#this changes everything
oh! Also I should take this opportunity to air my crack theory about Night Watch, to wit: Ned Coates is a time-traveling grown-up Young Sam.
My evidence:
Ned is the only other Watchman who is new to the squad, and new to Ankh-Morpork.
He is supposedly the only person who knew the real John Keel, but he never calls Sam out for it. If there ever was a real Ned Coates, and he really knew John Keel, we only have Ned’s word for it.
When he and Sam spar, he fights just as dirty as Sam does, and claims John Keel taught him the tricks Sam uses himself.
He’s protective of Vimesy, moreso than other Watchmen though he’s known them all for the same length of time.
He is clearly up to SOMETHING; Sam thinks he’s one of the real revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Winder, but none of the other revolutionaries interact with him or seem to know him that I can recall.
When Sam admits he’s a time traveler, he’s unfazed; his question “From how far back?” would make perfect sense as “from how far back in my timeline, where you are my dad?”
He supposedly dies in the last fight, but Sam doesn’t see it, and Sam supposedly died in that fight too.
Lu-Tze is 100% good enough to have two time-travelers operating at the same time without breaking the timeline; he does, however, worry about the unusual strain he’s creating.
So, let’s say an adult Young Sam has a time-travel accident. Possibly after some sort of major falling-out with his dad, one that’s got him still pissed off at him. And now he’s stuck in a vastly more shitty version of the city he grew up in, and the versions of his dad he has met so far are a) a dumb kid and b) kind of a dick. He is not having a great time. He really, really wants to go home, but first he has a revolution to see through.
Viewed that way, Ned Coates makes a lot of sense.
My annual reblog of this very old post, which I still believe is a plausible theory. This year I was actually invited to talk about it on the Compleat Discography’s Night Watch episode!
“ned coats” is exactly the kind of alias a startled and confused time traveler would come up with, too.
