(urth) Sev's common lineage

[Dave Tallman]

b sharp wrote:
> My impression is that the woman Sev sees from the loggia is not from the future but rather
> being taken back to the past where she belongs. I think this because the woman in the pale
> gown in the coffin appears in the first chapter of the first book of the series and the woman
> Sev sees from the loggia appears in UotNS, an afterthought book by Wolfe to help explain 
> the first four.  I don't get the sense from the first 4 books that Catherine (or the coffin woman)
> is from the future, quite the opposite. I think Wolfe put the woman in UotNS on the Path of Air
> mostly to connect her to the Play and Countess Carina, (whom Dave, through her maids, has
> neatly connected to Catherine, even without the physical resemblance).
>   
Since UotNS was an afterthought, Wolfe must have expected us to be able 
to construct the loggia scene from the play alone. What is the Contessa 
doing in the play? She seems like a throw-away character until we 
examine clues like her maid's names, the morning-glory reference, and 
Meschia's comment about her prolonging her life by wandering Urth and 
being unable to return home. Note that he said Urth, not Ushas; this 
implies time-travel to the past.

> So anyway, if she is from the past, and weeping now, I think she is being brought back to face
> her necessary destiny, to be tortured to death in Allowin's Necklace. If forced to speculate on 
> her crime I think it might be the same as her sister, Cyriaca's.
>   
This theory involves two or more time-travel trips to my one. I invoke 
Occam's razor; time-travel should be used sparingly in theories.  Here 
is your scenario:

1) An adulteress from the past time-jumps to the last days of the 
autarchy to escape her death sentence.
2) In spite of an imminent flood, a squad of Praetorians escort her to 
the already-flooded Atrium of Time so that she can be executed in her 
own time. (Why not just kill her then and there?)
3) She sees Severian and for unknown reasons looks at him with mingled 
hope and fear.
4) Back in the year before Sev is elevated she is buried in the 
necropolis. For unknown reasons, she is interesting enough to Vodalus 
for him to dig her up in person.

I see no clues that give the impression that the Contessa had her origin 
in a different time period. In the play she's an ordinary exultant with 
an apartment in the House Absolute, a favorite of the current autarch.  
In my theory she escapes to the past (actually she is forced to do 
this), lives about seventeen years there as a prisoner, and finally dies 
to become the corpse in the necropolis.  Her destiny is crucial enough 
to be enforced even when the whole world is about to collapse.

> Marc Aramini- Roy's nuts and bolts interpretations and insistance that real-world logic should be obeyed
> might leave gaps in understanding.  Surely Eschatology And Genesis is best interpreted as symbolic art
> within art rather than as a mechanical reality. Still without Roy, theories can (and do despite him) spiral 
> out of control.  I think his input is especially apt for a story written by an engineer.
>   
I think it is reasonable to look for clues in the books that go beyond 
real-world logic. For example, there's no reason to believe Dr. Talos 
knew the history of the saint names he selected for the maids. That has 
to be a clue from Wolfe to us, or nothing. It's a meaningless 
coincidence in the nuts-and-bolts world of the story.

The context of the argument was whether we should trust the play for 
specific details about the real Contessa. The details may have been made 
up by Talos. On the other hand, Sev might have carried back to Canog a 
few more specifics than what he told us in UotNS, such as the woman 
being of exultant height.