SPECULATION Leia, do you remember your mother, your real mother?

Sounds like a good reasoning. That and being Force-sensitive would do for Leia. Why Luke does not have any memories? What you said makes lots of sense.

 

Thanks! Yes, memory is a very plastic thing. In fact, the more often people talk to others about them, the more likely the memories are to change, which is kind of counterintuitive but we can alter our memories every time we remember them, due to subtle comments or ideas incorporated from others' reactions to them.. So, ironically, for crimes and things like that, sometimes it's the peripheral person, whom no one has really talked to, who has the most accurate memory of the events they witnessed.

So, Rey's memories about her parents could be pretty good, she hasn't talked to anyone about them in years, if ever. On the other hand, they could be pretty bad because they were "encoded" in a chaotic environment that isn't really conducive to remembering anything. One thing is for certain, recognition is easier than recall, so she might, say, recognize Leia or Luke even though she could not tell someone what they looked like, if asked.

 

Could the leia memory of her mother be a force induced force flash back .....she had a midichlorian count (midichlorian was an equally awful idea) . So could an unware force post cognition flashback write off this most deep plot hole in the story writing

 

"Do you remember Jar Jar...Darth Plageuis?"

 

I read a piece of AU fan-fiction and found maybe the best reasoning behind Leia having memories of her mother:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2440805/5/My-Mother

She was floating in darkness, but she was not afraid. This darkness was a safe darkness, a darkness that protected her from the outside world. She knew that there had to be another world outside of her safe dark world, for she sometimes heard sounds and voices coming from outside the darkness, but she was confident that the sounds would never find her, for her dark world was completely secure.

She was not alone in the darkness either, no, there was someone else with her, someone else who was protected by the darkness. She had no name or other descriptive word for the other being with her, but she felt a bond with it. The other being often touched her with a softness that brought their souls together.

This little dark world with the other being was her complete world. Though she knew there was another world in existence, she had no desire to visit it. The dark world was her home, her life, her eternity, her entire universe. Nothing in it would ever change.

But suddenly and without warning, something did change. Something pushed against her with a mighty force, throwing her against the soft barriers of the dark world. The push abated for a moment, and then a second forceful push thrust her against the barrier, this one even more powerful than the first. She felt something that she had never felt before, fear. The dark world that had always been her sanctuary didn't want her anymore.

As the pushing continued, she felt around for the other being, but to no avail. The other being had already been claimed by the outside world, had already left the darkness forever. Now she was alone, alone for the first time in her existence, and now she too was about to leave the darkness.

Coldness surrounded her, making her even more uncomfortable. Her world was rapidly disappearing, and so was the warmth and security that went with it. Suddenly, a group of hard, solid pieces of coldness pressed against her body, making her cry out as they lifted her out of the darkness.

Seeing light for the first time made her cry out even harder. Light hurt her eyes and made them squint, making her yearn for the darkness. Why was she here? Why couldn't she go back to her safe world? She didn't want to be here with the bright light and the uncomfortable pieces of cold holding her.

But then, the pieces of cold let her go and handed her to pieces of warmth. The warm, soft things that now held her were at least comfortable. They reminded her of the soft barriers that had protected her in her dark world. She stopped crying, feeling a bit secure again.

Her eyes blinked a few times, adjusting to the light, and then she saw something that took her interest. A soft, inviting pair of eyes stared at her with a loving but pained expression. Automatically she was at peace - she immediately felt a bond with these eyes, a bond that was similar to what she had felt with the other being in her dark world, but this bond felt even deeper and stronger. The face the eyes belonged to invited her, comforted her, stimulated her senses. Since she had no words right now, it would not be until later when she would connect the face with words like "beautiful," "kind," and "sad," but in truth, those words were not sufficient to describe how she felt about the face right now.

The face then spoke, in a voice that she had often heard inside the darkness, a voice that had comforted her even when her entire world was secure.

"Leia..."

Leia. She did not know what it meant, but she liked how it sounded.

"Leia..."

She was being moved away from the face. No! No, she wanted to stay...she wanted to learn more about the face...

"Leia..."

Don't take her away...don't take her away...she was never going to see the face again...

"Leia...Leia...Leia..."

Leia woke up. She breathed deeply a few times before opening her eyes, hoping that perhaps this time she would actually remember the details of that face. For as long as she could remember, she had been having that same dream - the dream that carried the only "memories" of her real mother. She didn't know how much of it was actual memories and how much of it was pure dream, but the moment when she first saw her mother's face always came to her so fiercely and vividly that she was convinced that it had to be a real memory. True, when she awoke she had forgotten the physical details of the face, but she never forgot the feelings. The intense feelings always stayed with her in her waking hours, guiding Leia to believe that her mother was beautiful, kind, but sad. That was what she felt; that was what the dream always told her.

 

That's why I find the brother-sister revelation in ROTJ so irksome--even if you take out the clunky ret-conning of the PT, it still feels rushed and shoe-horned in.


The only clunking writing I saw was in ROTJ. One, Leia's response to Luke's question was extremely vague . . . a bit too much, if you ask me. The scene should have never been added in the first place. And the vagueness of Leia's answer still makes me wonder why so many believed that Leia had spent her early years with Padme. And two, many fans honestly believed that Padme would hand Luke over to the Lars and keep Leia to herself. No self-respecting mother of more than one child would do that. She would either hand over both kids or keep them both. Or . . . Padme would have to die, which would lead both of her children into the guardianship of others.