Okay, we’re back and there are some dragons, so let’s get on with Guards! Guards!
Summary
The Watch members are drunk and have accidentally staggered into The Shades without realizing it. Once they do, they are about to be horribly murdered when a sudden scourge of fire from above incinerates their would be assailants. They call on the Patrician and Vimes tries to suggest a dragon did this, but he’s not interested in entertaining that suggestion and tells them to forget about it. Carrot almost tries to arrest the Patrician for a coach violation, but Colon calls him to attention and they narrowly avoid that scenario. The Librarian notices that a book is missing from his library. The Patrician asks Wonse to see to the dragon issue, worrying over what its appearance might do to the balance of power in the city—there is no obvious way of manipulating a dragon, after all.
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Defekt
Vimes has Nobby and Colon get into plain clothes to start asking about, leaving Carrot at the station and forbidding him from arresting anyone. He heads to meet Sybil Ramkin, an old money aristocrat of the city who breeds small dragons as pets. Carrot is buffing his chest plate when the Librarian comes in to report the crime of the stolen book; Carrot isn’t quite sure what he’s on about, but feels he must go with him, leaving a note to explain his absence. Nobby and Colon get rather drunk on their plain clothes op, and head outside to pee, which brings them face to face with another dragon. Vimes has tea with Lady Ramkin, and she gives him a rundown on dragon-breeding, and answers his questions. He shows her a plaster cast of the dragon footprint they found in the Shades, and she assumes that someone is having him on—the footprint, if it were real, would belong to a dragon from long ago, a huge one. As they’re speaking, all the dragons in her home go quiet.
The Librarian leads Carrot to the place where the missing book should be, and they play a game of charades to help Carrot guess the title. Lady Ramkin and Vimes observe the large dragon flying above the city in varying states of awe and horror, and Vimes sets out after it. He can’t find the thing, so he heads back to Watch HQ, ends up with a bottle in his hand, and wakes to Nobby telling him about the dragon. Carrot and the Librarian show up moments later to inform him about the stolen book. Meanwhile, the Elucidated Brethren are talking about creating their king figure, someone who can kill the dragon and then take orders as a sort of figurehead. The Supreme Grand Master is convinced that this plan will work and the magic won’t get out of his control.
The Patrician has announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who can bring him the dragon’s head. Vimes discusses that plan with Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, who is selling anti-dragon wares to as many marks as possible. Vimes goes to stand amongst the hunters, who don’t seem to think that the reward is high enough for all the overhead and issues in the aftermath. The Patrician is having to deal with the various guild leaders haranguing him over the dragon business, so he deflects onto the Archchancellor of Unseen University, as the appearance of a dragon would appear to be a magic issue. The Archchancellor deflects magnificently, and the Patrician goes to Wonse for suggestions on how he might handle the problem. It occurs that perhaps he might be able to negotiate with a dragon, since they can speak. He asks Vimes for a report on his investigation, but Vimes doesn’t give him much. Vimes heads to the Library, where he asks the Librarian if the book was stolen by someone who works at the University, making sense of the fact that none of the other books noticed an intruding presence. The Librarian responds in the affirmative—this is why he sought the help of the Watch instead of the University itself.
The Watch members all gather on the Watch House roof, looking out over the city. Most of the city is skywatching, hoping to see the dragon, but nothing happens. Vimes is staring at the Tower of Art, and realizes that it looks different somehow. He asks Colon about it and they realize that the dragon is sitting on it. The dragon takes to the sky, flies over the city, and shoots down flames upon the Watch House. Vimes comes to in Lady Ramkin’s bed. Nobby explains that he was brought there on her say-so, after Carrot saved his life. The wizards came out to fight the dragon, and that seems to make it more powerful. Vimes looks about Sibyl’s room, learning a great deal about her. She comes in with a full breakfast and goes on about what a character Nobby is, and how they learned while chatting that her grandfather had his whipped for “malicious lingering.” She insists that he let her tend his wounds. They talk about the dragon, and how this large one shouldn’t be physically capable of flying. She also informs Vimes that she’s handed over the Pseudopolis Yards—a very nice, unused piece of her family’s various city properties—to serve as the new Watch House. Then she tells him to get some rest. Vimes falls asleep and wakes later to sounds of a gathering mob.
Commentary
I forgot how much this book deals in themes of addiction, and from more than a single perspective. The description of Vimes’s alcoholism is maybe one of the most affecting, upsetting segments in the entire Discworld series. Getting back to the Watch House, pulling that bottle out of his desk without even noticing he’s done it, waking up drunk after hours have passed him by. It’s given to us with such clear narration, such simplicity, that it makes the moment of his waking that much more unsettling.
Then on the flip side of that, there’s the Supreme Grand Master thinking that once they’ve installed the king, he can give up the magic they’re doing “any time I like.” Which is addiction speak 101. So even though these two haven’t met, we’re being shown that this is ultimately one addiction unknowingly battling another. The question becomes who is going to succumb to theirs first.
The section on the reward for killing the dragon, and what’s the going rate and whether it’s a worthy sum, is one of those few situations where I’ll do math for fun. It’s just a really great way to get a read on how everyone’s doing in terms of wages and economy and all that. The fifty thousand dollar reward here is fairly substantial, if you’re looking at it from the point of view of a general citizen like Vimes. Members of the Watch get thirty dollars a month, which adds up to 360 dollars a year. Which means that if you did the job for forty years, you’d barely hit fifteen grand. So the reward is over triple that amount, meaning that it’s over triple what they’ll likely make in their lifetimes. Not enough for hero work, apparently, but no small thing to working city folk.
The introduction of Sybil Ramkin and her whole operation is a pitch-perfect sendup of the sort of people who breed dogs and horses, and all the minutiae that entails, and how it can utterly absorb someone’s life. Of course, the key difference here is that Sybil really adores her dragons, which certainly isn’t true of every dog or horse breeder. Some people really just are in it for getting prizes at racing and show dog competitions, a sphere dominated by the superrich. With Lady Ramkin, we see someone who isn’t really in it for glory or money or status. This is her area of focus and study in addition to being her passion. She just really loves dragons, okay?
It strikes me that we’re dealing with another sort of fantasy here in Sybil—the idea of the “good aristocrat”, a person of unspeakable power and wealth who is generous, kind, and not at all overbearing about their station. There aren’t an overabundance of them in Ankh-Morpork (indeed, most of the people in the city with wealth are shown to be in some way horrible), which leads me to some thoughts about her function in the Watch stories. Ultimately, Sybil’s wealth is a boon to Vimes and the people around him—as we see when she takes him in after the Watch House is destroyed by the dragon—and you can’t help but get stuck on this issue from a practicality standpoint in narrative. Authors will often create people of means in groups who collectively have less because doing things without money is considerably harder. As we’re all aware of that, living in capitalist societies, it makes things flow faster to have someone around who can write the checks and pay for your medical care and hand you a new Watch House when your old one burns down. In the first books, it was Twoflower. Here, it’s Sybil Ramkin.
In essence, Sibyl is the Bruce Wayne of this outfit. Which is good because they desperately need one.
And I say this with a great deal of affection, because I love Sybil and I also love her relationship with Vimes as it grows through these stories. For all their differences, they’re an extremely well-matched pair, and I do think they’re better rendered than any of the relationships Pratchett shows us up until this point in the Discworld books. I think this is because their vulnerabilities as people are better rendered than any of his previous pairs. They’re both lonely, and they’re both people who might come off tough or prickly at first glance, when they’re genuinely anything but. So it’ll be fun to watch this unfold all over again, but I still find it funny from a satire perspective—this “okay, you can have a good aristocrat, as a treat” vibe.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Of all the places I expected to come across the possible reference to Dumbo’s “When I See an Elephant Fly,” this “I’ve seen a horse/house/green fly, but I’ve never seen a dragon fly” is one that I’d forgotten completely. The song has understandably fallen out of favor, but I’ll always remember it because it taught me how puns worked as a child.
- Continuing the film noir aura around Vimes, we’ve got a Casablanca reference in the “of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into” bit, which is one of those things that was probably cuter thirty years ago, but I’m a bit burnt out on Casablanca references. Also the Sherlock Holmes reference, honestly. Everyone uses the “when you eliminate the impossible” line, it’s weirdly twee at this point. Might just be me, though.
- Vimes does the thing that all heroes of his ilk do, which is refer to Ankh-Morpork as “my city.” If I had a nickel for every time I heard “my city” drop from a crime-fighter’s mouth. Feel like you could do a real potent analysis on that.
- The Archchancellor of the University doing his best David Attenborough impression with the foxes and the dustbins ramble he offers to the Patrician is so good.
- The whole segment where Vimes wakes up and the litany of how this works (waking up after being knocked suddenly unconscious), and what people ask, and what it means to hear different things, is one of my very favorite passages maybe ever?
Pratchettisms:
There was a crowded moment in which realization did the icy work of a good night’s sleep and several pints of black coffee.
It spun along cheerfully like a gyroscope on the lip of a catastrophe curve.
It was amazing that she was capable of doing something so unwarlike as having a cup of tea.
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like “What’s so bad about genocide?”
Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a notebook these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place.
His eyes swiveled back and forth in their sockets, like two rodents trying to find a way out.
There was a ceiling. This ruled out one particular range of unpleasant options and was very welcome. His blurred vision also revealed Corporal Nobbs, which was less so. Corporal Nobbs proved nothing; you could be dead and see something like Corporal Nobbs.
We’ll get all the way to “And then ran back to his Library and the treacherous pathways of L-space” for next week!
My favorite send up of the “my city” cliche is probably from The Tick:
I like most the earlier books but for me this is when it really starts getting good
Sibyl’s room is described as the room of a woman, who never expects a man to see the inside of it. Was she ever wrong about that!
Sibyl is simply wonderful. As we will learn you mess with Sibyl Ramkins and her dragons at your own risk.
Here again is my all-time favorite Mark Reads Discworld video and review. Starting at 13:15, Mark, who categorically adores dragons (and puppies), flips out about swamp “dragon puppies” and wants to acquire several thousand of them. Less funny than the videos of Mark live-reading from Witches Abroad to audiences while on tour, but unbeatably cute.
I love Sybil Ramkin. I’ve long thought of her as the Hagrid of Ankh-Morpork.
Sybil says the big dragon’s shape should render it unable to fly. That’s also true of puffins, according to one of my biology professors, but fly they do.
Call-forwards:
This is the first named appearance of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, another Discworld character I love. Unlike Sybil, he’s a fairly terrible person sometimes, but his indefatigable resilience is endearing — [spoiler] /// his grander enterprises tend to literally crash and burn, but he always recovers./// To reference a later-referenced (and late) character, I think of him as the B.S. Johnson of businessmen. Anyone can fail to invent a device or start a business endeavor, but not everyone can fail spectacularly.
Mentally-nimble though he may be, the Archchancellor is not long for this (Disc)world. According to the Discworld timeline on the L-Space Wiki, Mustrum Ridcully’s first two books take place in the same year as Guards! Guards!
It’s unusual to see the Librarian have trouble communicating with someone. We’ll mostly see him in the company of wizards who have learned to translate his every “ook” precisely.
Pratchettism:
The memory rose up and hit him like a zombie with a grudge.
Sybil – to me Sybil brings to mind the Queen and her corgis.
Vimes – while it may be a cliche, throughout the books Vimes belief that AM is his city is at the core of his moral compass.
Sybil and Vimes – L-Space judges that they are both in their forties at this point which explains the bedroom comment. Both have given up hope for any true relationship.
Nobbs – I love the fact that Sybil adores Nibby. Perhaps it is due to her association with swamp dragons but it also hints that Nobbs has hidden depths.
Dibbler – the ultimate shyster and dreamer. It was said that you could tell when one of his get rich quick schemes had failed because he’d be back selling sausage in a bun. That delicacy was inspired by British regulations that said a pork sausage only needed to have 42% meat and half of that could be connective tissue.
Dragonslayers – in traditional fairy tales you got to marry a princess and get half the kingdom. They didn’t usually complain about the overhead.
The plot thickens.
Sybil as Bruce Wayne is not an analogy that I ever expected to hear but it fits beautifully. Although she could also be Tony Stark as she doesn’t really take an interest in things outside her world until they begin to affect her and then she really does have an influence on things. She and Vimes are my favourite couple in Discworld (not that there’s much competition).
Vimes’ goes from being “comedy drunk” to “functional alcoholic” very quickly in this part of the book. It is quite scary how effective that transition is, as well. It is also the point where Carrot stops being a major POV character. And, I think, where Vimes starts to become the hero.
I don’t think Holmes is overused; Pratchett is pointing out the Holmesian fallacy long before I remember seeing it on the net.
Is this the only time we see Carrot drunk? And why do we see him drunk at all, after his shaming of the drunken dwarfs? Did Vimes actually order him to drink?
ISTM Pratchett is still developing Vetinari. In the later books he wouldn’t have had the dragon-shadow wall (a reference to Hiroshima/Nagasaki?) torn down, he’d just have had a few (self-)important figures in and pointed out to them that having a bit of terror vanish would be better for their businesses (even in the Shades).
Farah Mendlesohn said (on a panel at least a decade ago) that Lady Sybil was a particularly English type, based on the number of women who got on with their lives (and passed down the habit) after the bulk deaths of men in World War I. OTOH, I noticed Sybil as the first type I knew directly rather than through books; I grew up in horse country outside Washington DC and knew a number of women with the same focused, practical, get-on-with-it attitude (although they all had families). I wonder whether the Queen ever got as close to all the functions of her Corgis as Sybil does to her swamp dragons.
If dragons have been mythical for some time, are all the dragon hunters con men, or just opportunistic, slightly-less-incompetent daredevils? I’m not sure whether the brief comment on expenses is intended to point at this or to be realistic about the fact that contracting can cost a lot more than just the principle’s wages, but they seem to be presented as if having experience.
Pratchettisms:
We’ve seen comments about the Ankh before, but this is the first of several in a small space.
Equal time for the land, and cf Bored of the Rings‘ description of a Boggie village.
(…”and the Lowells speak only to God.” is the Boston version, but I suspect there are pre-US versions as well.)
(cf “Sneeze, and it’s ‘Goodbye, Seattle!’ ” (Roxanne) )
I’m puzzled by Sybil’s dressing gown “of course” having a rabbit on it; that makes me think of Hugh Hefner, which I doubt was the intent.
@7 – Re: Carrot. It’s the only time I recall him being drunk too, although being a dwarf he presumably quaffed on occasion and his problem with the dwarfs in the bar was their fighting, not drinking. This time, though, he had spirits (not beer) forced down his throat while he was unconscious.
Re: Sybil. Not that it will mean much to non Washingtonians, but your comment makes me think of Marjorie Merriweather Post
Pratchettism
My own read has greatly outpaced the group’s so I normally don’t have Pratchettisms to add but I loved this one on Vimes from my current book.
“He just seemed to generate an internal scruffiness field. The man could rumple a helmet.”
@2
I agree completely. There is a self-confidence in the writing here that the earlier books don’t always have. It is notable that Pratchett is relying far less on ‘tacked-on’ humour (silly names for countries and so on) but instead lets the comedy flow from the narrative, the characters and the popular cultural tropes he is gently mocking. I wonder if this is partly as a result of the fact that between this book and Pyramids Pratchett had published two non-Discworld books – The Unadulterated Cat (a non-fiction comic look at domestic cats and their owners) and Truckers (a children’s SF novel, first of a trilogy later called The Bromeliad).
‘If it wasn’t female, then references to “it’s me who has the tricky part” gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come.’
I don’t get it. Can anyone explain this?
—
Is the “of Quirm” when naming the dragon a nod to Dragonriders of Pern? Sounds similar.
One misplaced hiccup and they were geography.
There is a big notch in the outline of a middle eastern country that is attributed to Winston Churchill have hiccups after a large lunch.
@10 – it’s meant to be a riff on misunderstanding (like Nobbs and Carrot on female troubles or Carrot and Mrs. Palm).
Vimes assumes that Lord Mountjoy Gayscale is a human, male, Lord. It seems to him that he is being asked to lift him up (or possibly arouse him) so that the ‘apparition’ in leather armor can mate with Lord Mountjoy. The mental images of forced gay sex would haunt him. Certainly the Lord’s name contributes to this.
I will point out that he doesn’t condemn the sex part, just the forced part and the implication that the Lord will be killed if he can’t perform. And, in any case, he doesn’t want to be a party to it.
You frequently reference “Lady Ramkin” – was that changed for the US edition? In my UK edition and my audiobook she’s always “Lady Sybil”; Pratchett generally follows the British system of titles for his Ankhish nobles. She’s the daughter of a Lord, not the wife of a Lord Surname or the title holder in her own right, so she’s Lady Firstname, not Lady Surname.
Only noticing this for the first time in this read, but is the description of the the-dragon-soon-to-be-known-as-Errol as a ‘whittle’ a reference to Frank Whittle the designer of early jet engines?
@14. The Annotated Pratchett website makes that connection:
Describing Errol as a whittle is actually a quite clever pun. On the one hand ‘whittle’ simply means something reduced in size (usually by means of slicing bits and pieces off it), while on the other hand Sir Frank Whittle was the inventor of the modern aircraft jet engine.
When Whittle showed his original design to his supervisor at Manchester University, the latter said, “Very interesting, Whittle my dear boy, but it will never work.”
@1 It cries to me of its need.
@8: This time, though, he had spirits (not beer) forced down his throat while he was unconscious. I’m not sure there were enough spirits involved (just before the end of the previous section) to have that much effect on someone Carrot’s size, but it might have reduced his resistance enough that he’d keep drinking when the bottle came around.
I didn’t know of Post until after I’d moved away for the last time, but I went to school near Tankersley’s ranch (now the site of the Al-Marah residential development). I also didn’t know about Tankersley’s questionable journalism until even later.
Which in turn reminds me of a cavil with the columnist’s commentary. IMO, Sybil is not a fantasy; she’s an outlier — but all of these stories are about outliers.
@13: yes, the US edition says “Lady Ramkin” (At least in the first few instances of her first appearance — I didn’t recheck all of this section.) However, she later becomes a Duchess, IIRC in her own right; is not the heir to title X addressed as Lord/Lady X? (cf Miles being “Lord Vorkosigan”, at least after his grandfather’s death.) I’m surprised this is changed in an edition that keeps “manoeuvre” instead of spelling it “maneuver”, but {,copy}editors do what they individually think is right. (cf the Chandler collection I edited decades ago — I was sternly told by the professional who proofed it that it should say “color” rather than “colour” even in a story that had been published only in the UK.) When this book came out, the US editions were still seriously behind the UK versions (my copy says “First Roc Printing, July, 1991” just above a copyright notice dated 1989); I wonder whether Pratchett himself made the change, having more idea of the character’s future and/or a more liberal idea of the Ankh-Morpork inheritance laws than did his country (which took another couple of decades to replace gender order with birth order, at least for the crown).
@13 – It must be the American editor or publisher. I can only find one reference to ‘Lady Sybil’ (from Nobbs (which may be significant). Everything else refers to her as ‘Lady Ramkin’.
Perhaps it is the American affection for surnames when addressing people with whom you are not ‘on a first name basis’ with (which is an American phrase).
@17&13, even Brits get their noble titles confused.
If Sibyl was the daughter of a peer she’d be Lady Sibyl Ramkins. If she inherited the peerage she’d become Lady Ramkin. That is under British rules. But who says Ankh-Morpork follows British rules?
There’s going to be the Lady Sybil Free Hospital.
@@@@@ 17 – The heir’s title in the UK peerage depends on the rank of the peer involved (Bujold’s Barrayaran system has similarities to it but is not identical). The eldest sons of Dukes, Marquesses and Earls take on one of their father’s subsidiary titles as a courtesy title (e.g. the eldest son of the Duke of Denver in the Lord Peter Wimsey books is Viscount St George). The younger sons of Dukes and Marquesses are Lord Firstname Surname (e.g. Lord Peter Wimsey) and if they get married their wives take the feminine form of that style (so Lord Peter Wimsey’s wife is Lady Peter Wimsey). The daughters of Dukes, Marquesses and Earls are Lady Firstname Surname, and on marriage they become Lady Firstname Husbandssurname unless their husband outranks them (which is why Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride & Prejudice is Lady Catherine, not Lady de Bourgh, as her being the daughter of an Earl trumps her husband’s knighthood; had she been the daughter of a Viscount or lower she’d have been Lady de Bourgh). Younger sons of Earls, and all the children of Viscounts and Barons, are just styled “The Honourable” with no courtesy title.
So before her marriage she’s Lady Sybil Ramkin, after her marriage she’s Lady Sybil Vimes as long as Sam is either a plain mister or Sir Samuel.
When Sybil becomes a Duchess, it’s not in her own right but through marriage, as Vimes is made Duke of Ankh. However, wife of peer trumps daughter of peer, so under the British system (which Pterry more or less followed, partly I suspect because it was what he was taking the piss out of) she becomes The Duchess of Ankh, and she’d at that point be Lady Vimes, not Lady Sybil. The hospital being the Lady Sybil is consistent with her having been established in society well before becoming a Duchess and so being thought of that way even after her title changed (like how almost everyone still refers to the Duke of Sussex as Prince Harry).
I was struck on a recent re-read at Pratchett’s descriptions of the dragon in flight. It might genuinely be some of the best dragon describing I’ve ever read; there’s such a sense of awe in the way it lazily sculls through the air that you readily understand Sybil’s admiration.
I also only picked up this time on why the dragon burns down the Watch House – it’s right after Vimes visits the Palace, and mentions to Wonse and the Patrician that the dragon might not have a lair at all.
It’s even more difficult when someone you know of only as their title changes their name. The local land owner where I grew up was known as Lord Neidpath (‘knee-path’), but now he’s officially Earl Wemyss (‘weems’), but still called Neidpath by most of his tenants, even though his real name is James Charteris.
If you grow up with this, you very quickly come to realise that the upper classes are effectively a separate species, and that most of them are quite odd (I’ll just say ‘trepanation’ and leave it at that). In this, Pratchett’s attitudes are pretty close to what I was brought up with.
The wife of the first Duke of Wellington regretted his rise to the peerage, Viscount Wellington, as she preferred the style of Lady Wellesley, Arthur was a knight. Wellington, a name picked because of its resemblance to Wellesley struck her as meaningless.
@24: So, did that mean she hoped he would get the boot?
sorrynotsorry
@24, @25: it’s a question of who wore the trousers. Of which Sir Arthur apparently was an Early Adopter. Up to then it was all breeches, knee length basically.
@25&26, I snicker
@25 – she definitely has a beef
@26 – Vimes expressed his opinion on this in later books
@5 Davep 1
“sausage inna bun“ reminds me of the Yes, Minister episode where they have to resist the EU’s desire to truthfully re-label the “British sausage” as “the emulsified-fat-filled offal tube”.