Is this what we’re talking about?

  • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    19 days ago

    Vimes is such an interesting character. He’s a class conscious cop with a conscience who ends up running the city-state’s entire police force after the rest of them are purged for corruption by the city’s dictator, a liberal blanquist reformer who literally fought alongside Vimes in a popular revolution, who puts Vimes in charge because he trusts him to carry out an anti-racist, anti-corruption agenda with the cynicism and tact required to stop the uneasy peace between all the institutional powers in the city from imploding.

    He’s also a cynical asshole cop who tolerates ludicrous corruption from his longstanding lackeys and every view we see of him that’s not from his own PoV or that of the handful of people who like and respect him paints him as a short tempered, bloodthirsty monster who’s obsessively cruel and completely ruthless.

    • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      20 days ago

      The discworld runs on narrative, and one of the really big narratives is the destined king returned to restore the golden age. Carrot actively resists the role but the stage is still always ready for him.

        • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          9·
          19 days ago

          He’s straight up got the mythical King’s sword, the royal birthmark, and the empty throne awaiting its destined owner. There is no prophecy about Carrot, just an overwhelming narrative drive that wants him to assume kingship, so badly that there’s almost narrative radiation emitted from him that makes others want to fall in line with the story he won’t allow the world to tell. Even the Silver Horde recognize they can’t fuck with him when he stands against them alone because they know the lone hero fighting impossible odds will win every time.

          • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            8·
            19 days ago

            Then there’s the punchline to said narrative: the golden throne of Ankh-Morpork is rotting from within. It looks pefectly fine from afar, glistening and tempting enough to motivate the villain with nostalgia and glamour. But pageantry does not define a state. What Vetinari clears up in that final scene is that the feeble wooden foundations of the throne symbollize the lack of sustenance that a fairy tale kingship would entail. Carrot would not be an able ruler to the city, nevermind a ruler as able as Vetinari himself is.

            I think this is a parallel with the way british democracy works and, I assume, Terry’s own feelings about it. Ankh-Morpork and Britain are both easily able to shed dipshit prime ministers and do so regularly. Ask Charles to do some actual governing and the country will collapse in 4 years - mostly because the way things are people don’t actually have to confront the shittiness of the royal family. They can latch onto the royals to little consequence. Likewise, the way things are in Ankh-Morpork means that people can wax poetically about the throne because there’s nobody sitting on it. Ankh-Morpork is not a monarchy, but it still has a nobility of sorts, a class system and the throne still sits upon the city, bereft of a king but still standing as a symbol of history. If Carrot sits on the throne it could quite literally fall apart and that symbollizes what’s ahead for Ankh then.

            I always say Britain should abolish the royal family but not the monarchy. Let a LizzieGPT ‘rule’ eternally and nationalize the palaces. Win-win.