Hubby has put in the disk to the first movie and as I watch Darth Vader try to blow his daughter out of the sky, I wonder why didn’t they “feel” each other? Another question of which I know there is no answer-- It’s been years since I’ve sat down to watch Star Wars since the beginning, what the hell kind of accent was Leia speaking at the very beginning of this movie? Man, I’m glad she stopped doing that before too long.
It’s a sort of Brit accent. Makes sense. She seems to use it mostly when addressing the Imperials.
My guess is she hasn’t been “turned on” by force training. Vader didn’t feel Luke as he shot at him in the Death Star trench, he could just tell that the pilot he was facing was talented in the force (presumably by using precognition to dodge his blasts).
Later, after training with Yoda, they stood out like beacons to each other. Just like Obi Wan did on the Death Star.
As an aside, my biggest problem with the original SW film universe, is that they elect teenagers into the Senate for no particular reason.
I have been told by my husband that Leia has as much force power (or whatever it’s called) as Luke and before her training in her later years, it was naturally funneled to government administration and nation building. That was the only time I ever caught my husband wanking.
It’s not even clear that Leia ever trained as a Jedi after Return of the Jedi. The old books were never canon in regards to the films and they’ve now officially been deemed apocryphal.
Lobohan’s answer of Leia’s Force potential not being activated seems about right. (Of course, in truth they weren’t related in Lucas’ mind at the time.)
My impression of this watching the films and The Clone Wars show is that in universe a British accent is indicative of the upper class on Corusant, and maybe other worlds. That is the in universe wank I came up with, so maybe Leia was trying to sound important and high class 
In TCW it becomes obvious that the… er species with the two head tentacles all speak with a French accent mostly. I liked this aspect of the movies and show, that different worlds and languages had different accents that incidentally mapped to real ones.
I checked out of the Extended Universe a long time ago,* but iirc, the word there was that Leia had almost no force sensitivity at all, despite Luke going his best to train her. That might have been changed later on, though.
*Dont start.
No, she becomes a Jedi rather late in life I’m assured.
nm. Redundant.
I would reckon that he didn’t “feel” that Luke and Leia were his children simply because he wasn’t “looking”. After all, so far as he knew, he’d killed Padme prior to childbirth; I don’t think he even knew she was carrying twins. He had no idea at all that he had a kid, much less two, so he wasn’t looking for that sort of connection. Fanwanking that detecting that sort of connection would require looking for that sort of connection, true, but it seems reasonable to me.
Mind you, once Radio Free Rebel started talking up Luke Skywalker, killer of the Death Star, I imagine he worked out that bit pretty darn quick.
What I don’t get is if Force-sensitivity is heritable, why do the Jedi lead seemingly celibate lives? Shouldn’t they be encouraging mating within their membership?
Vader: “Skywalker? Hmm, that was my last name.” [Reads report] “From Tattoine? Wait, at the house my stepfather owned?” [Keeps reading report and looks at stills from Death Star security footage] “What the fuck, is that the protocol droid I built when I was a kid? Holy shit, is that the R2 Unit that saved Amidalla’s ship?”
Because Lucas.
He obviously knew Luke was force sensitive even in the first movie(ANH), Vader himself says hmm the force is strong with this one. I would wager he also realized Leia was force sensitive(yea Lucas had no idea at the time, but there is nothing in the film to contradict it).
But so what really? The galaxy is full of untrained force sensitives, Vader could probably go to a market on any random planet and detect dozens of people with some level of force sensitivity. Fan wanking I’d bet a lot of high ranking people of any stripe are force sensitives, especially diplomats and senators like Leia.
That’s pretty much what I mean - he could tell easily that Luke was strong in the Force, but he had no reason to try to sense much more about him - certainly not any family connection. When they first “met”, he just had to shoot him down - and if it weren’t for Han, he would have.
Exactly. He would see her force sensitivity as being one of the reasons for her success in politics and more immediately as a complication in her interrogation. In movie, he does note that her resistance to the mind probe is quite considerable. In the EU, her force sensitivity is given as the reason.
He would not think and have no reason to think Force Sensitive=My bastard Child.
Because at that point in the filming, it hadn’t been decided that Leia was Vader’s daughter.
Um, Anakin and Padme were married in Ep. II, so Leia actually wasn’t his bastard child.