<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div><span><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13.3333px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> <div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Thomas Bitterman <tom@bitterman.net><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> The Urth Mailing List <urth@lists.urth.net> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, April 22, 2013 9:33 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: (urth) Thea's Identity<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><div id="yiv831558840"><div dir="ltr">On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Jeff Wilson <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:jwilson@clueland.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:jwilson@clueland.com">jwilson@clueland.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="yiv831558840gmail_extra"><div class="yiv831558840gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="yiv831558840gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">On Fri, April 19, 2013 10:21, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:<br>
>> From: Lee Berman <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com">severiansola@hotmail.com</a>><br>
<div class="yiv831558840im">>>>As another bonus, the Autarch is the "self-ruled", or, more<br>
>>> colloquially, "the boss of<br>
>>>himself". Who actually does what the Autarch tells them? The servants<br>
>>> of the House<br>
>>>Absolute, and the army. If both the servants and the soldiers are<br>
>>> (pretty much) clones,<br>
>>>then he is literally just the boss of himself. It's the type of joke<br>
>>> that feels unfunny<br>
>>>in just the right way for Wolfe to have made it.<br>
<br>
</div>Meh. The servants seem to have no trouble maintaining loyalty to the new<br>
Autachs, </blockquote><div><br></div><div style="">The new Autarch is a (semi-)clone of the old one, hence closely related to the servants.<br><br>---And presumably when the witches (?) clone soldiers they prefer uniformity and low cost and when they clone more significant persons they tweak the mix a bit, always optimizing. The seraglio could provide material without providing whole clones. <br><br>Note neither Appian nor Severian is as tall as an exultant but they are not short either. On first read I took this as the usual signal of "half-royal" birth, and I think that is the intended reading, later subverted into something more complex. I assume the exultants are somewhat like hothouse flowers, bred for one thing but losing other things a genome-gathering project could re-introduce.<br><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="yiv831558840gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
and it would make the Torturers, Witches, Librarians, and<br>
Stewards curious exceptions to the auto-cloning rule, as we know they get<br>
at least some of their number from outside the House and Citadel. </blockquote><div><br></div><div style="">With the exception of Severian, do any of the above ever become Autarch? I was under the impression it was always household staff.<br><br>---There is a passage in which Severian essentially lists the sorts of people in his memories; have to check but I don't think so. I hadn't known Stewards were their own order vs being part of the House; have to check that too.<br><br></div>
<div> <br></div><blockquote class="yiv831558840gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">It would<br>
bring into question why the autarch always has a great man soldiers but<br>
never enough, and it would fubar the basis for your identity intrigue on<br>
the raft.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style="">Cloning and maintaining soldiers in readiness for battle is not cheap. And military leaders always complain about not having enough soldiers, no matter how many they have.<br><br><br>---Especially when they are poorly led and supplied. The campaign against the Ascians does not appear to be marked by its brilliance, either tactical or logistical.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div> </div> </div> </blockquote></div> </div></body></html>