Well having had major laptop computer problems and also having trouble getting into AA from there and being gone...I couldn't get here until now. :angry:
SO that said, a couple of things.
ONE: Everyone who reads your column, columns knows YOU ARE A JACK SHIPPER!
Why not own up to it under your avatar? (Let's hear it from all of your readers.)
Sorry I shouted... ^_^
So everyone who reads my stories and columns elsewhere knows I'm a J/I shipper with heavy emphasis on IRINA.
Now as to this poll you've so tongue-in-cheek set up. I voted "Sloane believes he is because Irina made him believe it--but he's not. Jack is."
WHY: Ahh yes, why would Irina make or even want him believe it? (Of course, this means they had an affair.) So grrrr that said, why the lie? To protect Sydney above all costs. Remember in TTT, the conversation betwen Sloane and Irina. "We had an agreement." And didn't Sloane say this to Judy B ? They had an agreement not to speak of this to any one ever. (Irina's going to kill the bastard when she finds out.)Why protect Sydney? Mom has been protecting her ever since she was born. Irina knows something more than Sloane and knew it long before Page 47 was found. She is a certified Rambaldi expert (I'm quoting Jack). ERgo the lie she told Sloane about Syd's paternity. Naturally, because she was not able to stay in the family, she had to make sure he would never harm Syd.
Now we talk about betrayal of Jack and Sydney. Jack, yes, Sydney, no. She left because the FBI had tracked her down. She was not going to stick around to be executed or at the least given life imprisonment (which I doubt, due to the assassinations attributed to her). She disappeared because she did not want her six year old daughter to be harrassed or talked about, when her mother she adored was arrested and put on trial. She died in auto accident. It was something Sydney could understand and accept. Sloane, believing he was father, would never harm her until Irina could "return."
(Now all of this is predicated on JJ's intentions or not.)
So Irina returned, walking-in, putting herself at great risk at the hands of the CIA in order to see her daughter AND to get back into Sloane's circle. (In the course of her stay, she was set up by Jack and nearly executed. There was no way she could have anticipated her rescue by Sydney and certainly would not be able to plan, in spite of Jack's assertion.) We know she had, as Jack said, another agenda: to get her hands on all of Rambaldi's artifacts. To do that she had to find where the CIA had stashed their cache (Higher Echelon) and to get her hands on the heart manuscript (ADT). With that completed, she was extracted.
Now she was nowhere near Sydney, but unaccountably, time after time, she called or showed up wherever Sydney was available. In the Second Double, Irina shows up at the server farm when Sydney arrives.(Sark may have led her to do the deed, but even he was not privy to the exact time.) In The Telling she shows up at the ice rink AFTER Vaughn leaves...also shows up killing Sloane's men in the gunfight between them and Sydney and Vaughn. She disappears into a building overrun by CIA men and escapes. She calls Sydney at the office...
There has to be someone in the CIA who is an informant. (My choice is EW)
So what it boils down is...Irina has protected Sydney from birth. She knows the significance of the Rambaldi page 47. She told Sloane Sydney was his daughter in order to protect Sydney.
By the way VH, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that somewhere on Irina's body is a <o>.