Rey's grandmother?

The Rise of Skywalker novelisation confirmed Rey's father was an imperfect clone of Palpatine, not his biological son.

 

Legends had this explanation that you couldn’t make force sensitive clones because they would go crazy because of the midichlorians or something idk about canon.

The Order of Palpatinus......

 

Yeah, it’s a similar vibe to legends (from what I remember from the book). The Sith Eternal basically tried loads of different ways of cloning Palpatine, but they kept coming out with abnormalities or lacked force sensitivity etc. Rey’s father had no abnormalities but no force sensitivity, so couldn’t house Palpatine’s (and the Sith’s) spirit. Palpatine couldn’t use him, but let him live as a son to continue his bloodline.

 

Does the novelisation says why this clone is imperfect?

 

From what I remember, Rey’s father was pretty much a genetically perfect clone of Palpatine but wasn’t force sensitive at all. So was considered imperfect.

 

Maybe this is off topic, but doesn't the idea of Rey's dad being an imperfect Palpatine clone kinda contradict the idea that she's Palpatine's granddaughter? By what logic is the child of a failed clone the same as a granddaughter? Wouldn't she, if anything, be Palpatine's daughter?

 

From my limited understanding. Clones are actually genetic twins of the host. So technically Palpy is her uncle. But she is still his heir.

 

Rey had a mom. Her mom had a mom. What about her? What about that grandmother? What’s her story? Did she enjoy weird inflatable bread too? I bet she did.

 

I was thinking the same thing when I watched TROS in the theater. Man, I sure hope he gave her some heads up before starting a family. That’s a hell of a commitment to saddled someone with. We all got baggage, but yikes!

“I probably should have mentioned this earlier, honey, but there is a sliiiiiight possibility that . . . we could give birth to the anti-christ. Just uh . . . just puttin’ that out there.”

 

I just would've loved for the reveal scene in TROS to play out like. "You're his granddaughter. Well, the daughter of his clone. So kind of his niece, I guess."

 

Honestly the need for a clone just makes so unnecessary and convoluted. They could have made it his mistress or wife. I guess they could also have taken a woman and forced/paid her to have his child via in-vitro. But that would have been too complicated for a SW film.

That being said the explanation was only in the novelization not the movie.

 

That kinda makes it worse for me, tbh. Because the movie says "Sheev is your grandpa!" And the novel says, "Well, not really ."

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the novel, in this case, lightly retcons the film.

 

Being a father or grandfather hasn't to be taken literally in some cases. Boba Fett is the clone of Jango Fett, but Jango is still considered as Boba's father.

 

Which is essentially what TROS’s editor, Maryann Brandon, had to say about it.

“It was kind of a delicate balance and went back and forth a lot about how much we wanted to reveal...Some scenes changed quite a bit, the way that we wanted to present it to the audience. In the end, we ended up showing a lot less of it than we started with...There was originally a little more information about it, what was keeping [Palpatine] alive...it seemed to go off topic...There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on. I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know,” source

 

That's exactly my point. The movie says, "You're his granddaughter." But the novel comes along and says, "Well, not literally."

If you watch the movie with no knowledge of the novel--as most fans did--you would never think, "Oh yeah, she's figuratively his granddaughter because her dad is a clone."