Urth Net
Urth Digest, Vol 43, Issue 2
↰ answers Matthew Keeley
· by quotation
16 quoted lines
At 09:00 PM 3/10/2008, you wrote:
Some questions, which I think answer each other.
Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I don't
remember it.
Who killed Valentin?
The obvious suspect is Lesage, who seems to be the only
person who really hated him.
But how did Lesage know where to find him? And, in a
related vein, what did Ignacio do to win Lesage's trust?
If the answers are what I think they are, this is really chilling.
Peter
The buccaneers were laughing at Chris when he asked if they'd seen Valentin, because Lesage had recently offered them a reward for Valentin and they thought that was why Chris was looking for him too. It's clear Lesage found him first.
Lesage seemed to have the uncanny knack of being able to be in the right place at the right time, show up when it was profitable and be delayed when things went awry. In fact, the characters even discussed this at one point and were at a loss to figure it out. In a story where time travel is possible, this rises above the point of coincidence and is evidence that someone has pre-knowledge of events. Chris seems very wary of Lesage but says little about him, almost as if he doesn't have to or doesn't want to. I believe that Lesage was the visitor at the beginning, for whom Chris wrote the book. Chris was very paranoid about not messing with the timeline as Ignacio and realized that for things to turn out right for him, Lesage would have to go back as well. With Chris' manuscript, he would know what to do and where and when to show up or stay away.
Perhaps Lesage is Chris' son, doing the time travel thing to make sure things turn out the same to make sure he'll be born! That includes killing Valentin and betraying everyone at the end.
3 quoted lines
Good questions; I'd love to hear your answers.
Re: Ignacio and Lesage: What evidence is there to suggest that Lesage ever met "Ignacio?"
I don't believe there is any, other than what I speculated on above.
1 quoted line
As for Valentin - I don't know - I wonder if he killed himself? Chris suggests that possibility... Or perhaps Lesage revealed himself to Valentin as Chris and Valentin, seeing the truth, tried to kill his old tormentor? And then Chris kills Valentin in self-defense?
I don't think there was a large seperation in age between Chris and Lesage not to see a resemblence.
1 quoted line
Also - do we have any more thoughts on what caused Chris to go back in time in the first place?
At the point when the students become novices, they begin to travel back in time. I think this was a property of the Monastery. If you recall, other people also left abruptly, so they may have been doing the same thing.
2 quoted lines
And what about that "Angel of Death" that Chr says he sees above one of the boats?
-Matt
I believe that was after his second raping when he suffered severe head trauma and was wishing death on his tormentors. An homage to Latro, maybe?
Dan