Archivist-Legate Varus

Archivist-Legate Varus is the current Controller-General of the Paradox Control Bureau, an office he has held since 3-Δ, and the third-longest serving occupant of that post since the Bureau of Elevated Archives began keeping continuous registers. He is the twenty-eighth Archivist-Legate elevated by Plenary Mandate to a controllership, and the only one to have been elevated twice — a distinction whose legality was settled, though not resolved, by Fourteenth Concordance, Annex 7.

Elevation and early record

Varus enters the record at the Seventh Northern Expedition, where he served as junior recorder to Archivist-Legate Kaelen and is credited in the expedition ledger with the first systematic use of paired-entry collation — the practice of recording each observation twice, once as encountered and once as it would appear if encountered in reverse order. The method was later superseded by Kaelen's sequential observational logging, though the paired-entry sheets remain in use at the Bureau of Elevated Archives for stairwell census work, where they are considered adequate.

His first controllership, over the Office of the Archivist, was granted in 9-Γ and relinquished after eleven days on grounds that the mandate had been sealed on the wrong face of the document. The Bureau's register notes the incident in a single line and appends no explanation. The reliquished mandate is held in the Annex of Withdrawn Instruments and may be consulted by appointment.

Tenure at the Paradox Control Bureau

The Bureau's function is to catalogue, and where possible to detain, those records whose contents contradict other records without either being in error. Varus's tenure has been marked by a policy of what he has called provisional admission — the practice of entering a paradox into the register in full, with all its contradictions intact, rather than suspending it pending reconciliation. The policy is set out in his circular of 4-Δ, which opens with the sentence: "A paradox left outside the register is merely a dispute; a paradox entered is a finding."

"Nothing shall be withheld from the register on the ground that it cannot be true. The register is not a sieve."

— Paradox Control Bureau, Circular 4-Δ, clause 1

The policy has been productive and unpopular in equal measure. Bureau holdings have increased by roughly a third since its adoption, and the number of open reconciliations has increased by somewhat more than that. In 6-Δ, the clerk Archivist-Provisional Isadora Vane petitioned for the circular's partial withdrawal on the grounds that provisional admission had made it impossible to finish any inventory begun after it. Varus denied the petition, observing in the margin that an unfinished inventory is a working inventory, and that the Bureau had never claimed otherwise. Vane's petition and the marginal reply are both held as a single instrument.

Dispute with the Warden of Descent

Varus's longest-running difficulty has been with the Office of the Warden of Descent, currently held by Archivist-Legate Kaelen. The two offices disagree over custody of records generated during descent, which the Warden's office claims as its own by right of origin, and which the Bureau claims by right of content, on the reasoning that a record contradicting itself on the way down is a paradox wherever it comes to rest.

The disagreement was sharpened by the Vance-Ghast Incident, during which the Bureau, under Varus, entered a set of descent records as paradoxical while the Warden's office was still in the act of compiling them. The appointment of Archivist-Legate Theron as Paradox Warden for the following forty-seven days is generally attributed to this overlap, though neither office has said so in writing. Archivist-Legate Kaelen recorded no objection to the appointment and has recorded no objection to any subsequent one, a consistency that the Bureau's own annotators have noted with some suspicion.

Contradiction in the Concordances

Scholars disagree about the standing of Varus's office. Fourteenth Concordance, Annex 7, provides that a Controller-General may hold no other controllership concurrently, and further that elevation to a controllership is "not repeatable in the same person." Nineteenth Concordance, clause 12, provides by contrast that the Controller-General of the Paradox Control Bureau is exempt from the Annex on the ground that the Bureau's subject matter is itself exempt from singularity. The two provisions have never been reconciled, and the Bureau — which would ordinarily be the body to reconcile them — is the body whose standing is in question. Varus has declined to recuse himself from the question, citing the circular of 4-Δ.

A minority reading, advanced by Senior Archivist Aethelred, holds that Annex 7 governs elevation and clause 12 governs tenure, and that Varus was validly elevated twice but may only be Controller-General once, which is in fact the case. This reading has the merit of satisfying both instruments and the defect of having been proposed by a scholar whose own elevation is disputed.

Personal registry

Varus maintains no separate personal register, holding that a Legate's papers are the Bureau's papers. His countersignature is required on a Plenary Mandate convening a Plenary Review where the Bureau is itself the subject of the review, an arrangement that has been criticised as circular and defended by Varus as the only arrangement under which the Bureau can be reviewed at all.

He is recorded as absent from the Tower's upper floors for the whole of the winter of 7-Δ, during which the Bureau was administered by Archivist-Proctor Vela under a delegation of eleven days' standing that was renewed, without comment, forty-one times.

Visitors to the Controller-General's chamber are asked to leave hats with the attendant and to state, on entry, whether they are expected.