His Grace, His Excellency, His Blackboard Monitor-ship, the Duke of Ankh, King of the River, God.

feathersmoons:

copperbadge:

drgaellon:

roachpatrol:

shinyhappygoth:

citywatchnewsfeed:

oneofthequietones:

So we all know and love Sam Vimes. After all, as Thud!
tells us:

“Sam Vimes once arrested [Lord Vetinari] for treason. Sam
Vimes once arrested a dragon. Sam Vimes stopped a war between nations by
arresting both high commands. He’s an arresting fellow, Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes
killed a werewolf with his bare hands, and carries law with him like a lamp.
Watchmen across half the continent will say that Sam Vimes is as straight as an
arrow, can’t be corrupted, won’t be turned, never took a bribe.”

Now, here’s a thing. Who else – or rather what else –
‘carries law like a lamp’? The Guarding Dark, Vimes’ metaphorical inner watchman,
who later uses a lantern to break the Summoning Dark’s control over his mind.

Bear in mind that the Summoning Dark has been corrupting
minds since before written language, and that Thud! explicitly states Vimes is the
first to resist its control. That’s a lot of power for the Guarding Dark to
have. The fact that said power is demonstrated in a way that echoes the quote above
links it as much to Vimes the legend as Vimes the man.

Now, take a look at
this snippet of conversation between the Summoning Dark and Guarding Dark:

“…what kind of human creates his own policeman?”

“One who fears the dark.”

Obviously they’re talking about Vimes, but a generalised,
public fear is also a running theme in the Watch books. The Fifth Elephant and
Snuff both ridicule the phrase ‘the innocent have nothing to fear’, and the role
of the Unmentionables in Night Watch is essentially an extended takedown of the
idea.

So what if the innocent created and empowered their own
policeman, who protects them in much the same way that the Guarding Dark
protects Vimes?  

As we know, belief is a powerful force on the Discworld,
with a very real effect. I reckon it forms a feedback loop between
the innocent and Vimes. His achievements fuel the public perception of him as
the ideal policeman, an unstoppable, incorruptible force of law. Their belief
fuels his willpower – arguably his greatest asset – allowing him to achieve
more and add further to the legend. Vimes can successfully resist the Summoning
Dark partly because people believe
that it’s something he could do. As Vetinari and Drumknott put it in Thud!:

“Given a contest between an invisible and very powerful
quasi-demonic thing of pure vengeance on the one hand, and the commander on the
other, where would you wager, say… one dollar?”

“I wouldn’t, sir. That looks like one that would go to the
judges.”

And that’s exactly what happens. Vimes resists the
Summoning Dark long enough for Angua to bring him down, and it respectfully
departs.

What do we call a Discworld being that draws power from
belief? A god.

Monstrous Regiment confirms that mortals can become gods
through the power of belief even against their will, so why not Vimes in the
future? It would certainly fit the running joke of him being awarded honours
against his wishes. And after His Grace, His Excellency, His Blackboard
Monitor-ship, the Duke of Ankh, and King of the River, where else is there to
go?

TL;DR – I think Sam Vimes is slowly and unknowingly turning
into the god of coppers.

(Disclaimer – I don’t actually like this theory; I think Vimes works better as purely human. I
just think it’s happening.)

From The Desk Of The Commander

“Bugger.”
– Commander Vimes

He will be so grumpy if that happens. (There would also be the issue of whether offerings/sacrifices count as bribes.)

vimes is going to arrest so many bastards when he ascends to the top of that mountain. 

@copperbadge your thoughts, sir?

I think it’s a spectacular thesis, especially since it defends against the one objection I would raise, that nobody believes in Vimes in a god-sense (it’d be like believing in the postman, I think is the phrase Pterry uses in another book). Because genuinely there are now coppers in Ankh-Morpork and criminals across the Disc who do “believe” in the deific sense. 

I’m not sure how I feel about liking the theory, I’m in agreement on that as well. I really struggled with Thud in a general sense (for some reason it was difficult for me to follow, I should give it another shot) so I don’t recall much of it, but while I loved Snuff I also felt like there was a bit too much of the Superpower in it, a bit too much mysticism for a man whose story has always been about being the underdog and winning through sheer bloody-mindedness anyway. On the one hand it’s super gratifying to see Vimes really coming into a level of power like he has in Snuff, because I’ve always enjoyed him at his ragey-est. But on the other…I liked him as a plain copper too, yeah. 

Uh so I guess TLDR I agree with all of it, even the postscript, and I think it’s nice to see it articulated so clearly. And I do love the mental image of Vimes ending up on Cor Celesti and taking those motherfuckers down a peg. 

I actually love this theory because it is something Vimes-the-man would have to deal with, and actually I think both Thud! and Snuff are about how he’d have to deal with it, because once you start succeeding at the kind of high-level shit he was trying to do, people are going to mysticise and deify you, whether they even realize it or not.

We do it all the time. Hell we’ve done it to Pratchett! When people talk about Pterry (we even gave him his own name, see?) they’re not really talking about a man who had kids and typed stuff and liked his cats and had tea with Gneil: we’re talking about the author construct we’ve created in our minds, upon whom we tend to project all the things we bring to his texts and understand from them.

It’s actually one of the reasons I tend to talk quite strongly about what I feel Discworld says, rather than what “Pratchett” says: I’ve never talked to the man, I have no idea what he’s ever wanted to put in his texts and what got there by accident or even counter to his intent, and because I’m an author I know the latter happens. I only know and only ever can know what the text says to me.

But because Vimes has done huge things, because Vimes has become a huge public figure who’s shifted the world around him, because he has created a legacy, he has to deal with that legacy. He doesn’t have a choice. Even “not dealing with it” is dealing with it, in the same sense that a choice not to choose isn’t a choice.

In Raising Steam that comes around to haunt him with it: whether he likes it or not, he beat (and then work with) the Summoning Dark*. He has its mark on his arm, and he does both understand it and have to deal with the history that gives that mark.

Which means he can either use it in the course of his general drive to make the world better, safer, and more just, or he can ignore it, but both of those are choices and both have consequences.

Unsurprisingly Vimes actually chooses the middle course, which is avoiding making USE of it explicitly while making sure – in the course of chatting with his suspects – that they can see it, allowing their psychological processes in regards to this reality (that he hosted the Dark, that it marked him on leaving) to do the work for him and provide as much of the advantage as he thinks is acceptable to take.

And I actually think that given what we learn later on that “corrupting” is a misleading term, and “influencing the minds of people” would be more apropos: the Summoning Dark is tied to Vimes, to the Guarding Dark, because the Summoning Dark is justice denied which becomes Vengeance, which becomes Nemesis and Fury. The Summoning Dark was called by a dying person in the dark after the most intense betrayal possible in that person’s culture, and that person had every reason to think they’d get away with it except for this vengeance, and so that person called it down on them because it was the only Justice possible. Often it is. The entire point of the Guarding Dark is creating a world wherein this is not so. Wherein it’s not just violence against violence, with the person best at violence winning by default, but rather a place wherein society, as a whole and to the good of all, speaks up for the vulnerable and the weak and makes sure they are treated justly.

Yes, it’s a lofty goal and yes, it’s difficult as fuck, but the Summoning Dark is the vengeance of a world made of violence and blood where there are no guards, no civil protections; the Guarding Dark is the justice of a world where there damn well should be.

And Vimes created it, and shaped it into a Watchman, and started hammering the entirety of Ankh-Morpork and then the entire world (see also: Jingo and Monstrous Regiment) into following it at least as best he can. And when you do that, you deal with the legacy. It happens. And the legacy itself gains power and becomes important. If you’re lucky it becomes important for the right reasons and without distorting you and what you want too much in the process. But still.

When the Summoning Dark left Vimes it saluted him; then it brought him its own children (the goblins) and in its own avatar-shape demanded Justice. The Summoning Dark is the vengeance of the world full of heroes and warring armies and right coming from the end of a sword; it’s the one way the weak have of balancing shit up, that if they are so mistreated that it becomes worth it they can call down this Darkness and set it loose on those who wronged it. The Guarding Dark – who Vimes created – won’t let that happen and rejects and resists the power of the Summoning Dark, stripping it of that place as an ultimate balancing act. And at that point the Summoning Dark says, okay, fine: it’s your world now. You fix it.

It brings him its children, who only have it and its wrath to protect them from anything else, and basically says: okay, fine, if we’re moving to the world of weight and balance and mass acts and all of that shit out in the light, here are my children, here is the horrific thing happening to them, create justice. It’s a passing of the torch, or in this case the opposite of a torch.

And Vimes started this (or Keel did, and I suspect if anyone actually becomes the direct god of coppers, it may well be Keel more than Vimes, or at least the idea of Keel), so Vimes gets to carry it, and he gets to carry it whether or not it takes him into places where he has to act as “more” (or, in some ways, less) than just-an-ordinary-human.

And I love everything about that. I love the exploration of that. I love how unhappy he is about it, and I love how unhappy he is to find out, out on Sybil’s estate, that he can’t just pretend that he doesn’t have power and control, that he can’t just ignore it and expect that to work: that he does in fact have to fucking realize that in order to be able to do the things he wants to do (to change the law, to force the world to see goblins as people, to have moral authority over police and law-enforcement in other places to make them Do It Right) he has to accept that this makes him more powerful, inherently, than the maid-servants and he has to fucking cope with that and find things he can do, in full awareness of that power, to make them safe: he doesn’t get to just go “but but I’m not so everyone should treat me how it makes ME comfortable to be treated”.

That if he is going to take the power he has to take all the responsibilities, and sometimes that includes being a goddamn icon to other people because that’s what they need. That responsibility takes different shapes, many many different shapes, and sometimes it’s emotional and psychological as much as it is practical.

Vimes decided to wrench society around in a new direction, so Vimes gets to deal with how this makes him more than “just some guy”. And I love that. I love explorations of that. I think they’re incredibly important.