Agia's Weapons

Lee Berman · 20 Dec 2011, 20:32 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:32:49 -0500
Subject: (urth) Agia's Weapons
Message-ID: <SNT123-W36AA50A442F1B1070B526ECFA40 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff: I may have a problem with the use of "bequeath," however. It was once 
>common to give away all your possessions upon joining an order. Wouldn't she have done 
>this at that time, rather than when she left the Pelerines? The misericorde would then 
>be unexplained, since at that time it was not yet in her possession. But perhaps she 
>went back after to sell her habit and accoutrements.

My timeline would be more like this: young Cyriaca is a Pelerine. She is expelled because 
she gets pregnant with twins whom she raises in Nessus, supporting herself with a used 
clothing store. Some of her old Pelerine stuff (like the misericorde) is put up for sale.  
Later on she meets and marries a dashing armiger from Thrax and leaves the store to her 
teenaged kids and leaves them to fend for themselves. The one thing she does keep is her 
scarlet habit, which Severian finds her dressed in at the masquerade party (ridotto) in 
Thrax. 

>If Inire wanted Valeria dead, she'd be dead, I would think. But the death of both Autarchs 
>would have been difficult to plan!

Yeah. It's hard to understand all the motivations. But my best guess would be that Inire
generally set up Agia (like vodalus) to be an enemy of the Autarchy just as he (and the 17)
sets up the Ascians to be an enemy against the Commonwealth. That is the eternal manipulation
(like Palpatine in Star Wars, heh). Create two armies and pit them against each other 
and control everyone in the resulting mayhem.

>Yes, interesting. But was Agia not rather in control of Hethor?

The eternal question, even with slave and master. Who is controlling whom? If Hethor is Inire
we can see the parallel of attraction to young women (paracoita also). But I think the powers
who orchestrate Severian's adventures know he cannot be killed, thus they are using Agia (and
Agilus) over and over with the assassination attempts. In my view, they seek to have his power.
(which jibes with the quote Daniel recently provided)

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