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Tumblr crosspost (13 August 2020)
An anon said:
sometimes it feels almost like people have to justify leia being anakin's daughter to themselves, prove she's really a skywalker, so in doing so they erase the fact that she was raised by someone who was tangentially connected to her biological father at best, as well as padme and luke's canonical traits, like they need to prove that leia is the "real" skywalker where luke isn't
I replied:
I got this a long time ago, but I’ve recently been looking for Skywalker posts and yeah, I tend to feel the same way.
Does Leia resemble Anakin in some ways? Sure. But their similarities operate on meta rather than in-story logic. In-story, Anakin is not her father in any meaningful sense and has almost no impact on her except as Darth Vader. He is, however, Luke’s father—Luke and everyone around him, including Owen and Beru, persistently identify him that way.
And if we’re going with meta logic, the affinity between Anakin and Luke underpins Luke’s entire character arc in the OT, which makes very little sense without it. If Luke is just naturally pure and soft™ by contrast to Anakin-Leia, then what is his struggle even about? Why does Luke’s initial desire to be like Anakin culminate not in rejecting the terrible reality of who Anakin is but claiming to actually be like him? I just … why?!?!
I get the frustration with how thoroughly Leia is sidelined from the Skywalker A-plot (partly but not wholly an artifact of the retcon) and the drive to integrate her into it. I get seeing similarities between Leia and Anakin and finding them significant in a sort of literary sense. But the attempt to make Leia out to be the ~real~ Skywalker and Luke into Padmé 2.0 ignores a lot about how Luke and Leia relate to their respective parents and how their traits and character arcs develop and resolve.
(A long way of saying “yep, this!”)
sometimes it feels almost like people have to justify leia being anakin's daughter to themselves, prove she's really a skywalker, so in doing so they erase the fact that she was raised by someone who was tangentially connected to her biological father at best, as well as padme and luke's canonical traits, like they need to prove that leia is the "real" skywalker where luke isn't
I replied:
I got this a long time ago, but I’ve recently been looking for Skywalker posts and yeah, I tend to feel the same way.
Does Leia resemble Anakin in some ways? Sure. But their similarities operate on meta rather than in-story logic. In-story, Anakin is not her father in any meaningful sense and has almost no impact on her except as Darth Vader. He is, however, Luke’s father—Luke and everyone around him, including Owen and Beru, persistently identify him that way.
And if we’re going with meta logic, the affinity between Anakin and Luke underpins Luke’s entire character arc in the OT, which makes very little sense without it. If Luke is just naturally pure and soft™ by contrast to Anakin-Leia, then what is his struggle even about? Why does Luke’s initial desire to be like Anakin culminate not in rejecting the terrible reality of who Anakin is but claiming to actually be like him? I just … why?!?!
I get the frustration with how thoroughly Leia is sidelined from the Skywalker A-plot (partly but not wholly an artifact of the retcon) and the drive to integrate her into it. I get seeing similarities between Leia and Anakin and finding them significant in a sort of literary sense. But the attempt to make Leia out to be the ~real~ Skywalker and Luke into Padmé 2.0 ignores a lot about how Luke and Leia relate to their respective parents and how their traits and character arcs develop and resolve.
(A long way of saying “yep, this!”)