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He looked down at their intertwined fingers. "Leia... do you remember your mother? Your real mother?
The question took her totally by surprise. She'd always felt so close to her adopted parents, it was as if they were her real parents. She almost never thought of her real mother - that was like a dream.
Yet now Luke's question made her start. Flashes from her infancy assaulted her. - distorted visions of running... a beautiful woman... hiding in a trunk. The fragments suddenly threatened to flood her with emotion.
"Yes," she said, pausing to regain her composure. "Just a little bit. She died when I was very young."
"What do you remember?" he pressed. "Tell me."
"Just feelings, really... images." She wanted to let it slide, it was so out of the blue, so far from her immediate concerns... but somehow so loud inside, all of a sudden.
"Tell me," Luke repeated.
She felt surprised by his insistence, but decided to follow him with it, at least for the time being. She trusted him, even when he frightened her. "She was very beautiful," Leia remembered aloud. "Gentle and kind - but sad." She l;ooked deeply into his eyes, seeking his intentions. "Why are you asking me this?"
He turned away, peering back up at the Death Star, as if he'd been on the verge of opening up; then something scared him, and he pulled it all in once more. "I have no memory of my mother," he claimed. "I never knew her."
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Hmm. This proves to me that at least Lucas had in mind that Luke and Leia were still infants when Padme died. Yet the circumstances surrounding it are different in the novel. It makes me wonder if these different circumstances were simply the invention of James Kahn, the author of the novelization, or were given to the author by Lucas himself, as he has done on the prequel novelizations.