{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1020",
    "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": 1020,
    "subject": "Autarchs are commoners",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-20T23:11:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-20T23:11:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0017-0054@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-20T23:11:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Autarchs are commoners",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Adam,\n\nPerhaps you want to argue that hereditary autarchy imparts \"nobility\"\nin the first generation.  But the aristocracy of Urth is the exultant\nclass, and exultants are forbidden to be autarchs--this is a clear\nrule I don't think anybody has tried to deny.  So in the simple\nbinary system of nobles vs. commoners, autarchs by definition must be\n\"commoners\"--a range from armigers to optimates to commonality to\nservants of the throne.\n\nYes, the quote in IV does suggest that \"most\" (which is what, a range\nfrom 55% to 75%, or whatever percentage level where \"most\" gives way\nto \"nearly all\") of the minds at Severian's disposal (which does not\nreach all the way back to Ymar with any clarity of personality) are\nnot certainly hereditary autarchs.  (There is a part somewhere in\nthere where Severian recalls the fatal mistakes of many autarchs\nbefore him: one last visit to a lover, one last charge on the\nbattlefield, etc.  For those who care, these fragments could perhaps\nbe gathered up and laid out to add to the \"depth of Autarchial Mind\"\nbeyond and before Appian.)  Hereditary autarchy is mentioned very\nbriefly and not really sketched out beyond that--we really have\nno clue as to how successfully the potential was realized, at the\nindividual level or on average.  We only know that the potential was\nthere and it was realized to some degree.\n\nThen again, your assertion that of \"all the personalities Severian\nnow contains, only some of them are Autarchs\" is quite astounding and\nI look forward to your fleshing this out!  Thecla as the rule rather\nthan the exception?!\n\nRe: commoners talk about Valeria.  Right, they talk because she is a\nwoman (and this is something of a red herring, since we =know= from\nthe quote in IV that there are female autarchs--the point being that\nthere hasn't been one in living memory, but emphatically =not= that\nwomen are forbidden) and she doesn't know the words of power (=this=\nis the point I keep trying to make: they know next to nothing about\nbrain-eating, Yesod and all that, yet they know that she doesn't know\nthe words of power which autarchs should know, and this is cause for\nthem to talk--presumably to wonder what on Urth is going on, is she a\nsham or just more mentally incompetant than most?).\n\nDepending upon how much strength one wants to invest in the\n\"opium of the masses: the population believes that the Autarch will\nsomehow bring the New Sun\" deal, this question of Valeria's validity\nranges from 0 \"Whitewater ho-hum\" to 10 \"Watergate apocalypse!\"  That\nis, as usual, it depends upon the given application.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}