Talk:Marisa Coulter

I think this article should be from the perspective of Marisa Coulter, instead of from the perspective of Lyra or other characters. Ex: Lyra has a golden compass and she didn't know. Ex: Lyra had a desire to have a mother. There are many things that I would rather see: For example: about the fight she had with Lord Asriel with who should raise the child, that it couldn't be to a gyptian surogate and why did she give Lyra up for adoption? When her monkey searched for and found the alethiometer (while Lyra was away) why didn't it sieze it at that time? What about her being one of the few women with real power in the Church? —This unsigned comment was made by 75.212.133.163 (talk • contribs) on 21:10, July 15, 2010 (UTC+1).

Marisa Van Zee

In The Collectors, we learn that when Marisa was 18 she went by the surname Van Zee. I have added this to her aliases in the infobox. Is it too much to assume this was her maiden name? - Amyosaurus (profile|talk) 13:14, February 15, 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it can be assumed that Van Zee is her maiden name. When I listened to the The Collectors, it struck me as maybe a sort of traveling name - like how Lord Boreal used Charles Latrom in Will's World. However, I guess it could be her maiden name, but we don't have enough information to know for sure.

Also, I have seen two spellings of 'Van Zee'. For example, in this Telegraph article, it is 'Van Zie'. Someone asked Philip Pullman which was the correct spelling on Twitter and if there would be a paper copy of the story in the future. He didn't specify the spelling, but did say a paper copy would come out eventually, so we'll probably have to wait until then to know the spelling for sure. - Lucy 11:14, February 21, 2015 (UTC)

Ah, good point; it could be her travelling name! I'll just leave it as an alias, then. As far as spelling goes, the article you've linked to misspells Horley, a spelling we know from the book blurb, as 'Hawley', so I wouldn't consider it reliable. I agree that we should wait until we get a print version to change the spellings. Until then, articles can be marked with the transcribed audio template where needed. - Amyosaurus (profile|talk) 13:24, February 24, 2015 (UTC)

An e-book of The Collectors has now been made available (as have the main trilogy). This confirms that the correct spelling is actually 'Van Zee'. When I get some time, I might see what else I can add to this page and others from having a visual version to work from. - Lucy 21:23, March 10, 2015 (UTC)

We now have official confirmation ("Word of God" as TV Tropes puts it) that "Van Zee" is her maiden name; new user Emilykoroleva‎ tweeted Philip Pullman and got a reply to that effect. So it's now officially settled, with further confirmation on the way. — evilquoll (talk) 17:35, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

Perfect! I also thought Emily's follow up tweet was interesting. van Zee means 'of the sea', and so does 'Marisa'. One could hardly have a more nautical name! - Amyosaurus (profile|talk) 23:37, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit to 'van Zee' - wasn't sure on the capitalization. When in doubt - ask Pullman! (Emilykoroleva (talk) 11:26, October 29, 2017 (UTC))

Description of dæmon

Mrs. Coulter's dæmon was described as "nameless". This is incorrect, as it means "hasn't got a name"; as far as we know, all dæmons have names. The proper term for "has a name but we don't know what it is" is "unnamed". — evilquoll (talk) 15:34, August 17, 2018 (UTC)

Nationality

Marisa is currently in the English individuals category. Given that Marcel Delamere was her younger brother, it is likely that Marisa was either not English or not just English. The way Madame Delamere spoke of her in chapter 16 strongly indicates that she was the mother of both Marcel and Marisa. I suppose they could have been half siblings given than Pullman has said Marisa's maiden name is van Zee. Worth noting, however, that 'de la mer' means 'of the sea' in French, just as 'van (der?) Zee' does in Dutch. Did the family use translations of their surname, perhaps?

Marcel and his mother appeared to be French-speaking but could easily have been Swiss or Belgian or another European nationality. Belgian might explain the Dutch/French versions of the surname but that's just speculation. In chapter 14, Bonneville learnt that Marisa 'married an Englishman', phrasing that might also suggest her family was not English.

Is there any textual evidence that she was English? I suppose she lived in Brytain and spoke fluent English without any reported accent but we know very little about how citizenship worked in Lyra's world. — ArgentFir 10:35, October 4, 2019 (UTC)

It's actually bothered me for some time that so many characters have been placed into the "English individuals" or "xxx individuals" categories without proof, merely assumption. I have no problem with removing the category from Marisa's page because there is no solid proof of her nationality at this time. --MusicaLƎƎ (talk) 17:47, October 4, 2019 (UTC)

My mistake for the English individuals category - when I added the bulk of them back in February (there were only about 12 in the main category and I knew that wasn't right), I hadn't read the books for a few months and could've sworn I'd seen somewhere that Coulter was English but I haven't picked that up anywhere in the books during my re-read over the Summer so I must have picked it up somewhere online possibly or merely imagined it. Thanks for pointing it out, ArgentFir, seeing as there's been no disagreement yet, I've removed the category as I'm not sure when you'll come back to the wiki and want to remove the false information as quickly as possible. The individuals by nationality sections are probably something we should try cleaning out but, of course, that conversation is better suited to a forum/category talk page. Perhaps we could change the description to better suit the individuals in the category - rather than 'from x', we could use something that could include the people we heavily guess have lived in England. I look forward to see if Pullman tells us anything in the next book (and I guess the wait for the next for one will be a bit longer as he hasn't got down to writing the book yet and TSC was finished before LBS was published). NightSpeakers - My Blogs! 15:41, October 5, 2019 (UTC)

In the last chapter of The Secret Commonwealth I noticed that Marcel Delamare was skilled in shooting because Switzerland were "keen on such things as military service and hunting and marksmanship". This leads me to infer that Delamare is Swiss (and perhaps so is his sister). While this could just be put down to the fact that Delamare lived in Switzerland, military service tends to only be for those originating from that country. While there is no direct statement that Delamare participated in military service, it is quite possible that he did. All this, of course, does not necessarily make Coulter herself Swiss, but I feel that it is an important point when reviewing her nationality.--LimeInABush (Talk) 00:09, October 12, 2019 (UTC)