{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/305",
    "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": 305,
    "subject": "Legion of unmanned Autarchs?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-01-26T21:14:28+00:00",
    "last": "1998-01-26T21:14:28+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0006-0450@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "danrabin at a.crl.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-01-26T21:14:28+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Legion of unmanned Autarchs?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alice Turner states, in urth.v0006.n020.1:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Besides, it wasn't the one Autarch, it was the whole string of them."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Christopher R. Culver concurs:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "    Yep, we specifically learn that Ymar and the Autarch's predecessor were\nalso unmanned, as well as the other autarchs in between. What about Typhon?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Could we have citations, please?\n\nI'll accept the statement as concerns Ymar and Severian's predecessor, on\nthe strength of the passage in _Citadel_, XXXI:\n\n  \"If you fail, your manhood will be taken from you, so that you cannot\n  bequeath the Phoenix Throne to your descendants.  Your predecessor also\n  accepted the challenge.\" [aquastor Malrubius _dixit_]\n\n  \"And failed.  That is clear from what you said.\" [quoth Severian]\n\n  \"Yes.  Still, he was braver than many who are called heroes, the first\n  to go in many reigns.  Ymar, of whom you may have heard, was the last before\n  him.\"\n\nSince we learn in _Urth_ that Ymar was the first Autarch (as opposed to\nMonarch), this passage would seem to deny that castration was usual for\nAutarchs.\n\nI am unable to find another citation I seek: a passage in which Severian\nnotes how many of his predecessors met their violent ends by foolish\nexposure to danger.\n\nChristopher also asks,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "    BTW, someone in _Citadel_ refers to the Autarch as \"Legion,\" because he\nis many (Biblical reference, Luke 32, I think). Is this his real name? If\nnot, what is?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It was one of the woman-cats in _Citadel_, XXIV.\n\nThere's another passage (again, I've misplaced it) in which the application\nof the term is explained.  It's certainly not his real name.  Michael\nAndre-Driussi assigns him the name Appian based on a mention of a recent\nAutarch by that name in the short story \"The Cat\", but I don't recall the\nevidence being conclusive that Severian's predecessor reigned at the time\nof the events there recounted.\n\n  -- Dan Rabin"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}