(i) A young woman of the Riverfolk explains that the coffins of her people go down the river to the Sea where a seer now walks who will call back the Old Shen from the stars. She asks whether their dead will then rise from the waters. (She does not believe in this resurrection. She merely asks. Her religiously charged imagination elaborates the myth.)
(ii) The fugitive Ivar Frederiksen's fiancee is visited by a man named Gabriel. I wondered whether his surname, "Stewart," was also significant but its spelling differs from "Stuart," the surname of the prince who will come again. See here.
(iii) Gabriel Stewart tells Tatiana Thane that the Builders will return and make her son more than human.
(iv) A Riverfolk chaplain says that Ivar will prepare for the promised Advent and addresses him as "lord."
That is heavy Millenarian stuff. It could have been beautiful, poetic, metaphorical language for a change that can happen in us without superhuman assistance. However, we are to learn that it is being cynically manipulated to foment social discord.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And a merely poetic, metaphorical, or abstractly philosophical meaning was not what these persons wanted. They, and others like them, wanted a literal return of the "Elders," who would somehow transform and raise them to great power. Hopes that malevolently minded persons found easy to manipulate for their own ends.
Sean
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