{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5576",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 5576,
    "subject": "Kate Finn and Ted Griffin (Sorcerer's House spoilers)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2010-04-05T13:46:58+00:00",
    "last": "2010-04-05T13:46:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<h2l93d4039f1004050646v3bb3ff79u8e42ec94e86fae41@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Watkins",
        "address": "john.watkins04 at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2010-04-05T13:46:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Kate Finn and Ted Griffin (Sorcerer's House spoilers)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "(spoiler space)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI haven't seen any discussion of this, and I honestly think that it's a thin\nreed at best, but I think there's some suggestion in the text that Ted\nGriffin/Ambrosius is Kate Finn's father.  I want this theory to be true,\nbecause otherwise I don't see much point to the Kate and Biddy Finn\nsubplot.  But I'm having trouble with the timeline.\n\nKate, we're told, has to accompany Bax into the house to retrieve George.\nWhile their in the house, Bax shows Kate Goldwurm's spire, opens a window,\nwhich we've been told may have magical signficance, and they chat about\nAmbrosius.  After that conversation, they go downstairs and learn almost\nimmediately that George has been found.  I have no idea why this would\nhappen or what it would mean, but it suggests a connection, and about the\nonly material connection we have to Ambrosius is the suggestion that he and\nTed are the same guy.  I also kind of like the idea that the bloodlines of\nboth Ambrosius and Black were needed to retrieve George.\n\nThen there's the names.  \"Finn\" is pretty close to \"Griffin,\" almost as\nthough Ted Griffin were hiding behind a slight alteration of his former name\nto conceal his lack of aging, exactly as Martha Murray becomes Martha\nMurrey.  It's also apparently Griffin's MO to fake his own death and abandon\nhis spouse--he shows up alive in Doris's letter, after all, and I don't\nreally buy the cliched \"cop dies two years before retirement\" bit that gets\na throwaway reference in the conversation with Biddy.  Or rather, it seems\nlike it might as well have been Ambrosius invoking the cliche as Wolfe.  Or\npossibly he doesn't have an MO but moved on to a younger woman, and then got\nbumped off by Goldwurm in a manner that seemed to be a strikingly nasty\nillness.\n\nAnyway, I like this theory, but I don't think the timelines match-up\nexactly.  Biddy doesn't say when her husband died, but Kate is 24--putting\nBiddy at a highest likely age of about 64.  I think she's a lot younger,\nthough--Kate is the only kid we hear about a pretty Irish family having, so\nmaybe Biddy is 50.  (She can't be too young by my theory, though--she has to\nbe somewhat older than Doris.)  A cop can usually retire at half-pay after\n20 years of service, so conceivably he was as young as forty when he\nsupposedly died, having served 18 years in the force, starting at 22.  If\nBiddy is about his age, then he could've died ten years before the story\nstarted.  Or if he's about 10 years older than Biddy (not inconceivable if\nhe's in fact an ageless sorcerer who looked to be in his 40s or so), he\ncould've been allegedly 2 years out of retirement at 2/3rds pay and died\nabout 20 years before the story began, when Kate was very young.\n\nThat's a bunch of maybes that I can't recall being supported in the text,\nbut that's what more or less needs to have happened to give Griffin time to\nset up a new identity, court and marry Doris, have a life with her, and die\n\"ten years\" before the story begins, which is what Doris tells us happened.\n(Or maybe Kate was 9 and Doris only had 5 years with Ted--that may make more\nsense, as I'm not sure that a 4 year old girl whose dad was a cop would be\nas likely to become one herself as maybe a 9 year old tomboy who idolized\nher father when he died would).  I'd just like this theory more if we had a\ntime or approximate time for Kate's dad's death.  There's also the issue of\nthe women's relative age--if Biddy is 50 during the story and Ambrosius left\nher 15 or 20 years earlier, she would've been 30 or 35, a little early for\nAmbrosius to start looking for a younger woman (unless he's just really,\nreally shallow).  And Doris doesn't seem especially young--maybe in her\nmid-30s?\n\nAlternately, Bax is lying about all of this stuff and the tension in the\ntimelines is evidence that he got confused.  But I don't like that reading\nvery much.  I don't think Wolfe wants to reward reasoning that disregards\nthe fantastic as implausible and I don't think he went through the trouble\nof creating mysteries about the supernatural elements of the story just to\nhave the right answer being that a frauster is making everything up, so\nthere is no answer."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}