Appian (was: Severian's family tree)

Rex Lycanthrosaurus · 28 Aug 2006, 07:30 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm (Rex Lycanthrosaurus)
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:30:38 -0500
Subject: (urth) Appian (was: Severian's family tree)
In-Reply-To: <000001c6c872$f1444d10$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
References: <000001c6c872$f1444d10$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
Message-ID: <1156750238.20432.269553380 at webmail.messagingengine.com>

Tony Ellis writes:

> As you say, Appian dates from too long ago. In 'The Cat' we're told that
> Appian was Autarch 62 years before Severian's reign. Even if we
> generously make Appian 18 at the time, that would still make the Autarch
> Severian knows a man of 80.

I'd agree with Tony if I thought the old autarch was really 80, but I
don't for a number of reasons.

For starters, I have a lot of problems with the 62-year figure cited
since the statement about how "Paeon, who trained me, who was
honey-steward fifty years gone by" seems to imply that the training in
question took place fifty years ago. Given that Sev-as-Legion has
memories of being a boy in the kitchens of the House Absolute further
seems to indicate he was quite young when he began his apprenticeship.
If he was five, that means he will only be 55 when he dies; if he's
twelve, 62. In a low tech subsistence culture like the Commonwealth,
both 55 and 62 might indeed constitute "old." A kitchen apprenticeship
also seems consistent with someone being trained as honey steward

But even if Tony's right, and 62 is not the penultimate autarch's
lifespan, but the length of his reign, other factors may impact on his
putative age. 

Roy Lackey has argued, for example, that when the penultimate autarch
went to Yesod, the time lapse was probably minimal. From purely textual
analysis, however, I don't believe there's any way to tell whether he's
gone two minutes or ten years, which further complicates the age
question. Because the ship of the Hierogrammates slips in and out of
time, Gunnie also claims that some people disembark even younger than
when they got on. Hence that hypothetical upper 80 might in actuality be
much lower.

Then, too: is one required to be a minimum age before assuming the
autarchy? How old is Reechy/Ymar? Or Severian -- who quite probably is
still a teen? Could it be even younger? Sixteen? (cf. Alexander the
Great) Or even twelve or ten, since Father Inire is probably going to be
acting as regent anyway? This could further lower the supposed old age
Tony and others think disqualifies Appian as Sev's predecessor,
especially if, in his duties as apprentice or journeyman steward, he
stumbles upon the antepenultimate autarch alone in his final moments.  

And as an addendum to my previous post, worker bees (by far the largest
population in any hive) are sterile, as is the autarch who precedes
Severian.  

-- 
  Rex Lycanthrosaurus
  lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - The professional email service

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net