Exultants

Exultants are the exceptionally tall nobility of Urth.

Possibility: The exultant families were genetically engineered as aristocrats and military leaders, perhaps with their height to set them apart from/intimidate the common folk?

Question: What is their relationship with Typhon? Is he one of them? Did he create them? Did they come to Urth from elsewhere with him?

Possibility: The exultants are from offworld, probably from outsystem. They grow tall because of the technobloodmagic they practice upon their khaibits (the khaibits stay at their natural height of around 6 feet tall; the exultants, using the royal jelly extracted from their khaibits, grow and grow, like Baldanders [and along the same principles] but within tasteful limits, lest they turn into undines). They use a birth zodiac including the constellation of the Swan, which is more than a little impossible from our solar system, but incredibly easy from any other star. Severian says exultants are ancient; Jonas, who is more than ancient, looks upon exultants with wonder and says they are quite new.

A side issue in relation to this: Severian refers to the exultants as ancient families, while Jonas claims that they are the newest of families.

Does this imply that Jonas actually knows of older surviving families? I'd argue yes; though Jonas almost certainly has not been traveling in the haunts of power, he has undoubtedly been much further, geographically, than we've been told. Perhaps, like Eata, he's visited the Xanthic Lands. While we only get to see the Commonwealth and a sliver of Ascian society, it appears that exultants may be limited to the Autarch's dominions. Certainly, if there had been Ascian exultants, they at least have long since been subsumed, perhaps subverted, by the Populace (could the blind mounts that Severian faced once have been exultants?). But there's no reason to suppose that they exist outside of the Commonwealth. They should at first have clustered around the seat of power (I doubt, if they were Typhon's generals, for example, that he trusted them out of his sight), and later may have remained where they were through inertia or a desire to remain near their compatriots. The book of exultant lineages that Gurloes shows Severian doesn't seem to imply that there are any extra-Commonwealth ones; there would surely have been some intermarriage between nations if exultants were more widely distributed. But wait! In UotNS, Severian never mentions seeing any exultants (though I grant that he doesn't mention an unusual lack of them, either), either in Typhon's mountain city or in the pre-Citadel port. These are the haunts of power. perhaps the exultant families aren't created, or don't arrive, until the Commonwealth period has begun, and their "ancientness" is an artifact of their power and visibility. Valeria's family, which Severian suggests is the oldest of which he personally knows, is certainly not an exulted one.

Re: exultants. Well, Wolfe says that khaibits are clones. The Old Autarch says (IIRC) that the exultants are big because of the blood and stuff they take from their own khaibits ("grown from the body cells of exultant women so an exchange of blood will prolong the exultants' youth" [IV, ch. 24]; Ossipago speaking of Baldanders, "Growth has its disadvantages, though for your species [humans] it is the only method by which youth can be reinstated" [III, ch. 34]). As such, it seems to me, khaibits represent unmodified exultants--further, I believe they are not stunted by abuse or malnutrition, since their bodies must provide the royal jelly. Khaibits are natural; exultants are augmented.

The blind mount tall men of Ascian cavalry as descendents of exultants (i.e., the equivalant of khaibits) is a very interesting idea I haven't considered before. It certainly fits in a communistic "what to do with the aristocrats after the revolution" sort of way. Interesting. Creepy! (Maybe even the dwarves who ride them represent the former khaibits? That is: the khaibits are "ridden" by exultants, but after the revolution the lowly shall ride upon the high.) (Then again, this is all "Warg-rider" stuff as refigured by a man named Wolfe.)

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