the vetinari reveal in night watch is so. wow. refusing to call him by name for the whole passage racks up so much unnecessary drama cause we KNOW. we all know. we’ve all done the time travel math and he was wearing the lilac in the present and we know he’s gotta be in the assassins guild somewhere and come on, this happened:
it could literally be NO ONE ELSE and yet we still have to wait until the end of the passage for downey to call him by name it’s infuriating god this book is so good.
“Watchmen in our bank? Shut the door on them!” “Times have moved on, Auntie. We can’t do that anymore.” “When your great-grandfather pushed his brother over the balcony the Watch even took the body away for five shillings and a pint of ale all round!” “Yes, Auntie. Lord Vetinari is the Patrician now.” “And he’d allow watchmen to clump around in our bank?” “Without a doubt, Auntie.” “Then he is no gentleman,” the aunt observed sadly.
– on Vetinari’s failings according to the wealthy | Terry Pratchett, Making Money
THE CLOWN WHO opened the little sliding door in the Fools’ Guild’s forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn’t very happy about any of them. “We are here to see Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari. “I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth.” The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick. “This is the Fools’ Guild,” he said. “Expect…fun.” There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed, and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side. “I don’t know why they persist in this, I really don’t,” he said, sweeping through. “It’s not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard.” There was a groan from the dark behind the door.
-Making Money
this april fool’s day, JUST SAY NO to silly pranks!
Most tyrants in fantasy fiction: My greatest nemesis is someone I have tried to kill on multiple occasions, and who may just be my greatest weakness. I cannot rest until I DESTROY them! *maniacal laughter*
Meanwhile, Havelock Vetinari: *drinking a glass of water* The lady who compiles the crosswords is very good at her job-
“I know exactly what you never said. You refrained from saying it very loudly.” Vetinari raised an eyebrow. “I am extremely angry, Mr. Lipwig.”
“But I’ve been dropped right in it!”
“Not by me,” said Vetinari. “I can assure you that if I had, as your ill-assumed street patois has it, ‘dropped you in it,’ you would fully understand all meanings of ‘drop’ and have an unenviable knowledge of ‘it.’”
“You know what I mean!”
“Dear me, is this the real Moist von Lipwig speaking, or is it just the man looking forward to his very nearly gold chain? Topsy Lavish knew she was going and simply changed her will. I salute her for it. The staff will accept you more easily, too. And she’s done you a great favor.”
“Favor? I was shot at!”
“That was just the Assassins’ Guild dropping you a note to say they are watching you.”
“There were two shots!”
“Possibly for emphasis?” said Vetinari, sitting down on a velvet-covered chair.
Most tyrants in fantasy fiction: My greatest nemesis is someone I have tried to kill on multiple occasions, and who may just be my greatest weakness. I cannot rest until I DESTROY them! *maniacal laughter*
Meanwhile, Havelock Vetinari: *drinking a glass of water* The lady who compiles the crosswords is very good at her job-
““Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.””
— Lord Havelock Vetinari, The Truth, Discworld book 25
One of my favourite things in Guards! Guards! is imagining Vetinari booking it from room to room in the palace in order to appear wherever Wonse goes to escape him. Just going full tilt down hidden passageways only to skid to a halt, quickly smooth himself down, take a deep breath and slip into each new room.
“‘In my experience Miss Cripslock tends to write down exactly what one says,’ Vetinari observed. ‘It’s a terrible thing when journalists do that. It spoils the fun. One feels instinctively that it’s cheating, somehow.’”
After reading Jingo I can never look at Vetenari the same again… oh he’s a scary tyrant? Is he, Rincewind, is he really? The man was juggling. While dressed as a Klatchian. With Nobby and Colon of all people.
And Sergeant Colon looked up and into a growing, greenish, expanding-
The melon exploded, and so did the audience, but both their laughter and the humor was slightly lost on Colon as he scraped over-ripe pith out of his ears.
The survival instinct cut in again. Stagger around backward, it said. So he staggered around backward, waving his legs in the air. Fall down heavily, it said. So he sat down, and almost squashed a chicken. Lose your dignity, it said; of all the things you’ve got, it’s the one you can most afford to lose.
Lord Vetinari helped him up. “Our very lives depend on your appearing to be a stupid fat idiot,” he hissed, putting Colon’s fez back on his head.
Colon tossed him the knives, slowly and gingerly. He’s going to try to stab the guards, he thought. It’s a ruse. And then everyone’s going to tear us apart.
Now the circling blur glinted in the sunlight. There was a murmur of approval from the crowd.
“Yet somehow dull,” said the Patrician.
And his hands moved in a complex pattern that suggested that his wrists must have moved through one another at least twice.
The tangled ball of hurtling fruit and cutlery leapt into the air. Three melons dropped to the ground, cut cleanly in two. Three knives thudded into the dust a few inches from their owner’s sandals.
And Sergeant Colon looked up and into a growing, greenish, expanding-
The melon exploded, and so did the audience, but both their laughter and the humor was slightly lost on Colon as he scraped over-ripe pith out of his ears.
Three fruits arced gently out of the green whirl and thumped on to Al-jibla’s tray.
The guards looked carefully, and to Colon’s mind nervously, at the cross-dressed figure of the cross corporal.
“She’s not going to do any kind of dance, is she?” one of them ventured.
“No!” snapped Beti.
“Promise?”
Nobby grabbed three of the knives and tugged them out of the man’s belt.
“I’ll give them to his lor- to him, shall I, Beti?” said Colon, suddenly quite sure that keeping the Patrician alive was almost certainly the only way to avoid a brief cigarette in the sunshine. He was also aware that other people were drifting over to watch the show.
A couple of armed men had drifted over to them. Sergeant Colon’s heart sank. In those bearded faces he saw himself and Nobby, who at home would always saunter over to anything on the street that looked interesting.
“You are jugglers, are you?” said one of them. “Let’s see you juggle, then.”
Lord Vetinari gave them a blank look and then glanced down at the tray around Al-jibla’s neck. Among the more identifiable foodstuffs were a number of green melons.
“Very well,” he said, and picked up three of them.
Sergeant Colon shut his eyes.
After a few seconds he opened them again because a guard had said, “All right, but anyone can do it with three.”
“In that case perhaps Mr. Al-jibla will throw me a few more?” said the Patrician, as the balls spun through his hands.
Sergeant Colon shut his eyes again.
After a short while a guard said, “Seven is pretty good. But it’s just melons.”
Lord Vetinari pushed him aside. “We are strolling entertainers,” he said. “We were hoping to get an engagement at the Prince’s palace… Perhaps you could help?”
The man rubbed his beard thoughtfully, causing various particles to cascade into the little bowls in his tray.
“Dunno about the palace,” he said. “What’s it you do?”
“We practice juggling, fire-eating, that sort of thing,” said Vetinari.
“Do we?” said Colon.
Al-jibla nodded at Nobby. “What does…”
“…she…” said Lord Vetinari helpfully.
“…she do?”
“Exotic dancing,” said Vetinari, while Nobby scowled.
