Thecla and Thea

Lee Berman · 08 Jan 2011, 14:39 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 09:39:54 -0500
Subject: (urth) Thecla and Thea
Message-ID: <SNT123-W27D405789B6C4E0140526ECF0C0 at phx.gbl>

Andrew Mason:> Might I suggest an alternative view that may have a similar import -
> that their mothers might have been source and clone? An exultant goes
> to court to become a concubine, taking her kahibit with her. Later she
> retires and gets married. What does her kahibit do then? Arguably,
> continues to go with her and becomes her husband's mistress. So they
> produce half-sisters.

I'm okay with this scenario. But I'm not sure it is necesary. My general idea or 
"theory" is just that there is unmentioned cloning going on and that given names will 
sometimes reflect its occurrance and that euphemism (like "half-sister") may be employed 
to disguise the relationship in polite conversation. 

SOmebody argued that Thecla and Thea are not identical. Nor are natural clones or what we
call "identical twins". Actually the main difference between them, that we are hit with
numerous times, is that Thecla has a "triangular face" while Thea has a "heart-shaped face".
What is the difference between these shapes? I think the answer might be, "sunken cheeks".

There is a mysterious repeated theme of "sunken cheeks" in BotNS. I think it may be related 
to cloning and blood sharing on somewhat flimsy evidence: in a dream, we are shown a (heart-
shaped) blood bat on the cheek of a young woman in a roomful of Thecla clones. In another dream, 
Thecla is revealed to have had her eyes enlarged as a child through application of poison extracts 
(belladonna). I think both dreams can be interpreted as Severian's realization of the foul practices
used to create youth and beauty among wealthy women of the Commonwealth.

If Roy were here he would argue (as he once did) that the example of Pelagia-Pega is contradicting
because Pelagia is an "armigette" and we only have evidence that exultant women are cloned so we 
must toss out this theory.  I would argue (snarkily) that we have the evidence of armigette cloning
with Pelagia and Pega. But I would argue more seriously that Cyriaca is an armigette and she seems
to have a mysterious way of remaining youthful looking (as does Catherine/Katharine maid, another 
armigette height, dark-haired, strangled, ex-Pelerine).

Somebody wondered about Agilus and Agia. I'm not sure. But they are so identical in appearance one
would suspect them of being identical twins. But we know that natural identical twins are always of
the same gender. I think they could be evidence of unnatural twinship.

Somebody mentioned the character of "Thais" as a possible naming convention for a clone of Thea. Thea
is too short to derive a saint name so this could be wordplay on Wolfe's part, Thais really meaning 
"Thea's" (her khaibit). There is some STRANGE stuff happening on that raft floating around at the end of 
the world. Thais gives sly looks. Odilo and Pega argue over the proper label of her relationship
with Pelagia....

Odilo strongly resembles his father, the steward Severian knew from long ago. We have Pega-Pelagia. We
have Thea-Thais. And we have Severian who is a twin and who we are pretty sure has multiple version of
himself running around. I think it would make an appropriate symmetry if all four future gods on that
raft were, in some manner, cloned.

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