(urth) Autarchs

[Andrew Mason]

Jeff Wilson wrote:
>
> Typhon is the first to carve his face into the western Andes, at least.
> The Autarchs that follow do likewise, but there semms also to be a
> succession of Autarchs before Typhon, or at least a succession of people
> whose minds are inherited by the post-Typhon succession. URTH, XLI: "and
> I began, as I walked on, to search those veiled lives that lie behind
> the last, memories that I have scarcely mentioned in this narrative,
> that dim as they grow stranger and stretch backward, perhaps, to Ymar,
> and behind Ymar to the Age of Myth."

It's not clear to me that Autarchs eat the brains only of Autarchs:
the stated aim of the practice is to make the whole Commonwealth
present within one person. Though of course this raises the question
who might have maintaining a chain of brain-eaters before Ymar's time.

One piece of evidence that the autarchy existed in some form before
Ymar arises in connection with the Antechamber; we are told that
before Ymar, all crimes committed around the House Absolute were
judged by the Autarch himself. I suppiose, though, that this might be
another case of the loose use of 'Autarch' to mean 'ruler'.