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As per Wookieepedia

To hinder transgression, those who showed an aptitude for the Force were taken directly from birth (or soon afterward) to train in the Jedi Temple headquarters on Coruscant or at smaller Jedi Enclaves as Padawans.

Why was Palpatine, who was strong in the Force, not identified as a potential Jedi at birth?

DavidW
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DavRob60
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    Why wasn't Anakin identified as a potential Jedi at birth? – zzzzBov Jul 30 '12 at 16:22
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    @zzzzBov in The Phantom Menace Qui-Gon said to Shmi (Anakin's mother) : "Had he been born in the Republic, we would have identified him early, and he would have become Jedi, no doubt...he has the way.". So the fact Tatooine was outside of the republic's influence played against him. Meanwhile, Naboo was part of the Republic when Palpatine was born. – DavRob60 Jul 30 '12 at 16:38

3 Answers3

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This is speculation as I have not read any definitive reason.

I've never read anything regarding the Jedi testing/identification implying that it was mandatory.

Palpatine's father was concerned regarding his son's murderous nature from the child's infancy (explained in the book "Plagueis"). Coupled with being a reasonably wealthy house, I don't find it out of the realm of possibility that his father just didn't want his son tested.

DavidW
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phantom42
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    There are thousands of Jedi, but billions of people in the galaxy (on Coruscant alone, there were billions). It is not feasible that everyone would be tested or even noticed. – The Fallen Jul 30 '12 at 15:52
  • SSumner: Trillions, in fact! – Lotus Notes Jul 30 '12 at 17:33
  • Yeah...I didn't feel like looking up how many there were. I realized after I posted it there were trillions but...it's just a comment – The Fallen Jul 30 '12 at 19:29
  • @SSumner "It is not feasible that everyone would be tested" Except that the device to perform the test is so common, or cheap, that every Jedi is likely to be carrying one with them, given that Qui-Gon Jinn just happened to have one on his trip to Naboo, and considered it important enough to take with him when fleeing to Tatooine. Force powers are likely so valuable to certain parties that testing would be ubiquitous. The Jedi order certainly must be interested in making sure no one slips through to adulthood with significant powers. – Adam Davis Mar 11 '14 at 20:56
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    @AdamDavis - Yes, but even at the height of the Jedi Order, there were only thousands of Jedi for the entire galaxy. And I don't recall how many worlds there were with populations, but it was certainly in the thousands. There's no way every Jedi could test millions of people, even if that's all they did – The Fallen Mar 12 '14 at 13:00
  • @TheFallen Who says only Jedi can perform the test? A regular labour ward nurse should be able to do it easily enough and send the results to some centralised Jedi mainframe that weeds out individuals with high enough Midichlorian counts. Home births with absolutely no official intervention would be the only place where it would actually be difficult to carry out. And even then, most planets presumably had birth registries just like we do here on earth. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 14 '16 at 04:33
  • The Ruusan Reformation mandates that all newborns within the Republic must be tested at birth. It is done as part of all routine medical tests in the Republic. The average Human has a count of less than 2500, while weak sensitives are above 5000. Anakin had over 20,000, while the Skywalker twins have 15,000 each. Newborns with abnormally high counts have their reports forwarded to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for the Jedi to follow up. – thegreatjedi Apr 14 '16 at 06:46
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    For one, it's very difficult to escape detection if you're born on a Republic member world: the test so easy to administer it's ubiquitous. Few would want to reject a test: Having a Force sensitive in the family is considered to be extremely beneficial to one's social and political standing, especially in advanced galactic society. The top 0.01% have the least reason to reject opportunities to be associated with the Jedi. – thegreatjedi Apr 14 '16 at 06:51
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In the book Darth Plagiues, Plagueis meets Palpatine as a young boy and cannot sense the Force in him. He wondered if Palpatine had learnt to hide his presence at an early age and later uses an incident with Palpatine's father to show his true nature.

Both Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious learn to hide their dark side from even Jedi masters.

So the short answer is that Palpatine probably learnt to hide it at a young age and since Naboo was fairly far out near the Outer Rim it's conceivable that he slipped by unnoticed by the Jedi order.

T.J.L.
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James Khoury
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7

From Wookieepedia,

Trained Jedi could sense high levels of the Force in persons. The presence of Force-sensitives in a vicinity could also be sensed. For more accuracy, they performed midi-chlorian counts to detect Force-sensitivity in candidates

Maybe no sufficiently-trained Jedi ever passed near Palpatine when he was a child. Thus, he was not detected and was never tested.

DavidW
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Chetter Hummin
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