(urth) Broceliande's forest

[Tony Ellis]

Broceliande wrote:
<lots!>
> 1.      What is the evidence for and against the existence of 
> the Annese,  

Well, the 'What Abos?' thread tackled this way back when, and hopefully
we covered at least some of the key points. The argument starts here, if
you can bear it:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0204/816.txt.shtml

I should point out that Robert Borski rendered our whole debate largely
pointless by quoting Wolfe as saying the narrator of VRT is a Shadow
Child. I think 'Shadow Child' was a slip of the tongue for 'abo', but
I'm open to persuasion.

> 2.      Is Veil's hypothesis correct? 

We're shown people who can use tools, and people who can't, so no, I
don't think the Annese can have replaced the human colonists entirely.
Quite aside from anything else, if every colonist is an abo, why do they
think they are colonists? How can they read? How can they maintain their
rich, complex culture, if they were all naked savages three generations
ago?

If you want to find the Annese, you have to look among the illiterate
and the marginalised: the beggars and the slaves. I believe in what I
understand to be Liev's postpostulate: that after the war, some of the
Annese were able to enter human society under the guise of being French
refugees. Victor's mother is one, Cassila is another.

> 2. Did Victor become Marsch, or did Marsch become Victor, or 
> is the prisoner 
> a synchretisation of the two?

The prisoner writes with the same wretched handwriting as Victor: we see
the officer look back at Victor's old schoolbook and nod to himself.
This, and masses of circumstantial evidence, suggests that Victor became
Marsch. 

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