(urth) Ouen's Catherine
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Sat Oct 14 15:24:33 PDT 2006
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com wrote:
>
> On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:59:32 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey"
> <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>
>
>> What "dark woman" did Severian have in mind, and what did he know,
>
>> or
>> suspect, about her and this look-alike waiter? I can only conclude
>
>> that he
>> came to this conversation with a prior notion about a certain dark
>
>> woman and
>> her relationship to himself.
>
> I took this to be just a simple deduction by Sev: He realizes first
> that Ouen must be his father, then since Ouen is fair & he (Sev) is
> dark, Sev's mother must have been dark also (is that valid
> genetics?).
It is, at least among historical humanity. Dark hair is dominant over
light, with red incompletely recessive to dark and incompletely dominant
over light. Of course observed expression is subject to length and
summer bleaching, though in the time of Urth, you'd need much greater
exposure to sun for the latter; sailors and fishermen on the water for
most of each day might qualify, as might people working near
still-functional lightning-powered machinery, or in well-lit galleries
of paintings, or making frequent flyer trips above the clouds and ground
clutter.
You'll need to track eye color as well as well, dark eyes are likewise
dominant over light, with exotics like violet and hazel similar in role
to red.
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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