Rewatching ep 1 with my son.
God, Everyone just forgets about Shmi. Padme is rich, and doesn’t take action, the Jedi could send a courriour, and don’t, Anakin waits a decade…
Palpatine could buy her, and then use that to drive a wedge between Anakin and the Jedi…
But everyone just forgets the virgin Shmi.
If we accept book canon, she did. She sent her handmaiden to free slaves and look for Shmi but couldn’t find her. Shmi also got involved with some liberation movements and her old home had some evidence that she was likely already free. So while no one could find her, they knew she probably wasn’t a slave which was at least “good enough”.
As for Anakin, I’m confident that you’re completely right that the Jedi were interested in tackling slavery at a deeper level. I’m sure he believed that if he put in the work and helped the Jedi that they would be able to eliminate slavery.
I think Anakin dreamed of the day he could return to Tatooine not just to free his mother, but to free ALL of Tatooine. He was going off to train and become a big hero, so he’d want to return as a big hero.
The book canon is invalidated by the Lars guy telling anakin that he bought shmi and freed her so she could be his wife.
Not necessarily, could be that the reason Padme’s people couldn’t find her is because Lars already bought and freed her at that point.
They show up at Watto’s looking for her, maybe they were trying to be discreet and didn’t exactly go up to watto and say “hey, do you still own that Skywalker lady?” And instead just sort of poked around in his shop for a bit and checked at her old home and didn’t find her. Maybe they asked around a bit a neighbor said that watto sold her off to some weirdo out in the desert who married her and set her free, but didn’t exactly have the name or address to point them in the right direction to find her because they only had second or third hand knowledge themselves.
Maybe they did ask Watto, and he decided that Lars was a good enough customer that he didn’t want to scare him off by handing out his contact info to some rando asking after his wife.
Maybe they got a straight answer and figured that she’s free and married somewhere is good enough, and they didn’t put more effort into finding her, though that does leave the question of why that info didn’t make it’s way to Padme, and even if she didn’t immediately tell Anakin because obi wan told her not to, you’d think she’d probably tell him when he went off in search of her.