{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/76",
    "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": 76,
    "subject": "Severian's family",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1997-06-30T10:16:55+00:00",
    "last": "1997-06-30T17:38:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0002-0125@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Geoff Alex Cohen",
        "address": "gac at cs.duke.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-06-30T10:16:55+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Severian's family",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"Kevin McGuire\" <kmcguire at itw.com>\n\nWhile I'm here, though, could someone clue me in on what pointers \nthere are to the identity of Severian's mother and sister?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I started a rough draft of this, at \nhttp://www.cs.duke.edu/~gac/Wolfe/family.html.\n\nOverview:  we know Severian has a sister, because Severian/Severa\nis a set of names you give to twins.  We know what happens to male\nchildren who are born to prisoners; female children go to the\nwitches.\n\nSo Severian's sister is a witch, of his age.  My guess (and Wolfe\nconfirmed this in the chat) is Merryn, the Cumaean's companion at\nthe very end of _Claw_.\n\nMother:  Well, Ouen names her Katharine at the end of _Citadel_\nand says she was given to the torturers (which matches our\ntheory for Severian's origin).  We do meet one woman in the\nGuild's care named Katharine...\n\nGeoff"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0002-0126@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-06-30T17:38:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Severian's family",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0002-0125@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #2453278 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\n\"Is there a sister in the text?  A father?  A mother?\n\n     \"We are told that 'Severian' is a name usually given to one of a\npair of twins.  If there is a sister, she will have been raised in\nthe Witches' Keep in the Citadel, and she may well make some sort of\nappearance.  I have myself gotten nowhere in identifying her, or in\ntracing any significance that might attach to her presence in 'The\nBook,' though if she does appear I suspect it is on the road to\nThrax\" (Clute, Wolfe essay dated 1986, STROKES, p. 164).\n\n\n\"Other relations lurk further back.  Ava, the Pelerine who questions\nSeverian in the lazaret, asks whether his name was not `one of those\nbrother sister names . . . Severian and Severa.'  Severian does not\nconfirm this, any more than he can say whether he has a sister; but\nlittle Severian had a sister Severa, who was in fact his twin.  He\ntoo asked if Severian had a sister.  No question asked twice can be\ncasual.\"\n\n[Brief paragraph running through a few candidates.]\n\n     \"A more appealing candidate is Merryn, the witch who appears\nwith the Cumaean atop the home of Apu-Punchau [i.e., on the road to\nThrax]\" (Gregory Feeley, \"The Evidence of Things Not Shown: Family\nRomance in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN,\" \"The New York Review of Science\nFiction No. 31,\" March 1991, p. 9).\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}