Subject: (urth) "Myfather's mountedguard"

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:26:08 +0000

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Duncan Truter [mailto:dtruter at gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 02:20 PM
>To: urth at lists.urth.net
>Subject: Re: (urth) "My father's mounted guard"
>
>he reveals in UOTNS that he's not just Severian and Thecla, but
>equally the eunuch autarch and all of his predecessors. maybe there's
>someone else here other than Severian or Thecla?
>
>Duncan

Sure, it would seem that everyone he absorbed, via Thecla or Autarch is capable of coloring his memory.  I'm curious if anyone has identified other instances of this.

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From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:33:41 +0000

It's my impression that the Severian and Thecla personalities and
memories are far more prominent.  Neither the old Autarch nor his
predecessors had either the Claw, which made Thecla "alive" in
Severian, nor Severian's eidetic memory, so the old Autarch's memories
of Autarchs past would be dim and imperfect compared to Severian's
Thecla-memories.

Certainly Thecla asserts herself in Severian in ways that the others
do not, or rather, certainly Severian records Thecla's moments of
self-assertion in ways he does not record such moments for others.
But that could be in keeping with his general reticense about the old
Autarch, whose name Severian surely knew.

On 10/14/08, Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org> wrote:
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---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:50:12 +0000

>From: John Watkins [mailto:john.watkins04 at gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 02:33 PM
>To: 'The Urth Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: (urth) "Myfather's mountedguard"
>

That makes a lot of sense as to why it is always Thecla and not the other memory characters we notice.

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:00:20 +0000

> That makes a lot of sense as to why it is always Thecla and not the other memory characters we notice.  

Sev specifically says that the previous autarchs' memories are present 
but faint, only his immediate predecessor and Thecla are "there" enough 
to have initiative and identity of their own.  I don't think the Claw 
would make a big difference, since Sev is the ultimately the source of 
the Claw's power. If anything, the conciliatory aspect of the Claw would 
have more of an integrating, assimilative effect, granting peace from 
such an internal division.

As for more Thecla-moments being recorded, that's largely because Thecla 
is the only passenger memory available for 2 1/2 volumes, with the a 
tiny snippet of Autarch-memory at the end of Volume IV. By the time URTH 
begins, Sev's already had ten years of time to adjust, so there's just 
not as much opportunity for other such takeovers to be recorded. 
Although, by the time Sev returns to the Citadel, he is speaking in the 
plural as more than just a royal affectation, as if the collective 
autarchs are speaking through him.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:48:34 +0000

>My real point was to address the original thrust of this thread, which has
>been the subject of much debate and spawned some rather fanciful theories.
>
>Thecla's father had a villa up north on the frontier. The Old Autarch
>fathered neither Severian nor Thecla.  Ouen was Severian's father. Thecla's
>father died before Severian even met her. Waiter Ouen certainly never
>commanded a mounted guard. The Old Autarch had been a servant in the House
>Absolute. It is very unlikely that a lowly servant's father commanded a
>mounted guard; still less likely to have done so when Thecla was a little
>girl. So the father in the sentence in question must refer to Thecla's
>father.
>
>-Roy

Roy, et al,
thanks for addressing the questions, and thanks for providing relevant quotes.

Roy, yes, that was the thrust of my question, but it was curiosity, not something to prove. I've definitely come to think this is the 'correct' reading.

---

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:41:48 +0000

"I played again with pebbles in the court-yard beside the fallen curtain wall, as Thecla dodged the hooves of my father's mounted guard."

I think everyone is being rather cavalier with this passage by contorting it into making sense; to jibe with what we feel we know. I prefer to read the passage literally and let it serve as a hint for what we don't know. Wolfe separates Severian's and Thecla's memories in the full version of this passage with the word, "again". This sentence is not separated, thus I take it  as a memory of Severian's, remembering playing together with Thecla when they were children.

Roy takes pains to note that Severian's father is Ouen, but this is merely a biological relationship, unknown and unimportant to either of them until the end of CotA. As a very young child, perhaps Severian can dredge up a memory from before he was given over to the torturers. If Catherine was married to (and had run away from) a guy who commanded a mounted guard, voila. Yes, she told Ouen she ran from an order of monials but that sounds better to tell her boyfriend than that she is running away from a husband. And it seems more likely that a commander would send the authorities to find and collect a runaway wife and send her to torturers (Severian says as much in a conversation with Cyriaca). Why would an order of monials do all  that?

Roy also discusses Thecla's formative years growing up at the villa in the north. Not sure if he remembers my annoying dictionary post from a couple years ago:

villa- 1: a country estate
        2: the rural or suburban residence of a wealthy person

Why would Wolfe make such a strong point that it is a "villa" which is mainly defined as a secondary residence for the wealthy. What is the family's primary residence? I propose it could be the Citadel itself. Catherine seems to have been in residence there in one way or another and this could make Severian's non-biological, cuckolded father the Castellan and perhaps hints that Thecla is his sister. Using Borski's ideas, he did have sex with Thecla and the Castellan is lame, marking them as family members.

In my current frame of mind I don't really think Thecla is Severian's sister.  But perhaps this was meant as a not-quite-red but pink herring by Wolfe. There is evidence Merryn is Severian's sister. There is evidence Jolenta is his sister. There is evidence Pia is his sister, etc. Perhaps Wolfe's intention was to pepper the story with half-clues about Severian's family to obtain a Proustian sense of ambiguous identity for the poor guy. I dunno. But I think there is more to this passage than just jumbled memories.
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:23:06 +0000

b sharp wrote:
>> Why would Wolfe make such a strong point that it is a "villa" which is
mainly defined as a secondary residence for the wealthy. What is the
family's primary residence? I propose it could be the Citadel itself.
Catherine seems to have been in residence there in one way or another and
this could make Severian's non-biological, cuckolded father the Castellan
and perhaps hints that Thecla is his sister. Using Borski's ideas, he did
have sex with Thecla and the Castellan is lame, marking them as family
members.<<
---------------------------------------------

Some inconvenient facts:
1) Thecla was an exultant. The exultants are a closed caste, meaning one
must be *born* to it, of exultant parents.

2) The lame (and still living) Castellan was not an exultant.

3) Thecla's father had given a ball for her each year until he *died*.

But I've said all this before.

-Roy