Patera Inire

Roy C. Lackey · 17 Jul 2010, 04:07 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:07:34 -0500
Subject: (urth) Patera Inire
Message-ID: <002501cb2565$9985d2c0$01d34a0c@rclackey>

I can't say why Inire was addressed as Father, but I have doubts that he was
anyone's father in the usual sense of the word, as I am the father of my
sons, any more than Silk was anyone's father yet was addressed as Patera,
which is just another word for Father.

I don't remember if this angle has ever been brought up before, but Inire's
title may be nothing more than a relic of the past. That is, we are told
that the Guild's rituals are held in the *ruins* of a chapel in the Citadel,
and the Citadel is the nominal seat of the ruler's power, the ultimate
stronghold. Obviously the religion the chapel served had fallen upon hard
times in Severian's day. That religion, it is clear enough, was based on the
Conciliator/New Sun.

At one point Sev mentioned the "thousand-year-old walls of the chapel". That
serves to date the religion's inception as approximating the beginning of
the autarchy. We are also told that Inire had been vizier to the autarchs
since the first autarch, Ymar, and that none of the following autarchs until
the Old Autarch had gone to Yesod to try to win a new sun. That last may
explain why the chapel in the Citadel had fallen to ruin.

We are given every reason to believe that Inire's mission on Urth was to
cause to be delivered a new sun. We are also led to believe that Sev was
returned to Urth in Typhon's era, rather than his own, to establish the cult
or religion of the New Sun, personified as the Conciliator. This Sev did
with his miracles and other superhuman feats, then vanished, while Ymar was
still a boy.

Just before he vanished, Sev handed over his bloody thorn to a man on Mt.
Typhon. That thorn eventually became the centerpiece of a female-dominated
religious order, the Pelerines. The Pelerines seem to be one of the few
functioning arms of the religion that once held sway in the autarch's seat
of power.

Could it be that the inception of the religion of the New Sun, the autarchy
and Inire's first known appearance on Urth are all related? That is, might
it be that Inire formally founded or was an early member of the newly-minted
religion, and that he pushed Ymar to go to Yesod? When Ymar failed to bring
a new sun and a long string of autarchs refused to even try, that the
religion faded with the dying sun until Sev's orchestrated rise to power and
eventual success?

The religion faded away, but not Inire. He may have kept the title Father,
just as the Domnicellae of the Pelerines was addressed as Mother.

-Roy

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