Sev's Silence about Catherine

Roy C. Lackey · 26 Jun 2008, 17:43 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:43:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Sev's Silence about Catherine
Message-ID: <000a01c8d7b4$2ce5c540$18cf4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

bsharp quoted and wrote:
>If Valeria is Sev's sister and Ouen is not her father, that father must be
>accounted for.

>>Borski provides a likely candidate for Severian's step-father. In addition
to those characters described in "gold" adjectives he suggests all
characters who
show lameness are  family members. There is a lame character who resides in
the Citadel and who has the power and authority to find and capture a
runaway wife, sequester her in a tower and send her adultery produced twin
babies to the torturers and witches. That being the conspicuously unnamed
Castellan. Severian tells us that, as for Catherine, he never sees him again
after their meeting. In (I think) Shadow, Severian
mentions that the Castellan is too high an official for him to ever have
seen, as a torturer. Quite a bit of attention paid to this character, I
think.<<

Sev met the Castellan when he first returned to the Citadel as autarch.
(CITADEL, XXXIII) Anyway, as I told you before, the text specifically states
that Valeria's family "had given many castellans to the Citadel, but the
last had died generations ago;". (SHADOW, IV) If that doesn't flat-out
preclude the Castellan from being her father, then nothing in the text means
anything.

-Roy

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