drothgery wrote:Julia Minor wrote:And do we now have an Inner Circle member as the highest ranking Schulerite in Charis?
Actually, I've kind of suspected that Maikel's grooming Paityr as his eventual successor since LAMA...
He'd be a logical successor. An issue is that there are other Archbishops in the Church of Charis, and Paityr is only a Bishop.
A bigger issue is that Paityr is too valuable in his role as Intendant, and Director of the Patent Office. Everyone in Charis has always respected his faith and his integrity, and knew that the attestations
he gave were not tied to the size of the bribe offered. (And while we have no TextEv, I would not be surprised if he got consulted by folks worried they
might be in gray areas, and wanted advice about whether they were safe to proceed in that direction before it reached a formal request for attestation where Paityr would have to take
official notice on the record.)
His reputation has spread to the rest of the Empire of Charis, and if he approves a new idea or technique, that's enough for the Empire.
Whoever succeeds Michael probably does need to be an Inner Circle member, and Paityr is.
The biggest problem is that
nobody can truly fill the role Michael plays. It's his sheer personality and personal impact on those he meets that are a good part of what he's achieved. His passing will leave a hole that can't be filled.
(And thinking about it, Cayleb was having conniptions a few books back about Staynair's refusal to accept adequte security precautions because they would get in teh way of what he was trying to do. Staynair calmly said that his secretary had a list of possible replacements for his should something happen to him. I wonder who was on it?)
We get the impression for TextEv that Merlin's upgrading everybody's nanies to MilSpec has a side effect of a somewhat longer lifespan than they might have otherwise had, so we will have Michael with us for a while yet.
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Dennis