(urth) Appearances of Inire

[Jeff Wilson]

>
> On Jun 28, 2010, at 5:52 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>> There is a detailed discussion of exultant families and their
>> dwindling---this suggests to me a dying race of world-rulers, not a
>> created class of freaks.

They're both. Exultants have greater height genetically, and enhance it
further by harvesting hormones or actual glands from their khaibits. This
modification for greater height may be a tradition going back as far as
the stone town:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Head_Shaping.jpg


> Yes, there used to be more families over the course of histories, but it
> seemed to me that Gurloes was impressing upon Severian the VASTNESS of the
> exultant families still going, no?
>
> There are nearly 3,000 exultant blood lines still going, based on this
> math...

> 'It gives about half a page to each. There are seven hundred and forty-
> six pages.'"

2 x 746 = 1492, but that may not be a one for one correspondence, as one
family may include others by marriage, like Prince Charles being a Windsor
as well as a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and a 
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which are themselves obviously
made of other families, each with their own laws about succession and
inheritance.