The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: Frail on August 04, 2016, 03:27:33 am

Title: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Frail on August 04, 2016, 03:27:33 am
Ok seriously, I've now read all six books and this keeps coming up in conversations. Have I missed something?
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: MSJ on August 04, 2016, 04:12:42 am
Ok seriously, I've now read all six books and this keeps coming up in conversations. Have I missed something?

It's talked about and speculated on for the very reason no one knows who her father is. I've absolutely no clue or any ideas on who it might be. Some subscribe to the theory that she was born of immaculate conception. I don't buy it, but I've never heard any ideas on who it would be reasonable to be or what their import would be, for that matter.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Frail on August 04, 2016, 04:33:09 am
What of Moenghus? He fits the time frame alright.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Callan S. on August 04, 2016, 09:16:49 am
Batman

But wouldn't that burn - immaculate conception  (with Esme being an old name 'Such an old fashioned name') but she gives the child away to slavery...
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: H on August 04, 2016, 11:21:18 am
Ok seriously, I've now read all six books and this keeps coming up in conversations. Have I missed something?

Quote
Then there was the dashing Kidruhil cavalryman, the one she had thought she loved, who came to her a second time without any recollection of the first. “You must be mistaken,” he had exclaimed. “I’d remember a beauty such as you!”
Then she had given birth to her daughter.

It either incredibly significant, or absolutely not at all.  The scene either shows some kind of arcane influence (a glamour) or is just a mundane example of how shallow the men who would visit her are and how naive Esmenet was at the time.

I felt like it was surely significant, surely arcane at one time.  However, now I am pretty sure it's just totally unimportant really.  Mimara is important not because where she came from, but because who she will be.  She is a violation of Before and After, the Judging Eye (the Eye of the Unborn) is with her before she is even pregnant.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: MSJ on August 04, 2016, 03:21:51 pm
I felt like it was surely significant, surely arcane at one time.  However, now I am pretty sure it's just totally unimportant really.  Mimara is important not because where she came from, but because who she will be.  She is a violation of Before and After, the Judging Eye (the Eye of the Unborn) is with her before she is even pregnant.

+1, H. This is where I am at with it. 
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Callan S. on August 05, 2016, 01:05:29 am
Pretty sure the forgetting of the cavalryman could be a significant thing, as it's kind of a theme in the series. Possibly like the blindness of the Cish, forgetting has something to do with more clear judgement. A clearing of preconceptions?
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Bolivar on August 05, 2016, 03:40:53 am
This stuck out to me in The Judging Eye, after the bit with the heart in the eye:

Quote
She seemed younger, somehow, more fragile with beauty. The curve of her cheeks, like the outer edge of an opened oyster shell. Her compact lips. Her wide eyes, lashed with quill strokes. For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother’s. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet’s whore-shell.

It seems like there has to be something extraordinary about her parentage here, how she was conceived despite the contraceptive. Her lighter skin also seems significant, heavily suggesting that her father is Norsirai. Maybe an exiled Dunyain or a Mangeacca agent?
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Tyrin on August 05, 2016, 04:37:18 am
Maybe... a Mangeacca agent?

You know come to think of it: do we have even a remote understanding of why the Consult not only knows about Mimara, but commanded that she be protected? (which resulted in her being saved multiple times by not-Soma)  We know what is told to the skin-spy about "even the false prophecies must be protected" but I don't buy that that's an honest answer from the Synthese; the Consult clearly knows something.

Maybe this is related to why Aurang seems so relaxed when he's flying around trolling the Ordeal.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: H on August 05, 2016, 11:33:36 am
It seems like there has to be something extraordinary about her parentage here, how she was conceived despite the contraceptive. Her lighter skin also seems significant, heavily suggesting that her father is Norsirai. Maybe an exiled Dunyain or a Mangeacca agent?

A good point.  Thing is, while it seems miraculous, we don't know the level of effectiveness that a whore's-shell provides.  Even so, I can't imagine The Consult sent an agent to Esmenet, because when Aurang come to her the first time, he remarks that this is the "beggining of their relationship."  I also doubt that there was another Dunyain on the loose that we never knew of.

My idea is that while her father is essentially no one, perhaps the fact that Fate allowed her to be born despite the contraceptive is what is key?

You know come to think of it: do we have even a remote understanding of why the Consult not only knows about Mimara, but commanded that she be protected? (which resulted in her being saved multiple times by not-Soma)  We know what is told to the skin-spy about "even the false prophecies must be protected" but I don't buy that that's an honest answer from the Synthese; the Consult clearly knows something.

That's a question that has been bandied around for a long time.  Where does the Consult get it's prophecies from?  The answer is that we really have no idea.  The closest we ever get to one is the quote from WLW, Chapter 12's opening:

Quote
Skies are upended, poured as milk into the tar of night. Cities become pits for fire. The last of the wicked stand with the last of the righteous, lamenting the same woe. One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand, they shall be called, for this is their tally, the very number of doom.
—Anonymous, The Third Revelation of Ganus the Blind

But my guess is this is second hand.  That is, this is news of the prophecy, a portend given on the eve of the First Apocalypse, not what surned on the Inchoroi in the first place.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: MSJ on August 05, 2016, 12:39:41 pm
We'll,  what I want to know more than who Mimara's father is, is why is the Consult so interested in protecting her? The false prophecy is evidently the Celmommas prophecy, no? Or, at the very least, it was lost in translation. So, wouldn't whatever the prophecy Mimara is connected to, would be true. I have a feeling the we get more truth from Aurang/Synethse than any other character in these books. I'm with you on that H, you've swayed me.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: H on August 05, 2016, 01:23:19 pm
We'll,  what I want to know more than who Mimara's father is, is why is the Consult so interested in protecting her? The false prophecy is evidently the Celmommas prophecy, no? Or, at the very least, it was lost in translation. So, wouldn't whatever the prophecy Mimara is connected to, would be true. I have a feeling the we get more truth from Aurang/Synethse than any other character in these books. I'm with you on that H, you've swayed me.

Thinking about it,perhaps why Aurang says they have to follow the false as much as the true is a conceit to realizing that some of the prophecies can be true.  Sorting the True from the False is really only doable post hoc, so all must be followed, until proven one way or the other.

I'm pretty sure that Aurang knows more about Earwa than anyone we get a perspective from, bar Kellhus.  Problem is Kellhus is a manipulator and a liar, possibly deluded to the point of believing his own rhetoric to some degree.  Aurang believes his own rhetoric too, but from everything we've seen or been told in the series, he has something of the Truth to it everything he says.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Frail on August 05, 2016, 02:44:00 pm
Batman

But wouldn't that burn - immaculate conception  (with Esme being an old name 'Such an old fashioned name') but she gives the child away to slavery...
That would be devastating. I feel like Kellhus would know who the father is, especially with Mimara around a few times on the Andiamine Heights, (he could see generations of Nroni fisherman toiling through Akka's face.

On a side note... in The Judging Eye, how did Mimara know where Achamian was to begin with? Let alone find him?
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Cynical Cat on August 06, 2016, 10:06:08 am
Mimara knew where he was because Kelhous, and by extension some of the royal court, knew where he was.  The rationalization Mimara might have heard is that he was essentially under her mother's protection, but we know that Kelhous has his own reasons.  That's why Ironsoul was sent out to play Scalpoi although what Kelhous was attempting to accomplish with that gambit remains a mystery.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: Madness on August 06, 2016, 05:59:40 pm
No issue yet but be careful with TGO spoilers in the General Earwa subforum - as we are trying to keep all TGO spoilers clearly labelled in the TGO subforum until final, general release with Orbit UK's edition Sep 29th.
Title: Re: Mimara's Father?
Post by: The Sharmat on August 16, 2016, 06:51:10 pm
I always felt there might be a greater significance to Nil'giccas's "I remember your name...Mimara." than just an Erratic finding a moment of clarity, but I have nothing to back that up but a gut feeling.