(urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??

[Roy C. Lackey]

Jane Delawney quoted and wrote:
> > He had been searching for her body for "forty years".  (SHADOW. chap.
XXII)
> > Ouen is about forty-two.
> >
> I concur. Also, it is deducible from the text (Dorcas remembers going to
> buy clothes for her child, remembers looking after a child and so forth)
> that if Dorcas died in childbirth, as is usually assumed, it was in
> bearing her *second* child, ie. Ouen's sibling.
>
> What I can't remember right now is whether there is much textual
> evidence that Dorcas did in fact die in childbirth. All the old boatman
> tells us is that they'd been married four or five years, then 'Cas died.
> It's entirely possible she died of other natural causes when Ouen was a
> toddler.

It was Ouen who said that she died in childbirth, which is what his father
had told him (CITADEL, XXXVII). But the text is otherwise silent on the
subject of a second child. Ouen knew what his mother looked like from the
picture of her he had, but he was probably too young when she died to have
actually remembered her.

-Roy