I honestly can’t understand the hangups about this issue personally. Why wouldn’t Leia think of her foster mother as her mother? Why wouldn’t the mother she originally spoke of be that foster mother? Why do we even assume she knew her foster mother was not her “real mother”?

Not defending the PT (which I hate), it just seems weird to me that everyone assumes she speaks consciously of her birth mother in her original line.

Lucas’ explanation doesn’t even have to come into play; Leia’s birth mother need never have been in discussion at all.

It seems weird that everyone thinks Luke spoke some kind of magic words when he said “real”, like that would cause Leia to know her foster/adopted parents weren’t her “real” ones. Is it mentioned anywhere that Leia knows before Luke tells her that the people who raised her weren’t her birth parents?

A lot of adopted children never know they are adopted; in Leia’s case, there would be good reason to hide it from her for most of her life, and her father may have gotten blown up before he was able to tell her.