You bring up some good points and I certainly consider them as plausible as any other interpretations. > More an aside than a strong argument: "Encompass" is a weird > word to use > to describe a person holding an office, I think - it has a sense of > "surround" to me, and to say a reign surrounded a project seems more > likely than to say a person's term surrounded the possible period. It > would strike me odd to write, e.g., "Clinton's presidency > encompassed the > two terms he was elected for but Nixon's didn't". The difficulty is that you're putting it in context of the individual. A more proper comparison would be "Clinton's presidency encompassed the duration of the Democratic reign whereas Nixon was forced to resign prior to the end of the Republican reign." I don't see any problems with "encompass" in the context of the House of Democracy and the House of the Republic. > There is a strong argument for > Paarfi being > thoroughly sloppy and fallible - consider the historians Ilen > the Magian > quotes. No arguments on this count. ;-) > > > Note that you haven't addressed my other objections - the supposed use > of "The X emperor" to the exclusion of "An X emperor" (book search is > not giving me a response here - if someone has the Texts it would be > easy to grep them in perl or whatever) and the ending of _FHYA_. You're correct, as far as I can remember. It's strong evidence, but it's not conclusive because you can't prove a negative. All you can prove is that "Every example we are aware of is an example of a single Emperor." Until Paarfi or some other historian writes "The Complete History of The Dragaeran Empire" we don't know for a fact that there's never been a case of a House with two sitting Emperors (excluding the current Phoenix reign, which most everyone would consider an abberation, I think). As a counterpoint, we don't even really have a clue what the government is like when there's a Teckla Republic in power. Nobody's bothered to tell us, and Teckla reigns are all referred to as The Xth Teckla Republic. It would be silly to conclude that Teckla Republics have no supreme leader(s) based on this lack of any reference to them. Same thing for multiple Emperors from a single House. The telling thing, I think, is that in instances that don't involve war there always seems to be a decision to be made about whether the Cycle has actually changed. It would seem that the Orb doesn't always just move to the next recipient. "Our" Zerika emerged from the Halls carrying the Orb, but the Council of Lords (or whoever they were) still had to ratify her as the recognized Emperor. What would the Orb have done if the Council had sided with Kana instead of Zerika? Would it have stayed with Zerika? Would the decision of the Council have caused the Cycle to turn? Just how closely tied are the Cycle and the Throne?