The eyes of a clone

Roy C. Lackey · 31 Jul 2005, 21:00 · from 2005-July.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun Jul 31 21:00:53 2005
Subject: (urth) The eyes of a clone
Message-ID: <000e01c5964d$9b194560$bc3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

Thalassocrat wrote:
>When Sev meets the Autarch on the battlefield towards the end of
>Citadel, the Autarch tells him: "Tou ... have always seemed to me a
>
>construction of horn and boiled leather."

Is there another term for boiled leather that can be linked to a named
character? I don't know; I'm asking.

>Assuming that dark versus light coloring is significant - he [Horn], like
>Sev, is dark.

Both have dark eyes and Sev has dark hair, but Sev has very pale skin, as
was textually established last month by Tony Ellis. Msg also posted this
physical description of Sev, attributed to Wolfe:

>Wolfe: You didn't say at what point in his life, so I'll choose him at the
>time he leaves the Citadel. He is 6' 1" and weighs 175 pounds. He is pale,
>with dark eyes, dark straight hair, and good teeth. His face is long and
>rather bony; high, square forehead, moderately high cheekbones, strong
chin.
>He is muscular; his hands are a little larger than average.

Not incidentally, Sev's dark hair puts some hurt on any
Sev-is-a-clone-of-yellow-haired-Typhon theories, irrespective of whether or
not Typhon had blue eyes. To say nothing of Sev and Silk being clones

>Maybe there's a wider loop, too, embracing Ymar as well. The
>parallels betwen Ymar and Sev are many & blatant: they must,
>somehow, be the "same". Ymar the Alpha, Sev the Omega.

I think someone has suggested that Ymar may have been a clone of Typhon, but
that can't be, either. Ymar had "wild black hair". (URTH, 265) As for Sev
being a clone of Ymar (or vice versa), Sev said this of him: "He flushed,
his dark cheeks growing darker still." (260) For me, those dark cheeks and
Sev's pale face weigh against their being clones.

>On a little tangent, I think Sev's childhood play-tomb must be
>Ymar's.

I have _never_ been able to get an answer as to who was buried in Sev's
tomb. In fact, the only person I could be pretty sure _wasn't_ buried there
was Sev. <g> I mean, the two times Sev died and left a body behind, on
Tzadkiel's ship and in Apu's tomb, don't give me any reason to suppose they
had been or would be relocated there. Certainly it isn't related or implied
in the narrative. Your suggestion solves the problem, Alexander style. I was
asking the wrong question!

>It's surely the tomb of someone who went off in a ship and
>returned. If we are to believe (as we are told) that Sev's
>predecessor was the first Autarch since Ymar to make the journey,
>then whose else could it really be? At the end of New Sun, we are
>left with the suggestion that it was Sev's own tomb, somehow or
>other; I think it must have been both Sev's and Ymar's - again,
>somehow or other.

Yes, that business about Sev at that point (right after B F & O resurrected
him in Apu's tomb) looking so much like the funeral bronze he remembered
should be accounted for, but it isn't in the text. And it leaves unsettled
whether or not the tomb Cilinia was buried in is the same tomb where Sev
played. The discrepancies MSG pointed out can't be ignored. Don Doggett has
also made the suggestion that Sev's tomb was really Ymar's. You both may be
right. The tomb was not built during Sev's lifetime, at least not during the
time we are shown, and when he left Apu's time he went back to Ushas. His
story ends there and the drowned tomb becomes moot to Urth.

The Citadel antedates Typhon and the topmost area of the sides of the hill
may have been used already by the time Typhon came along. Sev's childhood
playhouse wasn't too far down the hill, iirc. It makes sense for the tomb to
have been built early in the autarchy, if not before. When -- and _why_ --
would a tomb for Sev have been built long before he was even born?

The lives of Typhon and Ymar overlapped, but Ymar was a wretched boy and
Typhon secluded and near death on his mountain. I don't see any connection
between them. I don't know how Ymar became the ruler, but I find it easier
to believe that Typhon's young daughter was buried in Ymar's tomb than in
Sev's tomb, assuming she wasn't buried in a different tomb altogether.

-Roy

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