{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1980",
    "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": 1980,
    "subject": "The Conciliator's ho-hum career",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-23T23:26:40+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-23T23:26:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0528@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "danrabin at a.crl.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-23T23:26:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Conciliator's ho-hum career",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Rostrum writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "What's he going to do, other than wander around healing people\nand turning water to wine that will make him such a mythic figure?  Not\nthat miracles aren't notable, but most of the world's religious figures\nare remembered for something more than a bunch of magic tricks."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If we go back to the scene in which Canog overhears Severian explaining his\nrole to his \"followers\" in his cell, I think we can start to put some of\nthis together.\n\nPresumably, the Hierodules, Hierogrammates, and Hieros were unknown in\ndetail  to the populace in Typhon's day.  Typhon probably had a cult of\npersonality: let us imagine him to be as frightening and ever-present to\nhis subjects as was Stalin in his day.  A wonder-worker appears out of the\nsky, behaving ethically, survives a beating at the hands of Typhon's goon\nsquad, calls down an earthquake  as he is about to be treacherously\nexecuted, and kills the hated prefect of the torturers.  While in prison\nawaiting almost certain execution, he reveals that he is on a mission to\nreconcile the sky people with the Urth people, and is bringing a New Sun\n(the old one having faded appreciably in Typhon's day, as he reveals in\n_Sword_).  There's hope!  The tyrant may be challanged, and perhaps the sun\ncan be renewed as the Conciliator renewed himself after his beating!\n\nAs the Conciliator is escorted from his cell to be taken to see the\nMonarch, he prophesies that the ragged apprentice Ymar will become the\nruler, and he repeats the prophecy of Typhon's downfall to the Monarch's\nface!  The angry ruler imprisons the Conciliator, who tames wild animals,\nwins over some of Typhon's soldiers, and vanishes when true danger\napproaches.  The Conciliator could have killed Typhon with the concealed\nknife, but declines to do so, and he rescues the officer whose negligence\nlet him retain the knife.\n\nThis is POWERFUL STUFF!  These events woudl not seem to their witnesses to\nbe just a sequence of unconnected supernatural-appearning tricks.  Rather,\nthey would seem to be a divine intervention against Typhon by a power far\ngreater that heals and succors rather than imposing rule.  Ymar's rule,\nprophesied by the Conciliator, would derive its legitimacy from the\nconnection.  Indeed, we learn over the course of _New Sun_ that the quest\nto bring the New Sun is the central feature of the Autarchy.  The fact that\nthe Autarches have Hierodules as advisors is an enactment of Severians\n\"conciliation\".\n\nAnd a thousand years later, when the Conciliator is remembered and Typhon\nforgotten, the former kills the latter in the course of utterly refusing to\nrule via the tyrant's power.  Of course, it's ten years _earlier_ for\nSeverian, and Typhon doesn't know that Severian doesn't know that he will\nbecome the Conciliator.\n\nPerhaps the fact that we see these events through Severian's eyes rather\nthan those of the populace is what makes all seem so inconsequential.\n\n  -- Dan Rabin"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}