From: raster@highfiber.com (Charles Dye)
Subject: (urth) Re: Educating Agia
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 13:50:51 

William H. Ansley <wansley@warwick.net> writes:

>Agia has always struck me as being rather too well educated to be from the
>stratum of society Severian finds her in when he meets her. She seems to
>know quite a bit about the Conciliator and the Botanic Gardens. Her little
>speach about the Conciliator at the beginning of V. 1, Ch. 19 (p. 118, Orb
>ed.) has always seemed a bit odd to me, coming from her. But, then again, I
>don't believe we ever find out much about her past.

I've never seen Agia as being generally educated.  Rather, she seems to
have picked up a lot of odd historical facts, or factoids.  Her offhand
reference to the Conciliator living "say, thirty thousand years ago" (in
Shadow, Chapter 19) is unusually precise for a Commonwealth citizen.
And the odd phrasing "thousand years" instead of "chiliads" or "millenia"
suggests to me that she heard it from someone who is not a Commonwealth
citizen.  Perhaps someone who was alive that long ago?  I see one obvious
suspect.

(Wild speculation:  could Hethor have been the (unseen) soldier who betrays
the chiliarch freed by Severian?)

raster@highfiber.com


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