(urth) The Tomb of the Unknown Severian

Roy C. Lackey rclackey at stic.net
Tue Dec 18 20:57:58 PST 2007


Joel Sieh wrote:
>It could also be a tomb fashioned by the "original" Severian, the
>Severian who failed the test in UotNS, went back in time, and modified
>events (e.g. sending Juturna to rescue his boyhood self after falling
>in the river IIRC) so that he would later succeed at the test instead
>of failing.  Sev goes on a bit about this at the end of UotNS.

I don't care about the mausoleum stuff, but the Juturna part intrigues me.
The problem with the above is that it was Sev2 (our narrator Severian) who
spoke with Juturna in the throne room near the end of Book V about the
boyhood near-drowning incident. Near the end of Book IV is where Sev2 spoke
of Sev1 (the "first Severian"). There, Sev2 said that Sev1 hadn't drowned
either, because someone was already messing around in his (their) life by
that point. So, when Sev2 spoke to Juturna about her having saved his life
when he was a boy (though she had not yet saved him in her own backward
personal timeline, but never mind), he was referring to the incident at the
beginning of Book I when he shot out of the river propelled by her hand,
obviously. Yet, if Sev1 didn't drown either -- and he obviously didn't,
since he went on to become autarch -- who saved *him*? You can't say that
time-walking Sev1 saved himself as a boy -- he wouldn't have been alive to
become a time walker. Care to speculate?

-Roy




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