The Book of the New Sun is (rightly) a moderately famous bit of speculative fiction - the sort of thing brought up by the kind of book-reading type who blew right past Asimov, Tolkien and Le Guin long ago. I have to include myself in that - I've mentioned Wolfe's works enough times on here before.
Anyway, of all the images or ideas or characters from The Book of the New Sun that get referred to or are popularly circulated, there's one that seems a trifle neglected: a passage on 'The Seven Principles of Governance'. This is found in Chapter XXXIII from The Shadow of the Torturer - and it is reproduced below.
I appreciate the Scholastic tone, reminiscent in its tone and form of Aristotelian Medieval thought - but clearly referential of systems of government we would not call Medieval. Which is, in a fashion, a perfect summation of a Feudal Future; though if one must put Wolfe's New Sun in a sub-genre, Dying Earth comes first. The drift into theology and mystical experience is also quietly fitting, and indicates the eventual direction of the quartet of novels. Not to chide unduly - but I hope the reader of the New Sun recalls the Seven Principles of Governance as clearly as Terminus Est.