Subject: (urth) The Book of Typhon part one, revised: Severian's true kingship

From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 04:51:36 +0000

Hi everyone, Don here again (not Lisa though I suppose that's 
appropriate to the gender bending discussions of late :))  Below is 
what I've been contemplating in my abscence.  Enjoy!

The Book of Typhon, Part One Revised:  Severian as True King

Note:  Please delete the body of this essay in any replies, as it is 
fairly long.

	“But it is only fair to warn readers that this remains a very 
difficult book, as well as a very queer one, to be avoided by anyone 
with a distracted, tired or rigidly scientific mind.”
	The preceding quote is from the Foreward of Robert Graves’ “The White 
Goddess” (p. 9) and I have included it because it seems equally to 
apply to Gene Wolfe’s “Sun” series.  The two works have a great deal in 
common and I would venture to say that it is much more difficult, if 
not impossible, to get a deeper understanding of Wolfe’s work without 
some familiarity with “The White Goddess”.  But that is another 
argument and my chief interest in Graves with relation to this work of 
Wolfe’s is in the hiding of things.  Things such as Severian’s and 
Silk’s true identities, and the role of Typhon in the grand scheme of 
the work.  And though Graves is my inspiration and guide, I have found 
it is possible to discover these and other mysteries using for the most 
part only Wolfe.  I don’t expect that I will convince the unwilling, 
but I am confident that I have come up with an interpretation of the 
text that is internally consistent and compelling in the aggregate of 
circumstantial evidence.  But let me get to my argument.  It is this; 
that the “Sun” series, among it’s other functions, is a complex 
dynastic novel which Typhon, far from being a secondary character, 
permeates in his role as the father of Ymar (and thus Severian) and in 
his role as Silk, who is Typhon’s clone.  This part of the essay will 
deal with Severian’s ancestry.
	The main stumbling block to my theory is that Severian’s parentage is 
pretty well agreed upon.  His mother is Katherine and his father is 
Ouen, whose mother is Dorcas, making her Severian’s grandmother.  But 
is this correct?  I believe it isn’t.  The only certainty is that 
Dorcas is Ouen’s mother.  Ouen denies ever impregnating Katherine, and 
the only evidence that Ouen could be Severian’s father is that they 
look strikingly similar in profile. (Sword and Citadel, p 402).  This 
is hardly compelling.  In addition, it is thematically weak.  If Dorcas 
is Severian’s grandmother then he is committing incest in a manner that 
makes no sense mythopoeicly.  The incest only makes sense if she is his 
sister or his mother.   Equally, the archetypes clinging to Severian’s 
character point in a different direction.  Ouen makes a much stronger 
adoptive father in the vein of Joseph the carpenter, or Sir Hector, as 
Severian obviously parallels to an extent both Jesus and Arthur.  But 
the truth is much stranger than this and I will approach it later.
	If you accept that Wolfe is using the “King Jesus” model for Severian, 
which I do, considering the marks of sacred kingship that they both 
share, the lameness and the facial scar, then the previous are two 
models for a hidden king.  A third involves Vodalus, the liege of 
leaves, a regular Robin Hood with Hildegrin as his Little John, trying 
to bring a return to the monarchy, waiting for Richard to return.  
Which he does, in disguise of course.  Severian is a perfect Richard; 
witness his grand entrance into Vodalus’ lair, and I’m reasonably 
certain that Vodalus is on to him, much as Robin knows Richard before 
he is revealed.   And, without taking too much liberty, I can carry 
these thematic parallels a degree deeper:  Jesus (at least in King 
Jesus) is descended from Herod, who Graves takes pains to tie to the 
god Typhon,  Arthur is the son of Uther, another good Typhonic (Urth’s 
Typhon)  model, and Richard is the son of Henry who, if you’ve seen The 
Lion in Winter or given a cursory study to medieval history, you will 
recognize as Typhon’s near twin.  And isn’t Echidna (wife of Pas/Typhon 
in LS and wife of Typhon in myth)  Eleanor of Aquitaine in simulacrum?

To bolster this thematic argument of a “return of the king” I give you 
the Autarchs themselves:
	‘“. . . the minds he brought to us, which we touch only faintly even 
now, are not, with one or two exceptions, those of genius.  Most are 
only common men and women, sailors and artisans, farmwives and wantons. 
  Most of the rest are eccentric second-rate scholars of the sort Thecla 
used to laugh at.”’ (Sword, p 380)  The Autarchs sound very much like 
stewards to me, placeholders.

The eidolon Malrubius hints at Severian’s bloodline as well:
	‘”The animal that rests beside you now would die for you.  Of what 
kind is his attachment to  you?”
	“The first?”’ (Shadow, p. 198) by which he is saying “Attachment to 
the person of the Monarch.”  In the interest of length I have left out 
most of the passage (Shadow, pp. 197-8) but it has always seemed 
cryptic to me and it has occured to me that it can be read 
analeptically  to hint that “First is the monarchy (Typhon) and you are 
also the Monarch.”
	
	Now admittedly, this is hardly convincing on its own.  But the real 
meat is in the various clues, many of them “pied” (to use Graves term) 
and all of them out of order in the text of TBotNS.
	The first clue is The Tale of the Boy Called Frog .  For economy’s 
sake I’ll assume everyone’s read it.  On the surface it seems to be a 
story told around Little Severian.  Frog is raised by woodcutters and 
then orphaned and sheltered by the Black Killer (Severian) and the 
naked one (Apu Punchau).  In a very real sense this is the case, but 
there is more to this.  Spring Wind, the father of Frog and Fish, is 
Typhon, aka Typhoon, which is a spring storm.  Wolfe hides this 
cleverly in two ways:  First, the story occurs before Typhon is 
introduced and second, the name Spring Wind seems Asian in origin and 
makes the story seem as if it comes from the First Empire.  The Black 
Killer who shelters Frog, is the Torturers Guild, and the Naked One, 
who has “never had a son of Meschia to teach,” is none other than 
Father Inire who according to the Lexicon Urthus is the “vizier to 
countless Autarchs since Ymar”.  He occurs as the Naked One in Sword 
and Citadel as the bent and masked guide (pp. 350-1).  And here we have 
the answer:  Ymar is the bastard son of Typhon, Frog, sheltered by the 
Black Killer and taught by the Naked One, who rules by the red flower.
	Great, so where does Severian fit into this?  Jonas tells us.  He 
knows who Severian is, hence the story of the “black beans” (Shadow p. 
209)  The “beans” I’m sure we can agree, are embryos and black is used 
as a description almost exclusively to signify something to do with 
Severian or the Torturers.  Black Sun (a name of the Conciliator) Black 
Killer are two examples.  I posit that the “handful of black beans” are 
the embryonic clones of Ymar, brought from the stars where Ymar left to 
try to bring the New Sun and right his father’s wrong.  I have found 
five of these black beans.  They are:
The Mandragora
Little Severian
Severian
Ouen
Master Palaemon
Note the age progression, the life stages of man.  Hardly proof you 
say.  But there’s more.  Listen to Dr. Talos:
‘”The castle?  The monster?  The man of learning?  I only just thought 
of it.  Surely you know that just as the momentous events of the past 
cast their shadows down the ages, so now, when the sun is drawing 
toward the dark, our own shadows race into the past to trouble mankinds 
dreams.”’ (Sword p. 186)  He is saying that the past and present 
influence and echo each other.  The resonance between Severian and the 
Mandragora needs no explanation.  Little Severian is raised by 
woodcutters and orphaned, and again there is the name.  (This brings up 
the sinister implication, reinforced by Graves, that Little Severian 
might not have died accidentally but was a surrogate sacrifice for Big 
Sev. but that’s another topic.)  Severian was born of a monial, raised 
by torturers, and there’s the incident with Triskele which is 
paralleled by the only anecdote given about Ymar:  his chasing of the 
dog.  Palaemon is exiled to Thrax as a Journeyman with Terminus Est for 
some unknown offence, most likely showing mercy to a client.  And Ouen. 
  The two look identical for one thing.  The other parallel is tricky 
and somewhat circular.  Severian has a relationship with Dorcas who is 
Ouen’s “mother”.  Ouen has a relationship with Katherine, Severian’s 
“mother” but, since they are both genetically the same person they are 
both also Oedipus.  Now Severian’s relationship with Dorcas makes 
perfect thematic sense, as does her comments to Severian prior to sex 
of “Won’t I be too small?”  She isn’t speaking of going in but of 
coming out, a reflection of her death during childbirth.  This also is 
her instant connection with Severian. She loves him because he is her 
son (as Ouen) but in her ignorance of her previous living life confuses 
these feelings with romantic love.
	So, who is Severian’s sister?  The answer is that Severian’s sister is 
Ymar’s sister, Fish, who was buried beneath the walls of the city, or 
more accurately, lives in a place that must be reached by travelling 
underground.  The Atrium of Time.  Valeria is Severian’s sister and his 
wife, Pharaonic style.  This is why they don’t have sex.  “I am all 
sisters we breed, and all the sons.” she too is a clone.  The brother 
sun, sister moon theme is also reinforced in Graves.  (This however, 
does not preclude Merryn from also being Severian’s sister.)  If you 
analyze Valeria’s words to Severian they are quite ambiguous and could 
easily be words of sisterly love.
	I’ve said this before and I’ll reiterate:  Ymar is the other Severian 
that Sev speaks of (Sword pp. 405-6).  “He too was reared by torturers, 
I think. . . and so, even as I, he (who in the final sense is and was 
myself) became Autarch in turn and sailed beyond the candles of night. 
. . He was not returned to his own time but became himself a walker of 
the corridors. . . I know too in whose mausoleum I tarried as a child, 
that little building of stone with its rose, its fountain, and its 
flying ship all graven.  I have disturbed my own tomb, and now I go to 
lie in it.”  Ymar has done all of these things  and he ruled (according 
to the tale of Frog) by the red flower, the rose.  The other Severian 
is not named Severian.  Again Graves reinforces this thematically on 
page 321 of The White Goddess, but I really think this essay won’t bear 
much more exposition and have a place on this list.  The evidence of 
Severian’s lineage, while circumstantial and riddling, is compelling 
and, I think, correct.

Addendum:  I looked up the name Ymar on the net and it means Ox in 
Hebrew.  This is from King Jesus p.219:  '"How do you say "ox" in 
Hebrew?"  "We say Aleph."'

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