{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4762",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 4762,
    "subject": "Uncle Sev",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2006-11-02T09:52:41+00:00",
    "last": "2006-11-02T09:52:41+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<20061102095242.786F4DA84A@mailserver8.hushmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com",
        "address": "thalassocrat at nym.hush.com"
      },
      "date": "2006-11-02T09:52:41+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Uncle Sev",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "This has probably been kicked around long ago, but I couldn't find \nit on a quick archive scan. Anyway ...\n\nLittle Sev's first words to Our Sev after getting over the shock of \nseeing his mother & gandfather killed: \"Are you my uncle?\" (Sword, \nend of Ch 17.) Why would he ask that? One possibility: because he \ndoes in fact have an uncle named Severian, whom he has heard of but \nnever met, and after whom he is named (presumably). \n\nOur Sev says Casdoe named Little Sev. See Sword Ch. 24: \"... so \nlong as Jader lived, the boy his mother had named Severian could \nnot truly perish.\" (Of course, we're probably supposed to reflect \nalso that Our Sev has saved his soul or whatever by his healing of \nJader, but that's surely a Wolfe-level thing, not Sev's own \nthinking.) \n\nHow would Our Sev know that it was Casdoe who named little Sev, \nrather than Becan, or Casdoe and Becan together? Is there some \ncustom in the Commonwealth that mothers name children? Further, is \nit the custom that they name their children after relatives, \nperhaps more specifically an [eldest] child after one of their \nsiblings?\n\nMaybe we can hypothesize that Catherine named Our Sev after a \nbrother of hers also called Sev. But where that would take you in \nthe Sev Family Tree problem - I dunno! I guess it could fit with a \ndisappointing scenario in which the Sev of the necropolis mausoleum \nhad children named Sev jr and Catherine, and Cath (resurrected?) \nsomehow (on a ship?) went forward in time to become Our Sev's \nmother. At least that accounts for the two empty coffins \n(resurrected Sev & resurrected Cath).\n\nOn another point: is there supposed to be a familial connection \nbetween Dorcas and Casdoe? It's so easy to see the names as \nsyllabic transpositions of each other; \"doe\" and \"gazelle\" etc. And \nwhat would have Becan's pet name for Casdoe have been - \"Cas\" \nperhaps? I don't know what to do with that, either. But while \nspinning vague hypotheses, I also note that Dorcas is surprisingly \ngood at painting stage scenery, and that she reminds me a bit of \nthe woman Fechin trysted with, in the description of Becan's \nfather: \"... truly beautiful, in the way that the quietest \nsometimes are\"."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}