{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1019",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1019,
    "subject": "A few minor cavils",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-20T16:26:07+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-20T16:26:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0053@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-20T16:26:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) A few minor cavils",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Tue, 14 Jul 1998 mantis wrote:\nActually I believe raster's primary concern re: authentic autarchs is\nthe same as my own--the brain eating bit."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "[snip]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And thus, it doesn't matter what Valeria calls herself, she isn't a\nreal autarch.  The higher ups of Yesod would know it if they cared to\nlook, and issues of sovereignity aside (though I agree with you on\nall or nearly all the points you've made--my intended point was that\n\"Conan the Nomarch of Urth\" and other pseudo-autarchs aren't going to\nbe allowed to take the Test: the only recognized representative of\nUrth is the real autarch), that the common people know Valeria isn't\na real autarch is extremely damaging to the domestic situation."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I didn't see anything either in the scene in Valeria's throne room, or in\nSeverian's later talks with Odilo and Eata, to indicate that there is\nany domestic instability over Valeria's inability to take the test.  All\nEata says is that there is \"talk,\" and this talk stems from her being a\nwoman and not knowing the words of power, not over her inability to take\nthe test (let alone her not having eaten her predecessor's brain, which\nI doubt the populace knows anything about; at any rate, Severian didn't).\n\nIn any case, if nobody took the test between Ymar and Appian, then the\nrole of the test in legitimating the Autarchy can't have been that\nimportant."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I'll also agree that the autarchs inbetween were told that they\nwould fail if they tried--this may be straight from the text (in any\nevent, I know I've talked with people about it)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "That's actually not what I had in mind, and the one passage I recall which\nbears on this question seems to tell against this: Severian tells\nPalaemon that his predecessors had often refused to take the test because\nthey thought the enemy would gain an advantage from the New Sun\n(IV, ch. 34).  My idea had been that the other Autarchs' Hierodule\nadvisers had given the Autarchs ostensibly neutral advice which\nnevertheless highlighted this, and perhaps other, alleged disadvantages of\ntaking the test."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The Byzantine model fails at this level, since Byzantine emperors had\nto be cunning, ruthless, etc., clawing their way to the top.  Whereas\nwe know that the autarchs often enough just stumbled into it--the\nPeter Principle crafts a \"Claudiarchy\" of common men and women,\nincluding second-rate scholars, farmwives, wantons, sailors, and\nartisans (V, ch. 34)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm sure you're right about the general mediocrity of the \"found\" Autarchs\n(though they need not be any more mediocre than those who succeeded\nthrough primogeniture, or than hereditary monarchs anywhere else, for that\nmatter).  But my impression is that this quote (which is in IV, not V)\nrefers not just to the earlier Autarchs, but to all the personalities\nSeverian now contains, only some of which are Autarchs.  If they are all\nAutarchs, then since Severian says \"'Most are only common men and women,\nsailors and artisans, farmwives and wantons,'\" that would seem to imply\nthat the Autarchs who succeed via heredity are in the minority.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}