So one of the things I love about watching Star Wars: A New Hope after having watched all the other Star Wars movies is howā¦ wellā¦ how normalĀ Lukeās upbringing appears to have been.
Itās not just that he was loved. Itās clear that Breha and Bail Organa loved Leia immensely. But she was a princess functionally from birth, and then became a senator atāwhat? eighteen, nineteen, twenty? Something like that. She was much loved and much trusted, obviously, but her upbringing must have beenā¦Ā āunusualā would be putting it mildly. As a teenager she was learning statecraft and politicsāand deception.
And their mother must have been the same way, queen from such a young age, raised and trained to rule. And their fatherāloved, yes, deeply, and I have no doubt that his mother did her best to protect Anakin from the worst parts of slaveryābut he was still a slave, as was she, and there was only so much they could do.
But Luke! Luke got the gift of a perfectly normal childhood. All the jokes about Luke, the whining about wanting to go to TOSCHE station to pick up some POWER CONVERTERSāthe snippy teenagery conversation he has with his uncle about waitingĀ āa whole nother year????āāthe shooting womp rats in his T-16 back homeāthe fact that left to his own devices, at the same age that Leia is deciding THE FATE OF HER PLANET, heās still playing with model spaceshipsā¦..
ā¦theyāre all signs that he had a normal childhood. That heās a normal eighteen, nineteen, twenty, whatever year old.Ā
I mean, he grew up in a situation where it was completely safeĀ for him to whine to his parent figures. He knew that Lars and Beru wouldnāt make him pay for hisĀ ābut I wanted to go to TOSCHE STATIONā or for hisĀ āI want to go to the academy THIS yearā or whatever. Unlike basically every other Skywalker ever he grew up without a ton of extra pressure, without aĀ āoh by the way youāre going to be king of [planet]ā stuff, withoutĀ āalso youāre the Destined Future of the Jedi.ā They didnāt raise a legacy, or a scionāthey just raised a child. (In point of fact, thatās why Yoda almost rejects him: heās too old, and he was raised too normal.)Ā And since Owen and Beru obviously knew perfectly well who and what he was, thatās actually an astonishing accomplishment. They were delivered an infant who they knew had the approximate destructive power of a nuclear device, and they still raised him asā¦ a kid, a child, a boy who they loved with the same mixture of exasperation and devotion as any parent-figures.
He grew up as a kid, with a gruff but loving uncle and a sweet-tempered aunt, he grew up skeet-shooting womp rats and hanging out with his friends in Anchorhead when he had an excuse to go into townāand itās clear how safe he feels with them because he doesĀ whine and moan and have fits without any apparent worry that heās going to pay for it later. He whines and moans in the way I did at that age: in perfect confidence that while my parents might temporarily snap at me, they would never hurt me, and they would always love me. And that all they really wanted for me was to grow up safe and happy.
tl;dr: Luke Skywalker: the last of the Jedi(?) but also maybe the first of the Jedi to grow up in a normally functional childhood.
(I also really, really want to see the story in which he grieves his aunt and uncle for more than ten seconds. Perhaps I will write it.)
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
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