{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1117",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1117,
    "subject": "[spoiler] RTTW",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-02-08T18:39:58+00:00",
    "last": "2001-02-08T18:39:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0161@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2001-02-08T18:39:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) [spoiler] RTTW",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Surely, mantis, Severian is a grandson of Typhon, at nearest, if\nnot a remote descendant.  Unless you're prepared to throw out\nthe conclusion that Ouen is Severian's father and Dorcas is\nOuen's mother, we know Severian's father is not a member of\nTyphon's family.  That leaves his mother, and unless Typhon\n& co. were (1) walking the corridors of Time, which, for all\ntheir other activities, we haven't known them to do, (2) allowing\nEchidna to go gallivanting about getting herself impregnated by\nmen other than Typhon (a bad way to ensure the continuity of\na royal line, to be sure), or (3) playing body-games -much- more\ninteresting than the one that Typhon tried with Piaton, I don't\nsee how Severian could be a member of Typhon's immediate\nfamily.\n\nI'd much prefer the more allegorical explanation that, as the\nexultant families came to Urth with Typhon, they're all part of\nhis extended \"family\", latterly including Severian through his\nmother.\n\nOf course, that still leaves open the question that you're trying\nto answer, to wit:  Why would Scylla insist on being buried in\nSeverian's mausoleum?  Perhaps Echidna's original was un-\nfaithful to Typhon, or was already pregnant when she married\nhim, and Cilinia is Severian's daughter."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Nacre,\n\nRight, there's that explanation: that Sev Armiger/Exultant was just a\nfriend of the family, who provided a safe burial place when things got\nugly.  Maybe he was even the children's tutor or something.\n\nBelieve me, I did think of this one! And it does have a lot going for it.\n(It also sets up some weird ripples of its own.)\n\nOTOH, it seems to me that the transfer of Silk from Pig to Horn was\nstraight through the eyes, without a monitor . . . the nearest analogy\nwould be when Typhon did his voodoo on Severian.  And iirc, in TBOTLS there\nwas that detail about how the blind god Tartaros couldn't download into\nanybody because he could not see, even in the mainframe version.  Which, I\nthink, means that he is proof against possession and blocked from\npossessing people that way: that is, we probably won't find any critters\nrunning around the Whorl as his familiars (iirc).\n\nJust to be clear about what I'm trying to say: at root, Severian might be\nTartaros, son of Typhon, in a way which does not affect bloodlines, Ouen,\nCatherine, Dorcas, and all that.  Please reactivate that weird, wooly\n\"reincarnation\" thing that you must have felt if/when you read TBOTNS (and\nthere was no URTH) . . . at that point, there was the funeral bronze, which\nmeant that somehow Severian was a reincarnation of some guy who had died a\nthousand years earlier; then there was that red tassle present from\nApu-Punchau, who had been dead for who knows how long, and was also, in\nsome nebulous way, also an ancestor of Severian; and then all the other\nthings that made it seem as if Severian was an avatar of the Conciliator.\n\nHow could it be?\n\nWell, URTH laid it all out in a way that erased the \"reincarnation\" aspect:\nit was all Severian, all along.  Not to knock it, mind you, not at all!\n\nAnd in the LS/SS we have seen plenty of \"nuts and bolts\" explanations for\nall sorts of things, similar in the way that URTH showed how the miraculous\nwas achieved.\n\nMaybe a good shorthand for what I'm groping for would be: we know the\ntechnological means (geneering and possessions) by which Pas and the others\ndid their reincarnations in a 300 year frame, but in this mysterious detail\nat the end of RTTW we may see that Tartaros achieved a reincarnation\nthrough other means (the \"old fashioned\" way?) that took about 1000 years.\n\nIn the same way that we know all about (technological ghosts) aquastors,\nand we are blindsided by Patera Pike as a real ghost.\n\nAre we certain of Silk's genesis?  Is he a geneered \"love child\" of Typhon\nand Kypris?  Does this make his attraction to Kypris more Oedipal than for\nmost?  Is his melancholy a result of Typhon's megalomania undercut by\nKypris's need for love, or something like that?\n\nBack to the mausoleum: there are five coffins.  Cilinia died young,\napparently not too long after the Scylla scan was made.  If Cilinia played\na part in the rebellion on Urth, it could not have been a big part.  But\nScylla is first born, Sphigx is last born.  The others (Molpe, Tartaros,\nHierax, Thelxiepeia, Phaea, Sphigx) were all scanned as adults, so the Urth\nrebellion could not have begun until long after Cilinia had died (say 20\nyears), and consequently there would be no rebellion at the time of her\ninitial internment, hence no need for secrecy or disguise for the daughter\nof the Monarch.\n\nThere are seven children and two parents: we know where Typhon was buried.\nMaybe the mausoleum with five coffins (two of them empty, large enough for\nSeverian to lie in, and he does) is that of the children, with Urth rebels\nbeing elsewhere (perhaps not even dead).\n\nThe gods of main frame are all blond, except for Tartaros who has no image\nbeyond \"dark.\"  Severian is dark of hair.\n\nAll just a wild thought.\n\n=mantis=\n\nSirius Fiction\nCatalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}