Ever since the scene at the Opera House on Coruscant, fans have wondered whether or not Palpatine's story about Darth Plagueis had the subtext of "Anakin, I am your father." The main conclusions that have been reached are:

1. Sidious admits later he does not actually know the secrets of preserving or creating life through the Force. Therefore, while Plagueis could have created Anakin, Sidious could not.

2. Sidious begins training Maul from infancy. As Maul is more than a decade older than Anakin, and the Sith "Rule of Two" prevents Sidious from taking an apprentice before he killed Plagueis, that means Plagueis would not have lived until the conception of Anakin.

Therefore:

3. Sidious is either lying about Anakin's origins, or lying about lacking the power to give life using the Force.

However, passages from the book Vader: The Ultimate Guide sheds new light on these theories. On page 6:

"If the lore of the Sith Lords is to be believed, Anakin Skywalker began life as the by-product of Sith experimentation. Darth Plagueis, a devotee of the dark side and lover of the numinous and arcane, developed a method of preserving life in those who were dying—and taken to the extreme, of inducing the midi-chlorians to produce life out of nothing. Anakin Skywalker, who never had a biological father, is believed to be the result of Darth Plagueis' vision. It remains unclear whether the deed came about through the efforts of Plagueis or through those of Plagueis' ambitious apprentice, Sidious."

This simply repeats the uncertainty raised by the movie, but on page 34, the question appears to be answered:

"Plagueis revealed to Sidious an experiment he'd conceived to create life directly from the midi-chlorians found in one's blood, potentially yielding a being of astounding power. Comprehending that any such being would amount to Sidious' replacement, the Sith apprentice murdered his master."

As far as I'm concerned, this all but states directly that Plagueis orchestrated Anakin's birth. The previous reason why this had been rejected by a number of us, the fact that Sidious began training Maul long before Anakin was conceived, is addressed in the next sentence:

"Darth Sidious had multiple pupils, beginning with the feral Sith Lord Darth Maul, whom Sidious raised and trained without Plagueis' knowledge."

That means that in 54 BBY, Maul is born and shortly thereafter, kidnapped by Sidious who begins to raise him. Then in 42 BBY, Plagueis is successful in bringing his experiment of conceiving life through the Force, resulting in the birth of Anakin Skywalker. Shortly after Anakin is born, Sidious kills Plagueis before he can be replaced. Sidious then takes on Maul as his apprentice, and adds Force training to what would presumably only be paramilitary training prior to that. This also reconciles two variant bits of Darth Maul's history. Most sources say he was kidnapped as an infant and raised by Sidious - but there's at least one source that claims Sidious did not start training Maul until adolescence.

The answer to the big question about how Sidious managed to raise Maul without Plagueis finding out is also assisted by that last quote - in the word feral. I don't think Sidious actually raised the infant Maul as such: he put Maul in a wild situation that he could survive as a feral child.

Unless Zabraks respond far differently from humans, Sidious did not leave Maul in a feral situation until the age of 12. While I have not made a full study of the subject, I have read about a number of cases, and the oldest feral children who were able to learn how to read or properly socialize were recovered from the wild by the age of 7. Most children who were feral past the age of 5 considered wearing clothing to be a form of torture (especially the ones found in the 19th century who were promptly put into the children's clothing of the day... on the other hand, a 6 year old recovered in France in the 60's was able to adapt to loose farmer-hippy clothes within a year) Also, feral children have horrid health problems, and the ones who are wild past the age of 5 rarely live past the age of 20. If Maul were human, to get optimal "results" I would guess Sidious put Maul in a feral situation around his first birthday, and recovered him from the wild when he was four years old.

Providing the word feral is meant literally and not figuratively, this quote then puts a whole new spin on every other story about Maul's life.

Update: I contacted Abel Peña, the writer who wrote that piece, and he stated that while he meant the word "feral" in the figurative sense, he agreed that it would fit with what we already know about Maul's upbringing if Sidious did keep Maul in a feral environment for a few years.