Thea's Identity

Lee Berman · 14 Apr 2013, 04:14 · from 2013-April.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:14:53 -0400
Subject: (urth) Thea's Identity
Message-ID: <BLU175-W326C4CD531BF199626A43ECFC30 at phx.gbl>

>Thomas Bitterman: Bonus points: the entire autarchial 
>line is half-clones of Inire.  It calls
>back (forward) to Wolfe's ideas about 
>hybridization as expressed in the
>Long Sun (something about crossing lines of corn).

This is along my own personal guess about what is going
on beneath the surface of BotNS. Why is the wizened,
monkey-like vizier titled "Father"? I suspect he fathered
a few of the characters we know. (Not Severian but I suspect
him of siring Severian's father, Ouen).

When the Greek gods interbred with mortals, the results were
called "demi-gods" or "heroes". When Biblical angels fell to 
earth and mated with humans, the results were called nephilim
or "men of reknown". I suspect these are cognate myths, reflecting
the same events and it was BotNS (specifically Talos' play) which 
made the connection clear to me.

I see Severian written as one of these characters, like the Greek
heroes. A person of mixed parentage who is born unsure of his own 
paternity but inexplicably finding himself possessed of mysterious 
powers and fighting prowess beyond what regular men have. I think 
Silk fits the pattern also.

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