Severian's family tree

b sharp · 23 Aug 2006, 15:05 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:05:24 -0400
Subject: (urth) Severian's family tree
Message-ID: <BAY103-F20C82FF9C9D8061D3321BDD7470 at phx.gbl>

Matthew DeLuca asks:

>Was it ever established that Catherine was Thecla's mother?

Unfortunately for those interested in Severian's family tree, it can't even 
be said that  Dorcas is Severian's grandmother.

I made my guess that Catherine is Thecla's mother based largely on that one 
cryptic passage:

"I played again with pebbles in the courtyard beside the fallen curtain 
wall, as Thecla dodged the hooves of my father's mounted guard."

Mark Millman interprets it this way:

[Severian] I played again with pebbles in the courtyard beside the fallen 
curtain wall, as Thecla dodged[Thecla overcomes Severian] dodged the hooves 
of my father's mounted guard."

Robert Borsky also thinks this is Thecla taking over in mid-sentence.  For 
years I reluctantly had the same interpretation.  Reluctantly because 
elsewhere in the text, Severian and Thecla's memories tend to get their own 
paragraphs.  In this passage, Severian and Thecla trade memories, sentence 
by sentence, each one set apart with the word "Again".  Midsentence 
switching seemed contrary to the mood I felt Wolfe was trying to set and too 
confusing.  If the sentence had to be split why not word it:  ".....as 
Thecla, I dodged the hooves of my father's mounted guard".

My mind was set to the opposite in a re-reading of Urth where I found 
Severian saying something about, "my childhoods in the Citadel".  Plural 
childhoods?  The other childhood wasn't Appian's was it?  It could be other 
memories but combined with the cryptic passage.....  Perhaps that very 
important passage above should be read just as it was written:  that 
Severian, in his first memory as a child, remembers Thecla in the Citadel.  
(I spent an hour last night trying to re-find that plural childhood 
statement in Urth but couldn't. Am I delusional? Help!)

So if Thecla was a child in the Citadel then perhaps her mother was 
Catherine, sequestered in the Citadel.

Roy makes some good objections against the Castellan being Thecla's father, 
including that her father is said to be dead (now Roy, that is told in a 
dream sequence, and those are not to be trusted, right? ;-)).  There are 
some small hints that Ultan could be involved here (books, obscured eyes, a 
family resemblance).  Perhaps he is a better candidate for true father and 
assume the owner of the northern chateau and villas remains an unnamed 
stepfather.

Roy also raises the good question of Thecla's exultant status and height.  
Catherine is clearly of armiger height and thus makes a good mother figure 
for Severian.  Could she have produced a child as tall as Thecla with an 
exultant father?

All this isn't very satisfying, but neither is just resigning, ignoring many 
clues and saying, "okay, Thecla is just a chance acquainance of Severian's.  
No family connection, no incest, nothing important here."  Maybe "my 
childhoods in the Citadel" includes Severian's and Reechy's (Ymar's) 
memories?  I dunno.

Perhaps someone, someday, can come up with a truly cohesive family tree for 
Severian.  Or maybe some people's hope will come true and Gene Wolfe will 
reveal his notes.  Please Gene! It will stay right here in the 
archive...nobody else will ever know....

-bsharp

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