The Old Autarch and Paeon

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 28 Aug 2006, 23:42 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:42:18 +1000
Subject: (urth) The Old Autarch and Paeon
Message-ID: <20060828234218.EAFB8DA824 at mailserver7.hushmail.com>



On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:56:46 +1000 Dan Rabin <wolfe-
lists at danrabin.com> wrote:
>I have always interpreted the passage mentioning Paeon the 
>honey-steward to be saying that the Old Autarch received 
>instruction 
>regarding the succession from someone he knew to be an aquastor of 

>
>Paeon, his trusted teacher from his youth.
>
>In other words, Paeon is to Old Autarch as Malrubius is to 
>Severian.
>
>This has seemed completely obvious to me since my second reading 
>(which was the first for catching many internal references).

A quick "me too"; I don't see how this can be in dispute, but maybe 
I'm missing something.

>
>In case anyone needs another puzzle to speculate about, it has 
>long 
>annoyed me that Severian describes the Autarch on the counterfeit 
>chrisos from Vodalus as androgynous, which I have (since second 
>reading) always assumed to mean that it's the Old Autarch (the 
>only 
>one since Ymar to take the test in Yesod), yet Severian needs 
>Thecla's memories to recognize the guy as the Autarch when he 
>actually meets him.

And how is it that people around the House Absolute don't recognize 
the the servitor as the Old Autarch? I think maybe there are some 
"continuity" glitches here.

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