Violet

Violet is the eighth of the Tower's fourteen named hues of record and the only one whose standing in the colour-register has been contested continuously since before the Precedence of Hue. It denotes, in the strict archival sense, the range of the spectrum between the sixth and ninth gradations of the Standard Vellum Spectrum, though in ordinary administrative usage it denotes rather more than a colour: violet is the shade under which the Tower files whatever it has not finished deciding.

Definition and mensuration

Violet is measured by Tome-Calipers against standardised strips cut from the Violet Tome, which retains a fixed shade the Calipers call canonical violet. A strip is held two inches above the leaf being compared and read by natural light; strips are replaced every fourth year, and retired strips are not destroyed but shelved, since the Office of Retired Standards maintains that any violet once used to certify another violet remains violet by contact. No one has been able to schedule the destruction of a strip, because the request must be filed in violet.

The Atelier of Permanent Impressions supplies the ink itself as Aethelred’s Permanent Glow, an alloy of the standard and a fixative whose composition is entered in the Atelier's ledgers as "proprietary, and likely to remain so." The Ink-Subcommittee has twice attempted to requisition the formula. Both requisitions were answered, courteously, with a sample.

Violet as a filing convention

Violet denotes provisional classification. Entries in the Index rendered in violet are read as contested, unprovenanced, or internally unstable — the practice traced in the Violet Tome with Silver Clasps and elaborated in the document's codicils on Void-Silver handling. Distillate 7-C is the standard wash for removing violet from a leaf that has since been settled; it is effective on every violet except the one it is most often asked to remove. A settle-mark in violet is therefore permanent, which the Concordance of Corrections annotates, without irony, as "an economy."

The Violet Exclusion governs the removal of such entries from circulation. Codified after a verdict folio was struck through in violet ink during an annulment, the Exclusion requires that any folio so struck be retired whole rather than re-inked, on the reasoning that a page cannot be struck through twice and remain a single page. Violet-inked folios account for roughly one leaf in nine of the contested holdings; the ratio has not moved in ninety years and is watched closely for that reason.

Violet Dusk and the dusk-moth

The chromatic conventions of violet are most fully observed at the Violet Dusk complex, where Librarians document dusk-moth activity across the Shelves of Perpetual Dusk. Moths are scored against the spectrum at first flight; those reading violet on the seventh gradation and above are entered in the Hall of Receding Dusk under the day-book of Cedric of the Waning Light, whose marginal notes on the Dusk Chord remain the authority for the seasonal register.

Dispute: the precedence question

Violet's rank is the oldest open disagreement in the colour-register. The Fourth Concordance, Annex 11, places violet above blue and below purple without comment. The Eleventh Concordance, Annex 2, reverses the order and adds that the earlier annex "was not so much amended as outgrown." The Nineteenth Concordance declines to settle the matter, noting at Clause 40 that both annexes remain in force and that the discrepancy "has not inconvenienced the Calipers, who compare shades and not neighbours." Clause 22 of the same Concordance, by contrast, concerns the polishing of the silver clasps of the Violet Tome and is observed with considerably more regularity than the ranking.

"Where two annexes assign a rank to the same hue, the hue is not thereby ranked twice. It is ranked once, in violet."

— Precedence of Hue, sec. 6

The Office of Chromatic Precedence has taken the position that the question is insoluble and should be re-filed rather than answered. Its registrar, Hesper Aldwine, requested in the winter of 788 that the file be transferred to the seventh gradation entirely, on the ground that a hue which denotes provisionality cannot itself be finally ranked. The request was received, stamped, and — being stamped in violet — entered as provisional. Aldwine's subsequent memorandum, that the office "has been asked to certify a colour that has certified us," is preserved in the Register of Circular Instruments and is not, strictly, part of the file.

Restricted uses

Violet is prohibited on the Night Stacks above the eleventh gallery, not for any symbolic reason but because the shelves there are oiled and the ink will not take. Visitors descending from the Violet Dusk are asked to leave their outer robes at the landing, as the moths follow violet downward and the stairwell has no other exit. Reading-room staff keep a sponge for this purpose and are not required to explain it.