(urth) Urth Digest, Vol 76, Issue 173

[Andrew Mason]

James Wynn wrote:

. (We know of Catherine only through Ouen; and Ouen only
>> seems significant because of his similarity to Severian, both
>> physically and in powers of memory,  so if they're not Severian's
>> biological parents, that whole episode becomes pointless.)
>
> It's not pointless. It connects Severian to Dorcas.

I'm feeling lost here. How does it connect Severian to Dorcas? It can
do so only through Ouen, but what reason is there to connect Severian
with Ouen if he is not his biological father? He sets out to look for
Ouen  purely because he has worked out that he is Dorcas's son, and he
thinks Dorcas needs a protector. Then the innkeeper mentions that they
look alike, and his brain starts whirring. If he's not actually Ouen's
son, this is just a mistake - there's no reason to think he's
connected with Dorcas at all.

But Severian helping
> his biological father find his mother, but never finding his his
> biological mother strikes me as really weird story-telling. Wolfe thinks
> the The Book of the Short Sun would be "lame" if, once we know the Rajan
> can travel to Urth, he does not meet with Severian. But it seems fine to
> him that his mother is just a name? I don't buy it. If people are
> suspicious, they should be.

Of course they should be. But I think that suspicion should lead us to
find out more about Catherine. The connection with the names of Holy
Katharine and Contessa Carina, the connection with the Pelerines, who
keep turning up throughout the series, the link with the story of
Frog, whose mother was also a virgin priestess - these all make her
significant. There is probably a clue, which Wolfe considers very
obvious, that tells us exactly who she was, but no one has spotted it
yet.

>
> If Severian is understood as somehow directly associated with the myths
> in the Brown Book, it restores a scattered unfocused unedited brain dump
> back to a comprehensible narrative.

He is associated with the myths of the brown book; but they are not,
as I read them, straightforward reports of his ancestry; they are
myths, and he is their fulfilment.
>
>
>> That he's the father of Typhon is not
>> problematic in the same way (though it would have to be reconciled
>> somehow with Typhon's claim that he he was not born).
>
> I'm curious why you think this would not "mess the story up" as well.

Because it would not conflict with what the narrative seems to tell us
about his parentage. (It would have to be a time-travlling Severian
who becomes Typhon's father, of course. I've no attachment to this
theory; I'm just saying it produces less of an obvious conflict.)  And
I didn't say 'the story'; I said 'this story'. I proposed a specific
story about Severian's ancestry and its significance; I think it helps
to make the work a coherent one; it shows how the world is being
guided - whether by an actual conspiracy or by the Increate - towards
the birth of the New Sun. This story is spoiled by making him a clone.