The Maids of Contessa Carina

Roy C. Lackey · 29 Jun 2008, 03:48 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:48:07 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Maids of Contessa Carina
Message-ID: <001201c8d99a$f49ed4e0$71d24a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Dave Tallman wrote:
>I take the original cell donor to be an exultant from the House
>Absolute. From the play: "The Contessa waits outside, and as she is of
>exalted blood, and a favorite of our sovereign's, I beg you see her
>first," and "Eight years since my girlhood have I abode in this House
>Absolute." I believe she escaped to the past to become Catherine, the
>mother of Severian.  I also believe that the maid khabits were made for
>her after her imprisonment, since she was alone when she met Ouen.

There are difficulties inherent with trying to map a person's life to some
lines from a play. But let's assume that your basic idea is correct, that
the woman Sev saw in the loggia was his mother, Ouen's Catherine. Naturally,
I have some questions. <g>

Who gave the order to escort/arrest her? Valeria? She acted so addle-brained
at the end as to seem uncomprehending of Urth's doom-in-progress. Aside from
the generic value of exultant hostages to the autarchy, what made that
particular woman so important to Valeria that she merited special attention?
The Praetorians were the autarch's personal guards. Who but the autarch
*could* command them? Inire? Sev had left him in charge of the Commonwealth
when he went to Yesod, but that seems not to have lasted for long, otherwise
Valeria would not be on the throne. Inire seems not to have been around any
more.

Nessus was already two days drowned when Sev saw the woman, and the House
Absolute was shortly to be inundated, so where was she being taken, and how?

When and where was she born? During the forty years Sev was gone?

If she was an exultant, then so were both of her parents. Who were they, and
do they appear anywhere in the Urth Cycle? (It seems odd that Ouen never
mentioned that he was shacked-up with an exultant. And exultants didn't
choose to bury their dead on Citadel Hill. Of course, being buried before
she was born might make for an exception. Still, the Guild's victims were
buried in the lower reaches, not up where the graves had monuments, which is
where the grave of the woman whose body was stolen was located.)

-Roy

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