(urth) The Typhon-Severian Family Tree

[don doggett]

--- James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net> wrote:

> MourningS Glory says:
> >3)...As I believe Marc Arimani has already pointed
> out, what does 
> >the device graved on the bronze door of Severian's
> crypt (the fountain, ship 
> >volant, and rose) have to do with Typhon the Great
> or his family? Nothing, 
> >whereas all three, as we shall see, clearly
> resonate with events in 
> >Severian's life.
> 
> Well, we don't really know that the symbols on the
> crypt have NOTHING to do
> with Typhon's family. Would we know what those
> symbols meant if Wolfe had
> not written "Urth of the New Sun"? They are still
> rather tenous and it seems to
> me Severian found meaning IN the symbols rather than
> the symbols having
> been designed after the fact.  > 

> And has anyone theorized how this person in the tomb
> is *actually* Severian?
> (perhaps if it were Apu Punchau's crypt...)

Yes, I have.  It is Ymar's tomb, he's the only other
Autarch to fly to Yesod, he was a member of the Guild,
and he and Severian are *somehow* the same person, if
not a clone then somehow the way Able and Arnthor are
the same in WK.  This "twinning" is a persistent theme
of Wolfe's.  Ymar is surely the bastard son of Typhon.
 Why else would anyone support him as autarch? 
Legitimacy of succession is very important and almost
the only way for a boy to become a ruler.

Don

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