Yeah, but typos like this "stick" if they go for too long. It is a simple typo and it should be corrected. I thought her reply in this interview is interesting, so I'm posting it:
PNR: Your new book, THE CURSE OF CHALION, is set in a new universe, one with its own religion, including five gods. Can you tell us how you developed this structure?
Lois McMaster Bujold : Gut feel, and my argument with philosophical dualism. On some level, I think the Platonic view of the universe, and the mind/body and good/evil dualism that has flowed from it, is a profound mistake, particularly when people attempt to apply it to the messy ambiguities of the real world. Much evil has been done in the name of good by persons wedded to a too-simple theory of society, economics, religion, politics, or what have you. When they attempt to apply their theories, and of course discover that real people persist in not fitting properly into their conceptual boxes, too often the response is not to abandon or modify the theory, but rather to start chopping up the people to make them fit. My five gods were, first of all, a pantheon that could not be divided evenly, one that resisted the deceptive simplifications of dualism.
The Father of Winter, the Daughter of Spring, the Mother of Summer, and the Son of Autumn map onto most of the human condition. In addition, the fifth god, a sort of trickster figure called the Bastard, turned out to be terrifically important in Chalionese Quintarian theology. The fifth god gives a box for all the bits and people who don't fit otherwise to go into, to have a legitimate place to stand and a powerful protector. The Bastard provides the adjustable grease between tidy theory and messy reality, so that the interface isn't plagued by so much destructive friction. He is, naturally, the god of balance, of disasters, of all things out of season; in addition, of foundlings and (naturally) bastards, of persons of alternative sexuality, of artists, of spies, no doubt of science fiction writers, and of a lot of other important things.
People being perverse, naturally they went and re-invented dualism in the form of the Quadrene heresy, dominant in the Roknari princedoms, which takes the four primary gods to be "good" and the Bastard to be a demon. So while everyone pretty much agrees on the existence of the same deities, the argument continues over their classification; the two faiths are in effect heresies of each other, with all the plot-driving conflict that implies.
http://www.writerspace.com/ParanormalRo ... Bujold.htm
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