(urth) Vodalus & the Old Autarch

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

Keeping in mind that the true succession is a mystery to most people, it would have been easily threatened by a guy with effective, charismatic sons and who would have reason to rebel against it, having been rejected by the Hieros.

However, I can't think of a reason they couldn't go back to do whatever they want. Of course, in that case, you would think that simply smothering a failed Epitome in his crib would be the way to go.

--- On Tue, 8/10/10, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Subject: Re: (urth) Vodalus & the Old Autarch
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 12:35 PM


From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com>
> Being at the exact location given, and in the flyer helps.  Severian's too young to have been a long-term informant, so the other guy must be him. And perhaps the Autarch has a very large court, with Vodalus being presented once in decades past, before the trial and the snippage, so that he genuinely doesn't recognize the changed man. (I personally think the change in appearance for emasculation in adulthood is exaggerated.)

If you take this plot element seriously (the failed Autarch being emasculated lest he father a dynasty) it might be that the changes *had* to be obvious.  Clearly hormone technologies are available such that the Autarch could have maintained at least the appearance of masculinity (*much* more than that was done to Jolenta, and the Autarch surely has technologies available to him comparable to those of Baldanders and Talos, especially considering that Talos modified Jolenta using only the equipment he was travelling with).  And the freezing of sperm is barely more hi-tech than the ancillary turkey baster technology.  Furthermore, the hierodules could presumably have sterilised him without undesired (or should I say undesiring) side effects.

So perhaps the Autarch had to be visibly emasculated in order to make it clear that he was so; that nobody could validly claim the throne on the basis of being his issue.  On the other hand, this fits very poorly with the means by which the throne is inherited!

Could it be that the emasculation acts backwards in time? That is, if Severian failed, he would have been *born* an androgyne in a new iteration? Thinking about it, none of the other options make a whole lot of sense.

- Gerry Quinn




_______________________________________________
Urth Mailing List
To post, write urth at urth.net
Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100810/0bf2d033/attachment-0002.htm>