What's So Great About Ushas?

Roy C. Lackey · 15 Jun 2008, 05:21 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:21:34 -0500
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <000a01c8cea7$b05240e0$d1cc4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Andrew wrote:
>This sets up the divergence between Sev1 and Sev2 - as Sev (ie,
>Sev2) says, the graveyard scene is what sets everything else in
>motion, which is the reason why he starts his narrative with it.
>
>Wihout it, I believe, Sev1 leaves the Guild with Triskele, in
>effect acting out Sev2's musing about a Triskele heading north to
>the wars with a new master.
>
>SilkHorn's meeting with Sev at the end of SS puts things back on a
>Sev1-track. No Sev2, no New Sun, no Juturna going back to interfere
>...

Without the Conciliator, there would have been no Claw, no order of
Pelerines to guard it. If no Pelerines, what was the monastic order
Catherine ran away from that led to her imprisonment by the Guild, which led
to both Severians having been born into their clutches in the first place?

The biggest problem I have with this theory is that it violates the
integrity of the Urth Cycle as a stand-alone work, and it turns the sense of
it upside-down in doing so. It also dooms Urth to the ice-future, the
"do-nothing" future that Wolfe has disparaged.

-Roy

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