Is Agia a Robot?

António Pedro Marques · 18 Jun 2010, 22:17 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ant=F3nio_Pedro_Marques?=)
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 23:17:15 +0100
Subject: (urth) Is Agia a Robot?
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David Stockhoff wrote:
> Well, the proverb doesn't describe female assassins---just women. So
> it's ambiguous. She could certainly be a trained or experienced female
> assassin, in addition to being either nonhuman or nonfemale. But since
> Wolfe probably made up the "proverb," it was with a purpose, and there
> are no clues that Agia is simply an angry trained human female assassin.
> (Unless she wears secret assassin armor on her head.)

I just find that Agia is the single most important character in the whole 
story and precious little is known about her. Maybe Wolfe's hints are not in 
the sense of her being a robot, but something else - though just what I 
can't guess.

- She is there almost from the beginning until the end - even as Severian 
becomes Autarch, she becomes the Autarch's antagonist, seemingly out of 
nothing - what's she got to do with the Vodelarii??

- Compare Agia's omnipresence to Thecla's, who Severian is always 
mentioning, yet barely appears in the story in person - by contrast, Agia 
has a will of her own to remain relevant.

- Why the obsession with Severian? He killed her brother/lover, ok, but it's 
not like it was undeserved, and he did it merely as an instrument of Law - 
not to mention that A&A went to great lengths to entrap Severian before he 
did anything - can anyone believe that the twins' usual business was killing 
unwary travellers in avern duels?

The fact is that Agia's whole purpose from beginning to end seems to be to 
work as an antagonist to Severian. To me this suggests that the character is 
much more important and mysterious that it seems at first sight, and that 
the oddities about her beg for some grand explanation. Iow, I don't think 
the odd hints point to her being a robot, but rather to something much more 
extraordinary (whether part of it is being a robot or not, and bearing in 
mind that pretty much everything in Wolfe's books is extraordinary, both in 
etymological and pedestrian sense). Just what, I have absokutely no idea at 
all. I certainly don't think she's the Devil, she's not that powerful.

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