The failure of the Autarch and the Second Chance of Severian The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 24 Jan 1998 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/300 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. ============================================================================== CRCulver — 24 Jan 1998, 16:49 Vizcacha said: > In his far future, someone decided that if only he had been a little better, > had lived a life that prepared him better for the test, he might have > succeeded. So, they came back and gave him that life, and he did."< Yes, Tzadkiel gave Severian the circumstances to become autarch by unmanning the previous Autarch. That's why I wince when I hear people use the word "punishment." The Autarch's castration wasn't a punishment for his failure to bring the New Sun back to Urth, it was merely a device to insure Severian, who *could* bring the NS, would get his day. Christopher R. Culver http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html ------------------------------------------------ "Ignorance, that light of fools steers a wayward path" -Brendan Perry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------