(urth) Sister?
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Sat Aug 7 04:18:54 PDT 2010
On 8/6/2010 8:14 PM, Jane Delawney wrote:
> Whether this is the case or not though - one is still left to wonder
> why, given that he simply must have been able to demand the relevant
> information from the Guild, Severian still does not know (even at the
> end of UOTNS he does not know - one might think that by that time, both
> Sev and GW have passed beyond worrying about it, but if Juturna is in
> the mix that is not the case at all, is it?) who his *sister* is. GW
> spends altogether too much time and effort setting Severian up as one of
> twins (or at the very least of a brother-sister pair with appropriate
> names) for this to be an irrelevant or insignificant question, surely?
Let us think what information that the guild would have retained. We
could expect them to have:
* the official documentation commanding Catharine's imprisonment and her
torture and execution if any. These would record her name, residence and
position, a brief or lengthy physical description doe identification
purposes, and the charges against her.
* the official guild records kept for inspection by the authorities,
accounting for her disposition and that of any children who arrived with
her or she bore.
* the internal accounts or logs kept by the masters for later
consultation of their own, their fellow masters, and masters yet to come.
I don't think this would necessarily include any details of any family
members who had not fallen into their hands, except by chance inclusion:
"...found guilty of the murder of her husband the Autarch's servant
Pancras for which the sentence of death is to be carried out...". Of
course, an exultant's family would be identifiable from their name, *if*
that name were faithfully recorded and there was no complicating
factors like disinheritance or abdication.
Of any siblings, the guild records would say that a girl with
such-a-color hair and eyes and marks was given to the Witches if the
birth came after incarceration, or such-a-color hair and eyes and marks
and the name of X if the girl came with her mother to the tower.
Severian's lack of mention of a sister suggests to me that either he
came without one, or that any on record are no longer locatable.
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >
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