the planet. The Royal Engineers of Naboo's aftermarket wizardry made their modified R-units the most sought after in the galaxy; he'd tried to protest, but she had silenced him with a soft finger against his lips and a gentle smile and a whisper of "After all what does a politician need with an astromech?"
"But I'm a Jedi— "
"That's why I'm not giving him to you," she'd said with a smile. "I'm asking you to look after him. He's not really a gift. He's a friend."

 

The reason the children aren't sent to Naboo is as noted, that they needed to be hidden from the Sith and the Empire. It wouldn't do sending either of them to live with the Naberrie's, for both their safety and the safety of either child. It's easier for Bail to take Leia since there will be fewer questions about how he and Breha are parents to a child, compared to Padme's sister. As to the droids, neither Jedi Master wants them and they could be more useful to the Organas than with either of them.

 

Yes, Leia was adopted by Organa, he VOLUNTEERED to do so, and the Jedi agreed. As he stated he always wanted to adopt a baby girl (And the old EU supplemented this by stating it was impossible for Breha to conceive) and nobody questioned it. Nobody even knew the babies survived so there was no reason to suspect Leia was anything more than a war orphan. Bail was a friend to Padme, and it makes sense he would do what he could to protect her children.

Since Lukes adoption too was brought up above I must say it does make sense to drop him of on a desert planet half the galaxy has never heard of, that also happens to be the only place Vader would never in a million years actually WANT to go, with his family that should be able to be trusted, Both adoptions were about convenience and trust nothing more. Obi-Wan and Yoda TRUSTED Bail and that's why they allowed him to adopt Leia, and they trusted the Lars's to raise Luke right. They needed to find people to raise them fast, and they went for the two easiest candidates to do so.

The Droid are another matter entirely. I can't imagine where else they might go, Padme was dead, and Anakin was psycho (They couldn't exactly give them back to him could they?) Obi-Wan and Yoda had absolutely nor need for either a protocol droid or a Astromech droid so naturally they fell into Bails possession. Just two droids in a galaxy of thousands, very few people could ever recognize them, and the old EU even said he tried to keep them out of the public eye in a sense. When Vader came to visit they were told to hide. But really I see no problem with them either.

 

I think you could argue by the same logic that the droids should go to the couple's children, Luke and Leia. Since Bail Organa adopted Leia, it seems reasonable that the droids are also placed in his care.

As for why Obi-Wan doesn't take one of the droids with him to hand over to the Larses when he hands Luke to them (since we see from the start of Hope that the Larses obviously could use a droid as a helping hand), I think it's merely to ease the storytelling - it would be a pain to have to explain how the Larses' droid went from them to Raymus Antilles in-between Sith and Hope.

 

Valiowk

You are right, it eased the storytelling to provide a bridge to ANH, but it's pretty darn obvious that Owen, Beru and Luke really got the short end of the stick.

Now that Beru had extra work with baby Luke, the droids would have really eased the workload at Lars Homestead. But such mundane considerations apparently didn't register with the concern for the big picture.

Had Lucas really written the whole saga before ANH he could have had Leia just hide the plans in an escape pod and have Artoo and Threepio on Tatooine find them, first.

 

Now that I think about this, I believe that Vader has the top property claim to Artoo and Threepio. Threepio was always his property, he and Padme were married, and he's still alive so they both belong to him after her death. I don't think it matters that Vader denies his past identity as Anakin. In terms of property law, Anakin and Vader are the same person.

Consequently, if the Jedi stayed true to their idealistic value of the rule of law, after Obi-Wan and Yoda figure out that Vader is Anakin, they should go on a intergalactic quest to return Threepio and Artoo to Vader.

Time for a new prequel!

 

It takes a remarkably narrow focus to latch on to the idea of Bail Organa being a thief. It's an absurd notion.

 

Oh, come on. Ease down. He's not impugning Bail's integrity. He's not saying Bail was wrong. He's just saying, technically speaking, when it comes to property law, should Bail really have ownership of the droids? Yes, as a practical matter, the Republic was collapsing; Droid ownership wasn't a top priority.

There was a similar thread a year ago started by someone in the military: technically, wasn't a Threepio a war criminal?

It's a war crime to surrender as a pretext for a surprise attack, and Threepio does just that in ROTJ. This is the same type of thread.



BTW, returning to thead topic: in TESB and ROTJ, Artoo and Threepio may have become collective property of the Rebellion. I'm not sure.

 

As Owen said, he has no need for a Protocol droid. Even in AOTC, it is Beru who does the house hold chores alongside Shmi and Threepio is regulated to working out in the field. We don't see him performing his function until ROTS.

They're Luke's property. He just left Threepio with Leia since he didn't have need for a Protocol droid when an Astromech is more valuable to him as a pilot. That's why it is that way in those films and in TFA, Artoo was with Luke at his Jedi Temple and he later goes to Ahch To, in order to find Luke.

 

Unless, as the ROTS novelization suggests, Anakin freed Threepio immediately after AOTC- offering him the chance to work for Padme as an employee.

Given the limited autonomy of droids, in this case - Bail may be "taking custody of 3PO" rather than "taking ownership of 3PO" - if he can't really function as a fully independent being.

 

Vader didn't need an astromech droid as the imperial fighters do not need such things. Funny right?, the Republic fighters do use astromech units but when the imperial war machine takes over they do away with astromech.

For me I think Obi-wan just didn't think about bringing a droid with him to stay with Luke. R2 was Padme's property. Did Anakin 'steal' him in the first place?, I mean R2D2 was in Padme's personal Nubian class ship or was that a Naboo owned cruiser?, then she lets Anakin use it for the pod racer. Did she specifically transfer ownership to Anakin?, Anakin seems to give 3PO to Padme as a protocol droid. And so it makes sense that it went with Padme and her daughter.

Ownership of droids is a tricky thing it seems. You have to put a restraining bolt so they don't leave you and find a new or old "master" maybe R2 and 3PO "decided" to go with Bail, I mean they knew Tatooine and probably did not want to spend 17 years doing moisture farming int he harsh desert environment.