Hello, I'm just your fan. I find very difficult to stop reading your theories, and the more i read, the more i get interested in Snicket stories. I've read the Unfortunate series a long time ago, and only last year I found a entirely new Universe to be explored in this story. Well, my question is: how the "13 words" is related to the rest of the story? And why everything is about 13? 13 questions, 13 words, 13 books, 13 chapters each book. Could the 13 words be related to Beatrice's questions?
Hello, @belaeomonstro! First of all thank you for your readership, I’m glad you had fun with my theories.
Daniel Handler loves to incorporate the number 13 into his books because it’s traditionnally associated with bad luck, despair and the Unknown (topics he loves). Conversely the number 14 usually represents hope in his books. It’s also possible his knack for numerology was inspired by the Kabbalah (he incorporates a lot of Jewish themes into his stories).
Daniel Handler seems to have a rule of thumb for the way he dispatches his writings:
Books for young children (picture books readable under eight years old, or by parents) are written under the Lemony Snicket pseudonym but do not involve his persona or the V.F.D. It’s arguable, however, that they’re supposed to describe true events within the ASOUE/ATWQ universe. In “File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents”, the pharmacy from “29 myths on the Swinster pharmacy” makes a cameo. it’s canonical within his world that he wrote them and that they exist.
Books for older children (novels more appropriate for tweens) are written under the Lemony Snicket persona, heavily deal with events of his own life and usually involve V.F.D.
Stories for children and adults (which usually involve graphic sex scenes) are written under his real name. They also exist within their own separate universe and there are also crossovers between the adult novels.
So all in all it’s difficult to say whether the Lemony Snicket character wrote “Thirteen words” as a fictional story for children or as something more grounded in reality.
