When Did You Last See Your Father?
The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 13 Apr 1999
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1527

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Peter Westlake — 13 Apr 1999, 10:02

> At 00:43 1999-04-09 -0500, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Apr 1999 20:06:20 Robert Borski wrote:

> > > Anybody willing to buy that this may also be symptomatic of morning
> > > sickness? Severian and Dorcas have been having sex long enough for her to
> > > be entering this stage of pregnancy, and it's interesting to note that nine
> > > or so months later, when Severian sees Dorcas for the last time in Oldgate,
> > > "on the floor near her was a basket, not small yet not large either." Could
> > > this basket perhaps contain a baby?<<

>    Damn! I just reread the series, noted and wondered about the basket
> (seemingly irrelevant to what was going on; she wasn't on a picnic), then
> forgot it. I think you're right. The idea of morning sickness had also
> occured to me when I read the vomiting scenes. I should have put them
> together!

> And later Roy wrote:
>    Okay, I accept that the woman Sev sees being led away, as Tony Ellis
> (and mantis, in the archives) states, is in the role of the Contessa, but
> who was she in the "real" world, outside the play, on the last day of Urth?
> Both she and Sev seem to recognize each other. From where, when? If she is
> less than forty years old, as suggested by her desirability, then Sev
> couldn't have seen her on Urth, because he has been gone that long. Why was
> she apparently being arrested?

Maybe she's a little older than that; could she have been born at the
very start of Severian's reign, for instance?

SBear.

Peter Westlake, Harlequin Ltd, Barrington Hall, Barrington, Cambs CB2 5RG.

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Roy C. Lackey — 13 Apr 1999, 06:59
  follows, by subject match Peter Westlake

> > On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:02:52 +0100 Peter Westlake wrote:
> > Maybe she's a little older than that; could she have been born at the
> > very start of Severian's reign, for instance?<<

    Believe me, that occurred to me, but I couldn't reconcile it with the
wistful, mutual recognition. But if you put it together with Robert Borski's
idea that she is Catherine, his mother, then it all comes full circle. The
child in the basket was his mother. Sev fathered his own mother on his
grandmother! He's his own grandpa! Too much!

Roy

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Kieran Cleary — 13 Apr 1999, 13:39
  follows, by subject match Roy C. Lackey

> she is Catherine, his mother, then it all comes full circle. The
> child in the basket was his mother.<

I like that as a possibility, but for this to work, Catherine needs to get
whipped back through the corridoors of time in order to meet Oeuen (sp?) so
that she can conceive Sev. What's the rationale for this time travelling?

Also, Sev's mother was supposed to be an exultant Pelerine? Whence the
exultant genes if her mother was Dorcas and father Sev himself?

Kieran

North West Labs
Stephen St. Court
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email: kierannwn at tinet.ie

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