Viola Strachan
Names: Viola StrachanViolaMummieMumViDee's mother
First appears in Book 3: Diamond Mask, chapter 3 (HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH 9 MAY 2062)
Appearances
What you know
Book 3: Diamond Mask
- Ch 4Mummie is an operant who, with meta therapists, has painfully tried to force Dee's latent powers out; she is stern and dismissive of the children's complaints.
- Ch 4Viola is Dee and Ken's mother and Masha's daughter-in-law; she is bitter about Dee's latency and dislikes going to Islay.
- Ch 5A psychophysicist with a coercive metafaculty and strong personal magnetism; she specialized in statistical cerebroenergetics, studying injurious effects of mind-boosting equipment on operators.
- Ch 5Viola was disappointed that her second child, like her first, was not an operant, and she blamed her husband's genes.
- Ch 5Viola has strong coercive mental power and used it to pressure Ian into selling the farm and moving to Edinburgh.
- Ch 5Less than a year after Dorothea's birth, Viola decided she no longer loved Ian, told him she would divorce him, and returned to Earth with the children.
- Ch 5For four years after the divorce, Viola worked in the university's Department of Psychophysics with her brother Robert Strachan and his wife Rowan Grant.
- Ch 6Viola is Dee and Ken's stern, skeptical mother; she consults the Islay Museum Keeper and lectures the children on skepticism.
- Ch 7Dorothée and Kenneth's mother and Ian's ex-wife, murdered by the Hydra.
- Ch 9Dee's mother was killed by the Hydra along with Uncle Robbie and Aunt Rowan; her ashes were buried in Edinburgh after a Requiem Mass.
- Ch 14Dorothea's mother, killed along with her brother and sister-in-law by the Hydra.
- Ch 17Dee's mother Viola is dead; she died along with Rowan and Robbie, killed by the Hydra, and the dream appearance of her was fake.
- Ch 17Viola, Dee's mother, was killed with others by anonymous murderers; Ian doubts it was random.
Connections
- family ofDiamond Maskmother
- family ofGrannymother-in-law
- family ofRobert Strachanbrother
- partner ofDaddymarried
- family ofDaddymarried, then divorced
- family ofKenson
- enemy ofHydrakilled her
- createdGlen Tuath Farmdesigned the farmhouse
Key moments
- Book 3 · Ch 3Fury checks the Edinburgh research
Fury enters Denis Remillard's office and, via his terminal, reads a restricted précis of the Edinburgh research that threatens the E15. It resolves to replace the files.
- Book 3 · Ch 4Ferry crossing to Islay
Family travels by old ferry from Kennacraig toward Islay. Seasick Dee, coached by Ken, opens her self-redaction power in secret and cures herself.
- Book 3 · Ch 4Dee picks Islay
Hydra telepathically implants an image of Islay in Dee and compels Masha; Dee's blind stylus point lands on Islay, dismaying Viola and Masha, who agree to go anyway.
- Book 3 · Ch 4Adults explain away the coincidence
Viola, Robert and Rowan all realise they thought of Islay and conclude Masha's unsettled post-regen brain accidentally projected it.
- Book 3 · Ch 5Ian marries Viola and moves to Caledonia
In 2054 Ian met Viola Strachan at his brother's degree ceremony in Edinburgh. Despite Masha's opposition they married and returned to Glen Tuath Farm on Caledonia.
- Book 3 · Ch 5Birth of Dorothea
Dorothea was born in 2057 on Caledonia, latent but healthy and with extraordinary potential; she needed to be taken to Earth for proper evaluation and treatment.
- Book 3 · Ch 5Viola leaves Ian
After Ian, swayed by his father Kyle, refuses to sell Glen Tuath, Viola decides she no longer loves him, announces a divorce and returns to Earth with Kenneth and Dorothea.
- Book 3 · Ch 5Viola settles in Edinburgh
Viola stays with Masha, then rents her own townhouse and works in Psychophysics with Robert Strachan and Rowan Grant for four years until all three are killed.
- Book 3 · Ch 6Probing resumes at Tràigh Nòstaig
During the picnic, the mind-prober returns gently; Dee resists it and hides it from her mother, using her lack of farsight as an excuse.
- Book 3 · Ch 9Dee's telepathy awakens
On the night after the killings on Islay, Dee wondered if her mother loved her, and began hearing thoughts of Gran and hotel guests. She learned from an article that farsensing marks operancy and decided to hide it.
- Book 3 · Ch 9Funeral in Edinburgh
After police questioning, the family attended the Requiem Mass and burial of the ashes of Mummie, Uncle Robbie and Aunt Rowan. Ken gave Dee an acorn.
- Book 3 · Ch 17Fury's false dream visit
Fury impersonates Dee's dead mother in a dream, praises her potential, disparages Jack and her farm companions, and urges secrecy. Dee later realizes the deception.
- Book 3 · Ch 17Ian's request
Ian asks Dee to find out why Viola was killed, then recoils when Dee mentally compels him to wait. She promises to investigate.