Subject: (urth) Regency Plot 2

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 17:42:00 +0000

Whoops--Eata says that some of the gold coins had Severian's face and
some had Valeria's face, "or anyway some woman's."

(So it wasn't two faces on one coin as I misremembered; and the fuzzy
face wasn't "some man's," i.e., Dux Caesidus's.)

This detail sparks other associations: for the current inquiry we
will assume that the coins have Valeria's face.  However, the
mysterious coin of TBOTNS, which had a womanly face on it from a
model never really identified, a coin given by Vodalus to Severian,
turned out to be a fake coin.  Who was the model?  (People seem to
assume that it is the old Autarch, unmanned and androgynous.
Personally I think it is more likely to be Tzadkiel.)  Are all
"woman faced" coins therefore assumed to be counterfeit, or are
they just based upon the coins minted by the self-effacing old
Autarch?  (Seeing how much trouble Severian's portraiture causes,
in Typhon's era as well as after the Deluge, one can openly applaud
the old Autarch's strategy!)  And does the fake coin somehow point
toward Valeria's (future) counterfeiting <boggle>?

Anyway, applying details from "The Map" to Eata's tale in URTH, we
find that "The Map" must be taking place in 8 S.R. or 9 S.R., since
Severian is Autarch and "the law" (i.e., he hasn't left Urth yet,
which happens in 10 S.R.), Maxellindis is dead (so presumably Eata
has already been arrested, served on the ship, jumped ship in Xanthic
Lands, spent two years there, then returned to the Commonwealth;
since Maxellindis drowned avoiding the arrest), Severian's face is on
newly minted silver coins.

Since Eata's tale is being shaped by Severian's prompting, let alone
his recording, it is as unreliable as ever.  But if we take the low
numbers he gives, then Eata could have returned to the Commonwealth
by 8 S.R.  Making it a lie that Severian was gone when Eata returned.

And who knows how quickly Valeria remarried?  It may be that
Severian's subconscious mind wants to paint her black after her
assassination/execution, as if to justify to himself his own
unconscious part.  So Eata's tale makes it seem as if she only waited
a year, or maybe two, before seizing power and then elevating her
lover to consort.

It might have been five years, or ten years, or twenty years.  Who
knows?  These amounts of time might mitigate, might soften the
judgment against Valeria.  But to the heart, they don't really
matter--the crime was committed (women who wound Severian's heart
=die=).  So the two guys talking cobble together a scenario wherein
it looks like practically the day after Severian left, his wife made
her VictoriEvita coup, and then the next week married her Fabio
consort, while Inire pushed up daisies or wrung his wrinkled little
hands.

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Mark Millman <mark_millman at hmco.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:53:44 +0000

On 10 July 1998 at 5:42 pm GMT mantis sez:

> Anyway, applying details from "The Map" to
> Eata's tale in URTH, we find that "The Map"
> must be taking place in 8 S.R. or 9 S.R., since
> Severian is Autarch and "the law" (i.e., he
> hasn't left Urth yet, which happens in 10 S.R.),
> Maxellindis is dead (so presumably Eata has
> already been arrested, served on the ship,
> jumped ship in Xanthic Lands, spent two years
> there, then returned to the Commonwealth;
> since Maxellindis drowned avoiding the arrest),
> Severian's face is on newly minted silver coins.

But a close reading of "The Map" will convince you
that it's set immediately after Maxellindis' death; in
fact, the corpse that Eata fishes out of Gyoll with his
boat-hook doesn't make him cry because it reminds
him of her; it makes him cry because it is her.

I think that Eata's story in _Urth_ is the story as he
has convinced himself it should be.  Maxellindis,
in Eata's version of events, wasn't unfaithful to him
and didn't betray him, and, perhaps most import-
antly, wasn't casually killed by her lover right after
the theft of the map.

This suggests that Eata could indeed have returned
from the Xanthic Lands after Severian's departure
(in fact, I believe that Eata leaves soon after this very
episode; his rejection of the steady job is suggestive),
though it doesn't mean that Severian couldn't have
interpreted the story that Eata in fact tells in such a
way as to convince himself that Eata returned before
Severian's own departure.  And it doesn't in any way
invalidate your conclusion, mantis.  Indeed, if any-
thing, I'd say it strengthens it, since it introduces a
parallel situation, i.e.,

     Valeria : Severian :: Maxellindis : Eata.

Though I would like to know something more about
the relative timing of the composition of _Urth_ and
of "The Map".

Mark Millman