Young Sam Vimes
Vimes Family Motto: PROTEGO ET SERVIO
[I] protect and serve
The Honourable Samuel Vimes II
| Young Sam Vimes | |
 | |
| Name | The Hon. Samuel "Young Sam" Vimes II |
| Race | Human |
| Age | born in Night Watch
1 Year old Where's My Cow? 14 Months in Thud! 6 Years old Snuff 7 or 8 Years old Raising Steam |
| Occupation | |
| Physical appearance | |
| Residence | Ramkin Residence, Scoone Avenue, Ankh |
| Death | |
| Parents | Samuel Vimes (Father) Sybil Vimes née Ramkin (Mother) |
| Relatives | Thomas Vimes (Paternal Grandfather) Mrs. Vimes (Paternal Grandmother) Grandma Clamp (Great Grandmother on Father's side) "Stoneface" Vimes (Ancestor on Father's side) Lord Ramkin (Maternal Grandfather) Lady Ramkin (Maternal Grandmother) Lord Ramkin Sr. (Maternal great grandfather who once shot Bloody Stupid Johnson in the leg) |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | |
| Appearances | |
| Books | Night Watch Thud! Where's My Cow? Snuff Raising Steam |
| Cameos | |
The much-beloved son and only child of Sir Samuel and Lady Sybil Vimes, the Duke and Duchess of Ankh.
Named "Sam", after his father, at the insistence of his mother, he was born during the climax of events at the end of Night Watch. His birth proved in the end to be difficult, due to his mother's age, so his father brought in Dr. John Lawn, the best doctor he knew about to help save both the mother and the baby. Already 14 months old by the time of the events of Thud!, Young Sam is able to lift his head, stand upright whilst holding onto the rails of his cot, distinguish the difference between his father and his mother, and can say "Da!"
According to his father, Young Sam seems to have a "very accurate internal clock". His father reads Where's My Cow?, Young Sam's favourite book, to Young Sam, with all the noises, every night at 6:00 PM SHARP. When this book is being read to him, Young Sam likes to crow along with all the animal noises with his father as it's read to him. This bond between them has become a major preoccupation for Sam Sr. since Young Sam was born, and is, perhaps, Sam Sr.'s salvation in Thud!.
Young Sam loves the Where's My Cow? picture book so-much that it is described as having to be "the most-cuddled book in the world", and has been chewed-upon on many occasions by him over time; Young Sam is also in the habit of using his father's helmet as a substitute for a teddy bear from time-to-time. Young Sam's nursery is pink and blue and packed with a collection of woolly, fluffy stuffed toys. Many of Young Sam's cuddly toys have, apparently, been in the Ramkin family for generations, out of their habit of never throwing anything away that might be used again (their attics are packed with the things they don't throw out.)
Sam Sr. usually doesn't tolerate others in the nursery during his and Young Sam's time together at storytime; the sole exceptions seem to be Sybil, (of course) and Dribble the dragon, one of Sybil's older swamp dragons, who always looks for somewhere warm to slump, has been observed to clamber up the stairs and takes point underneath Young Sam's cot every day and even sleeps under there time-to-time (no-one knows why exactly). The whistling noises that Dribble makes in his sleep do not seem to bother Young Sam while he's napping. Young Sam, like Dribble, also drools in his sleep.
It is also revealed that, one evening, after a trying day, Sam Sr. had ad-libbed his own version of Where's My Cow?, called the "Vimes street version", to Young Sam, reasoning that, since they lived in a city, Young Sam would be unlikely to hear many, (if any) of these noises. Instead of searching for a lost cow, the person, (Young Sam) is looking for his Daddy. Once Young Sam, "with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing", tried to repeat one of the "sounds" ("Bugrit") made in the "Vimes street version", to the nursemaid. Sam Sr. has stuck rigidly to the "authorized version" since, (and Sybil, mercifully, has never brought it up).
Young Sam shares a very special bond with his father. When having gone up to Koom Valley on a Broomstick-upgraded coach, which Young Sam enjoyed riding in very much thanks to the Show of the Year (Detritus, Grag Bashfullsson etc. all joining in with the noises of Where's My Cow?) in-order to pursue the Deep-Downers for their crimes, Sam Sr. was trapped underground. When, after having been unfailingly on-time for story-time for so long, Sam Sr. was kept from making it back on-time for their story time, Young Sam started crying when he saw that his father wasn't there to read to him.
Having been delayed from going back to read to Young Sam, Sam Sr. 'went spare', and ended-up attacking the Deep-Downer guards in a berserker rage. All the while, Sam Sr. was screaming out the lines to Where's My Cow? and, the bond between them being so strong, it managed to penetrate Young Sam's consciousness (and he seemed to be the only one to hear his father's voice) whilst they were staying all the way up on the surface, at the residence of an "old friend from school" of Sybil's, and Young Sam stopped crying, and began crowing along to the noises, to the confusion of his mother.
In Thud!, Young Sam also has a nursemaid, called Purity.
Young Sam is mentioned briefly in the events of I Shall Wear Midnight, after the mess caused by the Nac Mac Feegle at the King's Head in Ankh-Morpork. Mrs Proust, in order to draw Vimes's attention away from Tiffany Aching, brings up Young Sam in their conversation. Commander Vimes then thanks her for her advice about giving Young Sam a fizzy drink and a good burp...
By the time of Snuff, Young Sam is six years old, and has graduated from listening to Where's My Cow? to reading the works of Felicity Beedle with his parents' occasional assistance. He is also described as having inherited a Vimes' analytical mind, with a Ramkins' penchant for experimentation. At this point, the 6-year-old Young Sam is also pre-occupied with the science of "Poo", and is amassing a collection of stool samples of different animals.
By the events of Raising Steam, Young Sam is seven/eight years old, and has been caught-up in the zeitgeist of the new Railway. According to his mother at the end of the book, Young Sam has already filled up his first Train Spotters notebook.
Trivia
- Like his father, Young Sam is a descendant of Suffer-Not-Injustice "Old Stoneface" Vimes.