(urth) Thecla's genealogy folio

[Chris]

Interesting - to be honest I can't think of any interpretation of that 
statement that really makes any more sense than what you just offered.

But, yeesh, the incest-factor is being a little overloaded here.

>I had not read Wolfe's essay "Books in _The Book of the New Sun_" before a
>few weeks ago, when I obtained a copy of PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING. Wolfe said
>something else in the essay about Thecla's four books that has caused me no
>end of annoyance. <g> He said, "[t]hey all must have something to do with
>Severian."
>
>Thecla did not, of course, know anything about Severian when she requested
>the books. She just wanted help from her relatives and/or the Conciliator.
>Three of the books, as I outlined in my previous post, concern the
>Conciliator to a greater or lesser degree, so they necessarily have
>something to do with Severian. It's the folio with the genealogical charts
>that bugs me. I suppose I could fall back to the position that, since
>Severian comes to possess Thecla's memories and personality, anything that
>was important to her had something to do with him, but that's too easy and 
>I
>can't make myself believe that's all there is to it. No, I think that Wolfe
>is suggesting that Severian and Thecla are blood relatives.
>
>All of the attempts to link the two that I am aware of have speculated that
>they share a common parent, one that appears on stage in NEW SUN or is at
>least mentioned, however obliquely; that or they are related by someone 
>only
>a generation or two removed from them. Maybe so, but I have yet to be
>convinced.
>
>An alternative relationship might be suggested by the antiquity of at least
>two of the other three books and their connection to the Conciliator. The
>brown book dates back at least three or four centuries and Canog's book to
>the time of Ymar. Might it be that Thecla is related not so much to the
>apprentice Severian as to the Conciliator? Even if the connection is not
>recognizable or known to her?
>
>Several times in the Urth Cycle it is implied that Severian makes (will
>make) trips into the past that are not related in the text. The Conciliator
>might have entered Thecla's family tree anywhen from Typhon's time onward.
>
>It must be remembered that Severian made a big deal about how much his
>education was enhanced by the reading and studying of those four books. And
>even if he had not studied the genealogical charts, Thecla did and he had
>her memories. He might have gone into the past for the express purpose of
>making *come* true what he knew *had been* true. After all, someone also
>built that mausoleum and someone tinkered with the body count from time to
>time.
>
>-Roy
>
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