Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:Ardent

2024-09-21T23:03:18Z

Lias Bluestone: typo

what niggles here is that Ardent was all but killed at the end of {{T!}}, with a crushed throat and a long fall into waters that Sam Vimes only survived because of his possession by the Summoning Dark. Maybe Dwarfs are hard to kill, but seeing him resurrected to be a protaganist in {{RS}} was.... surprising... [[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 00:08, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Sam Vimes, at the end of {{T!}}, says "These are my demands. The grags and what's left of their guards are coming back to Ankh-Morpork with me. That includes Ardent, though I'm told it'll be weeks before he can talk again. They're going before Vetinari." (unsigned comment by [[User:Epithymetic|Epithymetic]], 6 September 2024‎)

Book:The Shepherd's Crown/Annotations

2024-09-21T23:01:12Z

Lias Bluestone: too many 's

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p10:'''''
Tiffany notices young Feegle are following her on her rounds and collecting examples of the strongest substance known to man, toenail clippings from the elderly. It is not specified as to what they do with them, but she suspects some sort of weapon-use is involved. Later in the book crescent-shaped boomerangs are deployed as weapons.

Compare this to Pat O'Shea's fantasy novel ''Hounds of the Morrigan'' ([http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Reading_suggestions#Pat_O.27Shea| Reading_Suggestions]) where the Celtic Irish war goddess Morrigan returns to Ireland. She/they (the Morrigan is a triple Goddess) uses her fingernails as a sort of boomerang-like ninja throwing star. This is also in Irish mythology, apparently. Where fingernails are lethal projectile weapons.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p19:'''''
''Mephistopheles'' is a good name for a goat. Although perhaps not as fitting as "Baphomet". Apparently Geoffrey Swivel got the name from a book. Geoffrey reads widely. Another literary Swivel on the Disc is the Ankh-Morpork Times' literary critic [[Tuppence Swivel]]. On Roundworld the demon Mephistopheles appears to Faust, in both book and opera, to offer him the Standard Contract. Demons, such as Baphomet, are closely associated with goats. And we know on the Discworld the nearest equivalent to the Faust thing happened with a youth called {{E}}.

And the story of the goat Mephistopheles - the rejected runt in the litter who needs intervention in order to survive - is echoed a little later when Tiffany Aching rescues the unwanted triplet Tiffany Robinson (p48). Foreshadowing? And things come in threes: Geoffrey is the youngest of three sons, Tiffany Robinson is the youngest of triplets, Mephistopheles the youngest of a litter of kids.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p21:'''''
Langus, who like Daedelus managed to fly. This is not a million miles away from Lingus, as in the Irish national airline Aer Lingus.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p32 and on:'''''
Pratchett tours the Disc to get a series of reactions, from established characters, to the Disc-changing event that marks the early part of this book (sorry: no spoilers. But it's a big one. We can rewrite this bit after the book has circulated a bit and people have had time to read it.) As he calls back to the events of {{ER}} - Smith's rag-rug on the bed and a very brief cameo from Esk - he reverts, in this chapter, to the second-person writing style that distinguished {{ER}} from the other early novels. And of course just as Esk was a girl who wanted to become a wizard, Geoffrey is a boy who wants to become a witch.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p42:'''''
An enigma fated never to be be resolved: the second reference to [[Eskarina Smith]]'s son (although this is discussed on the [[Talk:Eskarina Smith|Eskarina Smith talk page]].

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p44:'''''
Triplets are born. A daughter is disregarded after two sons. Tiffany takes charge and even names the girl Tiffany after herself. There is a hint that in the fullness of time this girl will become the next non-leader that the community of witches emphatically doesn't have; Pratchett's way of saying the circles of life continue?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p45:'''''
The white cat You's mysterious means of getting about. Elsewhere it has been speculated that this is a case of ''Schrödinger's Hat''....

'''''Harper paperback, p. 68'''''
"the times they is a-changing" The Times They Are A-Changin' is one of Bob Dylan's most famous songs

'''''Harper paperback, p. 82'''''
"Mephistopheles, how many people are in this pub?" A famous horse called Clever Hans could do the same "trick." In the case of Hans, the horse would continue to tap his hoof until the questioner's body language changed to indicate that the horse should stop tapping.

'''''Harper paperback, p. 83'''''
"…threatened to wallop them with his grandfather’s knobkerrie, a souvenir from the Klatchian campaign…" In [[Roundworld]], a [[Wikipedia:Knobkerrie|knobkerrie]] is a wooden club or stick from Southern or Eastern Africa with a ball on one end, typically used as a weapon, making it a foreign version of a staff with a knob on the end.

'''''Harper paperback, p. 207'''''
"We will put a girdle of glamour around their world" "I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes." Puck, A Mudsummer Night's Dream, Act II Scene 1

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p214:'''''
It ''had'' to happen. The concept that Discworld lumberjacks perform their duties better when wearing womens' clothing. And singing while they work. They even get the '''''Biggerwoods''''' mail-order catalogue. In Britain, ''Littlewoods'' is a popular mail-order company specialising in women's clothing from lingerie up to outerwear and clothes and singing is a reference to the Monty Python lumberjack song.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p223'''''
In this case Elvish has indeed left the building. A callback to {{SM}}.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p230:'''''
A callback to Granny Weatherwax in {{LL}}. Only here, Tiffany is contemplating the possibility inherent - what if Elves really can be made to learn? What if they learn, and develop, and grow up a little?

'''''Harper paperback, p. 260'''''
"Och no, I know who I am and he knows who he is and so does our other brother Callum." This is very reminiscent of Larry, Darryl & Darryl from the sitcom Newhart.

'''''Harper paperback, p. 260'''''
"We happy few" This whole section is peppered with quotations & adaptations of the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p277:'''''
A shout-out to a bleak old English ballad made relevant by Terry's favourite band, Steeleye Span. The ballad "Long Lankin" is about child-murder by night and named this particular elf. The LP that has this song, incidentally, is called ''The Commoner's Crown''. Listen to it '''''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSUH6YPM9oI here]'''''

[[Category:Annotations|The Shepherd's Crown]]

Aimsbury

2024-09-10T19:00:33Z

Lias Bluestone:

A chef encountered in {{MM}}, who works in the [[Mr Fusspot|Chairman]]'s Suite at the [[Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork]]. He is afflicted with an embarrassing [[Garlic|allergy]] and has very little experience of catering for humans. In fact, he prefers to call himself a canine chef. His daughter [[Peggy]] steers him through the little traumas of life and also makes a mean omelette. He is the ever-hopeful author of ''Cooking with Brains'', which has so far failed to propel him into the culinary stratosphere. He apparently delights in cooking minced [[collops]], making him the perfect chef for [[Adora Belle Dearheart]], who delights in ''eating'' minced collops.

==Annotation==

Thinking about it, ''Cooking with Brains'' has a resonance elsewhere in humorous literature, as author Sue Townshend's great diarist Adrian Mole, when aged about 29 and three quarters, is very briefly in vogue as the author of a cookery book called ''Cooking with Offal'', which refreshes the jaded food palate of the fashionable London dining out set... although not for very long, as his brief moment of fame soon evaporates.

Aimsbury has the obvious resonance with Roundworld [[wikipedia:Amesbury|Amesbury]], a historic town in Wiltshire, England, in whose parish Stonehenge can be found.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[de:Aimsbury]]

Linnet Dock

2024-09-10T18:13:47Z

Lias Bluestone:

Linnet Dock is an anchorage on the [[Ankh]] side of the river. it is connected to [[Nonesuch Street]] by [[Myrtle Street]](*D6) and Here-Hang-Hope(*D7). It breaks the line of [[Riverside Walks|river walk]]s at [[Amper Sands]](*D6), obliging the walker to take the long way round via Myrtle Street, Linnet Wharf or Noontender Way (both *D6 crossing into *D7), then via an un-named street to Long Lick, Dog-Watch Davets and Ankh Wharf (all *D7) to resume the riverside stroll at [[Ankh Bridge]]/[[Mollymog Street]]. [[Robes Pier]] and Linnet Landing which delineate the larger anchorage appear to be working dock landings, with all that implies. Third of Forth and Hangman's Quay are smaller docks to the Rimwards of Linnet Dock. Unless stated, all these features are to be found in map reference *D7.

[[Category: Streets of Ankh-Morpork]]

Talk:Library of Ephebe

2022-04-03T07:17:33Z

Lias Bluestone: Created page with "Those links in the last paragraph have perished from link rot. Where's a Librarian when you need one? Why couldn't pTerry have invented a DW version of Wikipedia? Hang on, now I think of it, I think he actually did. I'm thinking of the football in Unseen Academicals. --~~~~"

Those links in the last paragraph have perished from link rot. Where's a Librarian when you need one? Why couldn't pTerry have invented a DW version of Wikipedia?

Hang on, now I think of it, I think he actually did. I'm thinking of the football in Unseen Academicals. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 07:17, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Spindle

2022-03-14T22:04:49Z

Lias Bluestone: teensy typo

The Spindle are, or were, the dominant race in the Universe before the advent of humanity. They died of culture shock on discovering a race called the [[Wheeler]]s had preceded them.

The Spindle evolved on a low-gravity world: mummified Spindle corpses discovered aboard a derelict spacecraft point to a race three feet tall, long-snouted, double-thumbed, and with legs alternately banded in blue and orange. It appears their whole body could act as a brain. They were telepathic and claustrophobic: no more than a thousand could bear to inhabit the same world or it would have become overcrowded and unbearable.

For a crew of three Spindles, the spacecraft needed to be a hundred miles long... however, the recovered wreck contained the secret of the [[Strata-machine operators|Strata-machine]] as well as other goodies that when retro-engineered, provided secrets that enabled the human race to progress to a new stage in its development.

==Annotation==

Again this echoes a concept from Douglas Adams' '''Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.''' Adams creates a race of evolved, serene, beings whose maturity and gentleness so gets up the nose of the rest of the Galaxy that they are inflicted with the worst social disease of all - telepathy. Either they have to block out the telepathic messages by constantly talking to each other, or their home planet Kakrafoon has to play host to the loudest and most destructive plutonium rock band ever, '''Disaster Area'''. Again, you wonder about cross-fertilization of ideas - Pratchett taking what was only ever a single throwaway joke in h2g2, and expanding it a little further to see where it led.

[[Category:Strata]]

Gonne

2021-09-26T16:59:41Z

Lias Bluestone: sspelo

The '''Gonne''', like so many other recent technological devices in [[Discworld]], was invented by [[Leonard of Quirm]]. As usual, he had the best of intentions when he devised it, but it turned out to be one of the most dangerous weapons ever conceived in the history of the Disc.

The weapon is powered by a kind of firework mechanism. It consists of a four-foot-long tube with a feed mechanism for 6 small cartridges that can be fired quickly and with dangerous accuracy over a long distance. This fact makes the Gonne much more dangerous than the common crossbows.

It was so dangerous, in fact, that [[Havelock Vetinari]], who normally keeps anything useful around, ordered it destroyed. But the [[Assassins' Guild]] disobeyed the order, and instead secretly kept it under lock and key in their Guild Museum. Disaster strikes in the book ''[[Book:Men at Arms|Men at Arms]]'' when the Gonne is stolen.

With almost supernatural power, the Gonne can possess the mind of the man who uses it. It shows him the power he has in his hands, and erases all scruples by telling him what could be achieved with this power. Even [[Samuel Vimes]] struggled against this temptation and the only man who seemed to be entirely immune to the Gonne's promises was [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]], who finally managed to destroy the weapon once and for all. Carrot is immune because he has a [[Dwarfs|dwarf]]'s pragmatic attitude: a made thing is just a tool crafted for a purpose. why should I listen when it talks to me, as there's nothing there to do the talking? (This is probably why [[Hammerhock]] was killed after his purpose, of performing a minor repair on the gonne, was over. He also viewed it as a device, a clever device but nothing more, and was loudly speculating on building more—a prospect which the Gonne did not like.)

The Gonne has never been seen again. It has been suggested that Carrot buried it in the coffin of Lance-Constable [[Cuddy]]. His reasoning was that as the Gonne "died" when he smashed it against a stone pillar, its spirit could accompany Cuddy on his journey into the Afterlife, so as to provide a suitable weapon to fend off the evil spirits that Dwarfs don't believe in, but which ''may'' inconveniently believe in Dwarfs. The fact that it was well hidden and no man could re-create such a dangerous device ever again (unless they find Leonard's original sketch and get interesting ideas) was of course purely a secondary consideration. Carrot agreed with Vimes that Cuddy "got a real Dwarf burial," which usually includes a superb weapon, so perhaps Carrot restored the Gonne so Cuddy would have something beyond an awkward club.

While the Gonne itself is gone for good, it has a spiritual successor in the form of the [[spring-gonne]].

==Contribution to industrialization==

The Gonne might represent a quantum leap in crime and warfare, but in the process of manufacturing the Gonne Leonard comes up with an invention which while unnoticed is a cornerstone of industrialization. When Vetinari asked Leonard if someone else could build a Gonne, his response includes:

'''...the grooves in the barrel required some finesse, I had to build a quite complex tool for that'''

The tool that Leonard had built for this purpose was a screw-cutting lathe, one of the cornerstones in the progression from craftsmanship to serial production.

==Roundworld Comparison==

In Roundworld terminology, Leonard's Gonne is probably a self-loading wheel-lock rifle. Though it fires six shots before reloading, it is definitely not a revolver; the six welded tubes of the magazine are arranged in a line, and advanced by a rack and pinion, making it either a repeater or a self-loader. The rack and pinion suggest some form of automatic recocking mechanism, making a self-loader more likely. The grooves in the barrel imply rifling, as opposed to a smooth bore like a musket. The firing mechanism is described as a "tinderbox," which means flint and steel; this could be either a wheel-lock, snaphance or flintlock, but the wheel lock is the only one that would be contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, whom Leonard clearly resembles.

In Roundworld history, some efforts were made to build repeating firearms during the wheel-lock and flintlock era, such as the Kalthoff repeating wheel-lock of the early 1600s. Repeating firearms would not become widely used, however, until the invention of the metal cartridge in the 19th century, and self-loaders later still. Nothing precisely like Leonard's weapon ever existed, though its various components all did at one time or another.

The museum at Château du Clos Lucé, in Amboise, France, where Da Vinci spent the last 3 years of his life, along with the models (made from his drawings) of a tank (of sorts) and a <strike>spinning-up-into-air-machine</strike> screw-drive helicopter also contains a model of a kind of multi-shot machine gun, though it is different in scale (each barrel is a couple of meters long).

In WW2, the standard issue machine-guns used by the Japanese and the Italians worked on a similar principle to the loading system for the Gonne, adjusted to allow for automatic fire. Rather than a loose flexible belt in which the individual rounds were loaded into a cloth strip (as per Russian practice), or linked by re-usable metal clips (as per German), these MG's employed a fixed and rigid "tray" in which the rounds were fixed to an inflexible metal strip capable of carrying no more than ten rounds at a time. At least the British Bren Gun loaded its rounds into a fully enclosed magazine. The Italians fought their war in a desert—they soon discovered their system was an invitation to load sand and grit into the mechanism as well as the round. The Japanese discovered similar drawbacks in the jungle. But this indicates how, with a little refinement to the design, the gonne in the Discworld could so easily have become an ''Auto-Kinetic Machined Gonne That Carries On Firing Without Human Intervention''.

The Gonne seems to be something like the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxNcjRf0O0o J.M. Browning Harmonica Rifle].

One of the earliest proto-machine-guns, the Mitrailleuse of the late 1700's, involved six to twelve independently loaded musket mechanisms. The barrels and chambers attached to a rotating wheel, which as it fired swung the next barrel into place to meet the flintlock. While it took forever to load each barrel, once deployed it could lay down a quick and devastating burst of fire along a tactically vital arc. The French used it as a static weapon in fortresses.

And if you scale up a gonne, or scale down a [[Barking Dog]] (a legal weapon on the Discworld), where is the point at which a Gonne becomes an efficient artillery piece, or a Barking Dog a crudely effective but strictly illegal hand-held weapon?

[[Category:Devices]]
[[de:G'fähr]]

Book:Men at Arms

2021-09-26T16:54:29Z

Lias Bluestone: small mistake

{{Book Data
|title=Men at Arms
|cover=[[File:Cover Men At Arms.jpg|thumb|240px|Cover art by Josh Kirby]]
|coauthors=
|illustrator=
|date=1993
|publisher=Victor Gollancz
|isbn=0552140287
|pages=288
|rrp=
|series=Watch Series
|characters=[[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]], [[Havelock Vetinari]], [[Edward d'Eath]]
|annotations=yes
|notes= Book #15
}}
==Blurb==
"Be a [[humans|MAN]] in the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch|City Watch]]! The City watch needs MEN!"

But what it's ''got'' includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a [[dwarfs|dwarf]]), Lance-constable Detritus (a [[trolls|troll]]), Lance-constable Angua (a woman ... most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).

And they need all the help they can get. Because there's evil in the air and murder afoot and something very nasty in the streets.

It'd help if it could all be sorted out by noon, because that's when Captain Vimes is officially retiring, handing in his badge and getting married.

And since this is [[Ankh-Morpork]], noon promises to be not just high, but stinking.

==Plot==
Captain [[Samuel Vimes]] is forced by [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Vetinari]] to take on a group of new recruits for the purposes of ensuring diversity - a [[dwarf]] called [[Cuddy]], a werewolf called [[Angua]] and a [[troll]] called [[Detritus]]. Angua becomes involved in a romantic relationship with Corporal [[Carrot Ironfoundersson]], but he does not react well to discovering that she is a werewolf. There has recently been a string of mysterious murders in the city that appear to be connected. Vetinari bans Vimes from investigating the murders in a successful attempt to provoke him into doing so.

The murders have been committed by a young assassin called [[Edward d'Eath]]. After researching the city's history and discovering that Carrot is the rightful heir of the throne of [[Ankh Morpork]], he developed an obsessive desire to overthrow Vetinari and restore the monarchy. He committed the murders with the "[[gonne]]", the Disc's first and only hand-held firearm, a dangerous invention of [[Leonard of Quirm]] that d'Eath stole from the [[Assassins' Guild]]. The gonne appears to have a demonic power that tempts people into using it. When d'Eath explains his plan to [[Cruces|Dr. Cruces]], the head of the Assassins' Guild, Cruces kills him and decides to carry out the plan himself.

The Night Watch intervene to stop Cruces from killing Vetinari, but Cuddy and Angua are both killed in the struggle. Vimes and Carrot then confront Cruces, who reveals to Carrot that he is the rightful ruler of the city. Vimes seizes the gonne from Cruces and finds himself tempted to use the weapon, but Carrot stops him and disables it. Carrot is immune to being tempted by the gonne, which he believes is because he was raised as a dwarf and trained not to listen to tools. He kills Cruces with his sword and buries the remains of the gonne in Cuddy's coffin. Because a werewolf can only be killed with silver, Angua wakes up and recovers the following night.

Vimes holds his wedding with [[Sybil Ramkin]]. Vetinari fears that Carrot will use his status as the rightful ruler of Ankh Morpork to blackmail him. When he arrives, Carrot instead presents the Patrician with a plan to reform policing in the city by merging the Day Watch and the Night Watch into a new, modern and effective police force, with more funding and better working conditions. Vetinari agrees; Carrot is promoted to the rank of Captain, while Vimes is promoted to the newly-restored post of Commander of the Watch.

==Cover==
The front cover features (from left to right) Cuddy, Detritus, Angua, Carrot, Nobby and Colon. Illustrator [[Josh Kirby]] neglected to give Cuddy the dwarf a beard. At the bottom right there is a dog, presumably Gaspode.

==Characters==
===Main Characters===
*[[Angua von Überwald|Angua]]
*[[Fred Colon]]
*[[Cuddy]]
*[[Detritus]]
*[[Carrot Ironfoundersson]]
*[[Nobby]]
*[[Lord Vetinari]]
*[[Samuel Vimes]]

===Minor Characters===
*[[Bauxite]]
*[[Beano]] the Clown
*[[Big Fido]], Chief Barker of the Dog Guild
*[[Blenkin]], servant of the d'Eath residence
*[[Boffo (Clown)|Boffo]] the Clown
*[[Chubby]] the swamp dragon
*[[Coalface]]
*[[Cornice-overlooking-Broadway]]
*[[Cruces|Doctor Cruces]], head Assassin
*[[Silas Cumberbatch]], former town crier
*[[Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler]]
*[[Lord Downey]], then assistant head Assassin
*[[Edward d'Eath]]
*[[Duke of Eorle]]
*[[Gaspode]]
*[[Sir George]]
*[[Gayheart Talonthrust]] a swamp dragon
*[[Bjorn Hammerhock]]
*[[Leonard of Quirm]]
*[[Queen Molly]]
*[[Lord Monflathers]]
*Lord and Lady [[Omnius]]
*Captain [[Quirke]] of the Day Watch
*[[Skully Multoon]] of the Day Watch
*[[Sybil Ramkin]]
*[[Lord Rust]]
*[[Mr. Scant]]
*Lady [[Selachii]]
*[[Sendivoge]], Alchemist Guild secretary
*[[Thomas Silverfish]], head of the Alchemists
*[[Viscount Skater]]
*[[Abba Stronginthearm]]
*Lord [[Venturi]]
*[[Willikins]]
*[[Dr. Whiteface]]

===Cameos and Mentions===
*Kings and Queens of Ankh-Morpork (ancestors of Carrot's):
**Queen Alguinna IV
**Queen Coanna
**King Paragore
**King Veltrick III
**King Tyrril, ruled in AM 907
**King Webblethorpe the Unconscious
*Famous Architects:
**Capability Brown
**[[Bloody Stupid Johnson]]
**Intuition De Vere Slade-Gore
**Sagacity Smith
*[[Mrs. Cake]]
*[[Cheese]] (the pub owner, not the rotting of milk)
*[[Chrysoprase]]
*Cumblethigh, a dwarf
*[[Death]]
*Mr. Flannel
*[[Gimlet Gimlet]]
*Hamslinger, a dwarf
*[[Sham Harga]]
*Deranged Lord [[Harmoni]]
*[[Here'n'now]]
*[[Grabber Hoskins]]
*[[Ironfoundersson]]
*[[Jimi]], God of Beggars
*Sergeant [[Kepple]]
*[[Lorenzo the Kind]]
*[[Lettice Knibbs]]
*[[Cumbling Michael]]
*Mr. [[Schwarzlache von Morecombe|Morecombe]], Ramkin family lawyer
*[[Bundo Prung]]
*[[Ruby]]
*Laughing Lord [[Scapula]]
*[[Reg Shoe]]
*[[Dribbling Sidney]]
*Mad Lord [[Snapcase]]
*[[Gerhardt Sock]]
*[[Grabpot Thundergust]]
*[[Stoneface Vimes]]
*Homicidal [[Lord Winder]]
*[[Zorgo]] the Retrophrenologist
*Sgt [[Wimbler]]
*[[Carbuncle]]

==Locations==
*[[Ankh-Morpork]]
**[[Street of Alchemists]]
**[[Borborygmic Lane]]
**[[Brass Bridge]]
**[[Broad Way]]
**[[The Bucket]]
**[[Cable Street]]
**[[Elm Street]]
**[[Filigree Street]]
**[[Gleam Street]]
**[[Grope Alley]]
**[[Hubwards Gate]]
**[[Knuckle Passage]]
**[[Mormius Street]]
**[[Patrician's Palace]]
**[[Phedre Road]]
**[[Post Office]]
**[[Pork Futures Warehouse]], along [[Morpork Street]]
**[[Pseudopolis Yard]]
**[[Quarry Lane]]
**[[Rime Street]]
**[[River Ankh]]
**[[Scoone Avenue]]
**[[The Shades]]
**[[Sheer Street]]
**[[Shirt Alley]]
**[[Short Street]]
**Lady Sybil's [[Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons]]
**[[Three Lamps Alley]]
**[[Unseen University]]
***[[High Energy Magic Building]]
***[[Tower of Art]]
**[[Whirligig Alley]]
**[[Zephire Street]]
*[[Copperhead]]
*[[Dunmanifestin]] (mentioned)
*[[Koom Valley]] (mentioned)
*[[Quirm Manor]], presumably in Quirm?

==Things and Concepts==
*A Slow Comfortable Double-Entendre, drink
*[[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork]]
**[[Alchemists' Guild]]
**[[Assassins' Guild]]
**[[Butchers' Guild]]
**[[Dogs' Guild]]
**[[Fools' Guild]]
**[[Gamblers' Guild]] (mentioned)
**[[Merchants' Guild]]
**[[Thieves' Guild]]
*[[Battle of Koom Valley]]
*[[Dwarfs]]
*[[Swamp dragons]]
*Flameless Gripe, swamp dragon disease
*"Gathering Sweet Lilacs"- folk dance
*[[Gargoyles]]
*[[Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen]]
*C.M.O.T. Dibbler's Genuine Authentic Soggy Mountain Dew
*The [[Gonne]]
*[[Hermit Elephant]]
*[[Iconograph]]
*The [[Assassins' Guild|Inhumation Bell]]
*The March of the Idiots, clown anthem.
*[[Monarchy]]
*[[Twurp's Peerage]]
*Herbalist Plants:
**Eyebright for eyes
**''Phallicus impudicus''
**Spleenwort for spleens
**Teethwort for teeth
*[[No. 1 Powder]]- gunpowder
*[[Rats]]
*[[Retrophrenology]]
*Thighbiter's [[The Ankh-Morpork Succession]]
*[[Trolls]]
*[[Velvet Gown]]
*[[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]]
*[[Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises]]
*[[Werewolves]]
*[[Jimkin Bearhugger's Whiskey]]

==Annotations==
When he and Carrot have chased down and arrested Dr Cruces, Vimes ineffectually fights the blandishments of the Gonne as it insists that he must kill Cruces and take the power to himself. Cruces, remember, has just seemingly killed Angua: the natural tendency of a policeman who has just seen a fellow copper killed is not going to be one mercy and forgiveness. Vimes is eventually shocked out of the killing mood by Carrot, and lowers his weapon.

This evokes an episode in hard-man cop show ''The Sweeney[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweeney]'', where Flying Squad copper Inspector Regan, in a rage after seeing a copper shot, almost has to be physically disarmed by his sidekick Sergeant Carter before he realises he has almost stepped over the invisible line, and taken out irrevocable rough justice on a cornered criminal. Note that the junior, subordinate, copper takes the lead in both situations.

==Adaptations==
===[[Theatre Adaptations|Theatre]]===
Adapted by [[Stephen Briggs]] into a stage play in 1997.

''[[Murder in Ankh-Morpork]]'' is a second adaptation of ''Men at Arms'' combining plot elements from {{G!G!}} and {{FOC}}. Dramatised by [[Stephen Briggs]] 2020.

==Gallery==
{|
|-
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA First.jpg|110px|thumb|First Edition Cover by [[Josh Kirby]]]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA Letterbox.jpg|thumb|120px|'Letterbox' Hardback]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA LL.jpg|thumb|120px|Cover by Lissanne Lake]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA Black.jpg|thumb|110px|Paperback 2004]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA Tape.jpg|thumb|120px|Audio Cassette]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA CD.jpg|thumb|140px|Audio CD]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA MS.jpg|thumb|110px|Cover by Michael Sabanosh]]
|}
{|
|-
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA MS2.jpg|thumb|100px|Cover by Michael Sabanosh-paperback]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA US.jpg|thumb|110px|US Cover]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA Zoom.jpg|thumb|110px|Paperback 2012]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA Unseen.jpg|thumb|120px|Unseen Library Edition]]
| valign="top" | [[File:MAA CL.jpg|thumb|110px|Collectors Library Edition]]
|}

==External Links==
[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/men-at-arms.html ''Men at Arms'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

{{series|before=Lords and Ladies|series=Discworld|after=Soul Music}}
{{series|series=Watch|before=Guards! Guards!|after=Feet of Clay}}

[[Category:Discworld Series|Men at Arms]]
[[Category:Watch Series|Men at Arms]]
[[de:Buch:Helle Barden]]

Nine Day Wonderers

2021-07-29T20:03:21Z

Lias Bluestone:

A religious sect, who live a nomadic preaching existence in the [[Ramtops]] and are occasionally seen, and tolerated by the witches, in [[Lancre]]. They generally do all that is necessary by way of officiating at births, deaths and weddings in the region. [[Brother Perdore]] is, or was, a typical visiting Wonderer, until the day he fell off his donkey. As he fell on the side of the mountain track that had an eighty foot drop, this was nearly terminal, and led to the start of the chain of events that brought [[Mightily Oats]] to [[Lancre]] to officiate at the naming feast of young [[Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre]].

== Annotation ==

A nod to the Roundworld {{Wikipedia|Seventh-day Adventist Church|Seventh Day Adventists}}, with a bow to the concept of a "nine days wonder", which can be defined as "a novelty that loses its appeal after a few days".

[[Category: Groups]]

Nine Day Wonderers

2021-07-29T20:03:05Z

Lias Bluestone:

The Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky

2021-07-27T20:03:54Z

Lias Bluestone: typos

This is the formal throne-room title of Queen [[Artela]] of [[Djelibeybi]].

She was the wife of Pharoah Teppicymon XXVII and, after the mandatory servicing, the mother of [[Pteppicymon XXVIII]]. She was just about the only battle that Teppicymon XXVII won against his overpowering steward and chief priest [[Dios]], who protested strenuously about the impure foreign strain she was bringing into the royal family. Her country of origin is not recorded, but some of her quaint foreign ways, such as a dislike for pyramids, had puzzled and fascinated even her husband, who was sure he'd got his own post-mortem pyramidophobia from her.

She didn't just worship [[Cats|cats]] (as was mandatory in Djelibeybi). Instead, she liked them, even the flat-headed yellow-eyed screaming maniacs.

Dios always knew she was going to be trouble. She and her brother [[Vyrt]] conspired to ensure that young Teppic was sent away from the Djel for his education - the [[Assassins' Guild|Assassins' School]] in faraway [[Ankh-Morpork]], to be exact.

It is a telling detail that shortly after the succession was ensured, she went for a midnight swim, hitherto unheard of in Djelibeybi, only to encounter the large, scaly, and above all sacred, reasons why nobody in the country knows how to swim.

Her epitaph might be ''People never learn anything in this place. They only remember things''.

She was remembered by her son as a pleasant woman who was as self-centred as a gyroscope.

The Discworld Zodiac has a constellation and sign simply called the [[Cow of Heaven]]. The two concepts may be related, as so much of the zodiac, according to the {{CDA}}, is the creation of Central Sea peoples living into deserts who were starved of entertainment and things to look at other than sand-dunes and palm trees.

==Annotation==

It has been suggested that the parents of Pteppic are a direct and deliberate parallel of the central characters in Mervyn Peake's ''{{wp|Gormenghast_(castle)|Gormenghast}}'' trilogy. The setting is a several-thousand-year-old state (Djelibeybi/Gormenghast) which has fossilised into a tyrannical regime of age-old rituals which nobody dares to question the modern significance or relevance of; the Rituals are ferociously guarded and imposed by a fossilised Loremaster who embodies the tradition of the state in his own being (Barquentine/Dios). Most of the free income goes into endlessly maintaining old structures or building new ones to the same pattern (Pyramids). The ruling family consists of a rather vague and introspective Count/Pharoah, married to a woman working on instinct who loves cats (the Countess/Artela). In his death throes, the Count of Gormenghast hallucinates that he is an owl. Teppic's father has the same delusion about a seagull.

Of their children, the son (Titus Groan/Pteppic) goes out into a world not ruled by tradition and groaning under the weight of the past to see how things are done elsewhere, specifically in a fairly nearby but unspecified Big City. The daughter (Fuchsia/Ptraci) is also intensely dissatisfied with her lot and, if given a chance, would try to change it for the better - in ''Pyramids'', she manages it, in ''Gormenghast'', she dies in ambiguous circumstances. Pteppic is also an archetype of anti-hero Steerpike, in that he climbs to the highest point in the Kingdom and brings about its dissolution (Steerpike dies trying in ''Gormenghast'', but at this point, he has mutated into an embittered scarred and burnt villain who, interestingly enough, conceals a mutilated face behind a mask... another [[Roundworld]] fable creeping in here?)

On swimming in the Djel: the former BBC radio presenter Sarah Kennedy, a woman who frequently went her own eccentric way and got into trouble for it with BBC bosses, once advanced a theory about athletes of African origin. This was shortly after a Central African olympic competitor got into the history books ever for the longest, slowest, most laboured, 400 metres in a top swimming competition. When all seven other swimmers had finished, towelled down and in some cases showered and got dressed, he was still in the pool finishing his heat. The delightful Sarah then advanced a theory as to why so many Africans are world-class runners - ''"lions"'' - whilst you never see a black
African winning a swimming event - ''"crocodiles"''. She was immediately suspended for making non-politically correct comment...

[[Category:Discworld characters|Great Cow of the Arch of the Sky, the]]

Book:Raising Steam/Annotations

2021-07-27T05:28:29Z

Lias Bluestone:

The idea of a group of religiously motivated terrorists, working out of a conviction that the new way is a blasphemy, and the only ways to follow are the old ways, guided of course by the only people who correctly interpret the sacred laws and texts - us. This shadowy group live in dark caves, spare an especial bile for fellows and co-believers who interpret the Faith and the Way more liberally, and who express dissent by bringing tall towers crashing down, followed by attacks on the railways. Hmmm.

And a common remark about tyrants and dictators on Earth, at least since 1900, has been ''At least he got the trains running on time''. (Famously said about Benito Mussolini, who in fact couldn't - there are limits to a Fascist dictator's power, and Benito discovered his was the Italian state railway. Adolf Hitler didn't have to exert himself - German state railways already ran to an incredible peak of efficiency without Nazi help. But see note about "Beamtenherrschaft", below).

This book could well be about one [[Vetinari|Tyrant]]'s desire to get the railways running not only on time but at all possible times...

The very first trainspotter appears on page 59. Many others follow, including Ponder Stibbons, Rufus Drumknott and others. These include [[Young Sam Vimes]] who has possibly found an equally smelly but less scatological hobby.

The idea of the previously despised Goblin race finding its niche in tending complex and hazardous machinery parellels the Warhammer 40K race known as ''Gretchin'' or ''Grots''. in the 40K universe, these are a lowly, physically puny, class of Ork who are generally despised, used as cannon-fodder, live on disgusting foodstuffs, and who have the brains to keep the war machines working.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p12 et seq:'''''
[[Dick Simnel]] is introduced. British readers will instinctively recognise his accent is meant to reflect that of Northern England, the birthplace of British (and world) railways. But which bit of northern England? The experienced dialectologist will pick out occasional words in Yorkshire, Geordie and even Cumbrian slang. But the dominant accent emerging is that of Lancashire. And one particular part of Lancashire, at that. Dick's repeated use of the word ''"Gradely!"'', a Lancashire dialect word meaning "Great! Smashing! Brilliant! Ideal!" et c, along with other little quirks, points only in one direction. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/FredDibnah Fred Dibnah] (1938-2004) from Bolton, Lancashire, was a steeplejack and mechanic who embodied the old-time Northern engineer in everything he did. He became a celebrity on TV, initially for breath-taking steeplejacking, with a commentary delivered in a wry self-deprecating Northern voice, usually while hanging upside down a couple of hundred feet up. In later life, he had a second career restoring and driving old steam engines, which he loved. TV series were made about this aspect of his life. Reading Dick Simnel's dialogue in the best Bolton accent I can do, I realised there could only be one person being portrayed here. The great Fred Dibnah. Right down to the flat cap. Lots of clips are available on You-Tube but cannot be linked here.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p49:''''' Vetinari recaps events going back to {{RM}}, especially the life and interests of Ned Simnel. These included a wife and son.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p65:'''''
''Captain Angua, the most notable werewolf in the Watch...''
Terry chooses words with care. Can we presume there is now more than one werewolf in the City Watch?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p72:'''''
Albrecht Albrechtsson is seen to make a telling point in a heated debate by smashing his axe right into the middle of the conference table. Sam Vimes once did something similar in a time of dissent involving the conference table in the Rats Chamber, and giving it a Quirmian Polish with a very big axe. The Blackboard Monitor is known and respected among Dwarfs. Hmmm.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p88 and throughout:'''''
''[[Swine Town]]'' - a previously unregarded bucolic backwater, which becomes a strategic location for a railway depot located halfway between two important destinations. Compare ''Swindon'', which until the railway was built connecting London to the (then) second port city of Bristol was a very minor agricultural village. The Bristol railway, the Great Western, was built with the intention of bringing fresh perishable produce swiftly to the markets of the capital, whose river was so foul the local fish was utterly inedible. Swindon (whose name ''means'' Swine Town) became an oasis of heavy industry in Wiltshire, an otherwise entirely agricultural economy. Until privatisation, it remained a key strategic location in the British rail network, its factories building locomotives and directly feeding them into the system. Today, Britain incredibly ''imports'' railway locos and carriages from Europe and - believe this - transfers them to their destination ''by road''. It is possible we've lost the plot somewhere.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p112 et seq:'''''
* This page probably holds the all-time record (outside of {{SM}}) for the maximum number of sly allusions, annotations, and shout-outs to music, history, and other works of literature on a single page. To take them in order:
''Line 6'' - '''It's all about the Locomotion...''' The whole theme of the discussion between Mustrum Ridcully and Lu-Tze is indeed about the irresistable advent of the new. ''Everybody's doing a brand-new dance now!'' Indeed.
Also, the very first George Stephenson-devised engine was called not ''The Rocket'' - that was later - but ''The Locomotion''.
''Let's make a train now...''

''Line 9'' - the [[Ginnungagap]] is placed in its correct Discworld context as the primal chaos from which an ordered world emerged, with the proviso that if left badly managed, it will slide back into that chaos again.

''Lines 13-14'' - ''The only problem I have yet to solve is how to get from the dying world into the new world...'' Lu-Tze is referring back to earlier history monk stories. The Abbot has no problem with this - he is an adept at being serially reincarnated from a dying world into a new one! Lu-Tze has to go about things differently.

''Lines 15-16'' - ''even the Abbot is concerned about the arrival of steam-engines when it isn't steam-engine time'' - an aphorism originally coined by the chronicler of strange and anomalous things, Charles Fort. The full Fortean quote is:

''If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.'' (Charles Fort, '''''Lo!''''')

''Lines 30 - end'' ''...even the very wise have neglected to take notice of one rather important Goddess...Pippina, the lady with the Apple of Discord''. This invokes the Greek Eris, Goddess of discord, who famously incited war among Gods and men with the Golden Apple casually rolled into a roomful of vain deities, all of whom thought an apple inscribed "KALLISTI" - to the fairest one - was of course theirs by right. The fallout from the war among Gods became the ten-year Trojan War on Earth.

The following conversation between Ridcully and Lu-Tze emphasises the need for balance between Chaos and Order. This is also a central theme of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's ''Illuminatus!'' trilogy, where the Golden Apple is a plot -point, Eris walks the earth still as Goddess of disorder, her adherents greet each other with "All Hail Eris!", and the Chaos-Order thing is symbolised as Eristic forces versus Aneristic forces.

At the top of Page 113, Lu-Tze concedes that even the history monks can become a less than beneficial force once they get complacent and become part of the established order - he deliberately uses the term "bureaucracy" to describe this danger. This not only brings the Cosmic Auditors to mind - guardians of never-changing sterility - but also Shea and Wilson's assertion that chaos is born, out of sheer desperation, from stifling strangling bureaucracy - which is Order taken to a destructive extreme. Shea and Wilson have a word for this state in their philosophy, and yes, it's a German word - ''Beamtenherrschaft'', Bureaucracy.
''Beamtenherrschaft'', in the original ''Illuminatus!'', is in fact explicitly defined as the sort of state of mind that will ensure the trains run precisely on time, that their human cargo is satisfactorily documented, itemised, counted, and delivered on schedule to the right destination, who then sign for the delivery, in triplicate and in the right places - ''and in the midst of all the paperwork, nobody sees anything wrong or out of place with the destination being Auschwitz.

There is also a sub-plot in one of Robert A. Wilson's solo novels where, in the 1760's, a brilliant mind devises (at least on paper) a theoretically workable steam engine - only to be universally derided and laughed at, even at the advanced universities he attended. France/Italy in the 1760's was evidently not the right orchard or season for "Steam-Engine Time" to come to blossom.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p115:'''''
* Dick Simnel displays a familiarity with the events of {{SG}}, or at least the steam-engineering aspects. while he knows about "The Un-named" ([[Urn]]'s boat) via old books, does he also know the steam-engine was transferred to a landship afterwards?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp115-116:'''''
[[George Pony|Mister Pony]] tells Dick that he has to serve an apprenticeship to become a member of the [[Artificers' Guild]], even though there is no-one in the Guild who knows anything about working with steam. According to Wikipedia, a similar thing happened to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt James Watt] (the Scottish inventor and engineer) on Roundworld: "Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland, settling in the major commercial city of Glasgow intent on setting up his own instrument-making business. He made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, the Glasgow Guild of Hammermen (which had jurisdiction over any artisans using hammers) blocked his application, despite there being no other mathematical instrument makers in Scotland."

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p123 (footnote):'''''
''Let the train take the strain'' - was for many years an advertising slogan of British Rail, although it is doubtful that they had the toilets in mind.
Also, a footnote explicitly refers to "Mr de Worde ''and wife''". As both William and Sacharissa are elsewhere described as wearing wedding rings, this may point to their being married to each other. However, the reference does not elaborate as to ''whom'' William is married to. The mystery continues.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p124:'''''
Another sign of the changing times. A large troll halts the train as it slows to a bridge. The passengers hold their breath apprehensively. No, it's not a shake-down for toll money, nor is it the prelude to an anxious request as to whether the train is carrying any billy-goats, gruff optional. The troll works for the railway company. He has a red flag to prove it. The only toll he wants to exact is public recognition that his building-gang constructed the bridge the train is about to cross. As a saying about the future has it, everyone will want his five minutes of fame.... and the future is here. Why dwell on the past?
Later on in the book, we see a canny Moist franchising bridges to Troll families, who are given homes in the bridge pillars - complete with lavatories - and a guaranteed herd of goats. In return they tend to and maintain their bridges. As with Best Kept Station contests in Britain, there is a lot of competition to be the troll who has the Best-Tended Bridge.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p126:'''''
''Go and tell Vimesy you want to be the first Railway Policemen, then. I'd love to see his face''

The British Transport Police is one of the oldest forces in the country, instituted not long after the first railways began. The same Robert Peel who founded the first regular force authorised its commissioning. Author Andrew Martin has fictionalized this period in his Railway Detective novels featuring Sergeant Jim Stringer; author Edward Marston sets his railway police novels, featuring Inspector Colbert, in a slightly later period. however, Andrew Pepper sets his railway police mystery right at the beginning: ''The Revenge of Captain Paine'' investigates violent death and sabotage on a line being built.
Additionally, it is worth noting that the Signalmen were originally in control of railway traffic by use of flags and whistles, just as the regular Police controlled road traffic. Signalmen to this day are still referred to as "bobbies", for this reason.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p131:'''''
''Chemin de fer'' is indeed both the Quirmian for "railway" and a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin-de-fer card game]]. The card game is also known as ''Baccarat'' and it is likely the Gamblers' Guild know at least six more variations and anything up to ten alternative names.

'''''Corgi paperback (UK), p167'''''
Binoculars produced by Herr Fleiss in Uberwald. Famous manufactorer of optical devices in Germany is the company founded by Karl Zeiss in Jena.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p137:'''''
Two children, adventurous if ill-advised souls, are sensing the approach of a coming train by putting their heads to the track to feel the thrilling vibrations.... not just a shout-out to Western movies where the Red Indians detect coming-of-white-man's-iron-horse by this method (and WHY are they not of One-Man-Bucket's ethnicity?). Classic film ''The Railway Children'' introduces its central characters with a scene not unlike this. Although the kids here have the sense to lift their heads ''long'' before the train comes...

'''RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!'''
Has several referents. A [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7jSp2xmmEE a tune by Fatboy Slim]tune by Fatboy Slim (1998) where these are the only lyrics, repeated incessantly, with all the insistency of a train at full throttle. Another possibility is a reference to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwpjsToHzAE the Jesus Jones song|the Jesus Jones song, which has changing times as its theme and contains the lyrics "Right here, right now/Watching the world wake up from history."

On '''pp 91-92''', two children, perhaps the same ones, make friends with Sergeant Fred Colon. The Railway Children of the film of Nesbitt's novel had a similar friendship with a police sergeant who was also older, good-natured and somewhat bumbling.

the "Railway Children" shout-out is more explicit later in the book ('''''p309 et seq:'''''), where a group of children flag down the Iron Girder to warn them about an avalanche which has blocked the line. Whilst Edith Nesmith does not wave her long petticoated knickers in the air to flag down the train (even in ''the Railway Children'', Jenny Agutter got her clothes off), the similarity to the film is remarkable. Terry does say the children ''appeared'' to be flagging the train down with their pinafores, though... Although Moist von Lipwig quickly recognises that being Discworld kids, in a town which is in the orbit of Ankh-Morpork, they engineered the lineslip themselves for attention and excitement..

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp172 - 174:'''''
Moist von Lipwig, a man who normally shies away from physical combat (his weapons are other) is sized up by a shrewd assessor of personality, who realises that if his presence is going to effective in a stand-up fight, he needs chemical assistance. This is duly provided in the form of a goblin-brewed tonic, and completely alters his personality for just long enough. This evokes two similar literary accounts of similar potions, both applied to people of a Moist-like inclination. The great Victorian poltroon Sir Harry Flashman is beneficiary of an Arabian tonic administered by his lover just before a vital fight with the Russians in ''Flashman At The Charge''. As he is the only man who can direct the fight, something to dampen his natural cowardice is essential. And in ''The Stainless Steel Rat'', intergalactic con-man and bunco-artist Jim DiGriz realises the only way to understand his lethal adversary (and later wife), the rather ''spiky'' Angelina, is to ingest a chemical cocktail that simulates her marked anger-management problems. Sir Terry has definitely read all the ''Flashman'' books. And "Slippery" Jim and the spiky Angelina diGriz have so many suspicious similarities to Moist and Adora Belle... (now go to ''Reading Suggestions'' for more). Vimes recognises the essential Flashman-like aspect of Moist when he later reflects cowards fight harder and better as they have more consequences to fear.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p180 and perhaps throughout:'''''
The first mention of the leopard being able to change its shorts (Vimes about Moist). Wondered when this was going to come up...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p185:'''''
* ''...you do enjoy a quantum of frisson, she tells me''. Moist cast in the James Bond role?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p190:'''''
A would-be saboteur emulates the passing of Ned Simnel and leaves this world in a massive cloud of pink steam. By the way, the steam is necessarily pink in these circumstances ''because''....
Also, the uneasy suspicion forms in the mind of Moist Von Lipwig that the Iron Girder is sentient and somehow ''engineered'' a situation where a Dwarf who tried to do her harm was wafted to his afterlife in a cloud of hot pink steam. This is strikingly like an event in the Stephen King novel (and movie) "Christine", about a classic American car with sentience and a negative opinion of people trying to do her harm...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p218:'''''
Chief constable Upshot Feeney of the Shires is privileged to have earned the right to call his Goblin constable simply ''Boney''. this is a ShoutOut to the books by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Upfield Arthur Upfield]] and to two TV spinoffs, the seventies Australian cop show [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boney_%28TV_series%29 Boney]] and the nineties [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bony_%28TV_series%29 Boney]]. In the books the Boney of the title is Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the one half-white, half-Aboriginal in the Queensland force, a man who uses native tracking skills and a shrewd understanding of people to resolve difficult crimes. The Upfield character is based on a man known as "Tracker Leon". The Goblin "Boney"'s real name is something far longer than Boney: his colleagues have to earn the right to abbreviate it.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p220:'''''
It has to be handed to Terry. A nice little bit of misdirection leads us to a logical outcome nobody could have foreseen. After {{T!}}, we all thought the forthcoming One About Railways was going to be about establishing an Underground in Ankh-Morpork using the Dwarfish Devices for propulsion, right? Wrong... the Undertaking , in this respect, is going to be created by the emancipated and newly technically-savvy Goblins. They want a safe means of connecting all major Goblin settlements and providing a means to create and link a Goblin nation. And who knows where this will go to afterwards... no mention of the Devices since.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p223 et seq:'''''
Mrs [[Georgina Bradshaw]], the chronicler of the railway network. Refer to Wikipedia: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bradshaw George Bradshaw]] in the middle 1800's was a railway fan who made a living of writing traveller's guides, even meticulously collating timetables so that, ultimately, a traveller using Bradshaw guides could plot a railway journey, together with stays in recommended cities and local hotels, to confidently craft a journey from Waverley Station, Edinburgh, to Kursky station in Moscow - within five minutes of accuracy all along the way.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp228-229 and footnote p228:'''''
The inevitable spin-off: model railways and train sets. Lady Effie is heard to complain that the trackside model of Sir Harry King makes him look too fat... a Fat Controller? whatever will they think of next...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp229-230:'''''
Although Iron Girder is (fortunately) better adjusted to a human rival than Stephen King's Christine: she is heard to purr approval to Emily King buffing up her nameplate till it shines, and indicating her affection for Dick Simnel. it would appear I.G. is only malevolently inclined towards people who are actively attempting to injure her.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p237:'''''
Lord Vetinari is seen playing with one of the new scale model railway sets. To model rail buffs, miniature systems where the engines run on live steam are the most expensive, deluxe, desirable models there could possibly be. Yet Vetinari is seen catching one as it derails and leaps over the edge of the table. Is he deliberately experimenting with crashes and getting an idea of what could go wrong with a railway in the event of misadventure or sabotage? All this calls to mind the patriarch of the Addams Family, Gomez, as he relaxes with ''his'' idea of what the model railway hobby should be... and Gomez has a wife who inescapably brings to mind Margalotta von Überwald...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp244-245:'''''
An, er ''Brief Encounter'' takes place at a railway station...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp250-251:'''''
An even more explicit shout-out to the ''Stainless Steel Rat'' novels of Harry Harrison. In ''The Stainless Steel Rat for President!'', the opening scene is of the outraged police chief, Inskipp, sending men round to arrest the diGriz husband for embezzlement and mis-use of Special Corps funds. The spiky Angelina diGriz, taking exception at having her beauty sleep interrupted, intervenes with a large and unfriendly weapon so as to suggest good manners be considered on the part of the arresting officers. She takes charge and suggests the incriminatingly large sum of cash to be found in her husband's bank account is all down to one of ''those'' little book-keeping errors. Inskipp reluctantly agrees. Then takes revenge by sending the whole diGriz family out on one of ''those'' little missions involving death or glory but very little actual financial reward.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p262:'''''
A call-back to {{P}}, as Moist contemplates the nature of the pyramid, its associations, and how it all has to fit together absolutely perfectly and in the right order and sequence.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p263 et seq:'''''
The desperate attempt to restore Rhys to the Low Kingship, involving running a train all the way to Überwald despite frequent attacks and attempts to derail it: this is a shout-out to war movie ''von Ryan's Express'', where a hijacked train carrying a ''lot'' of battle-hardened tough cases trying to make it to safety is subjected to all manner of attacks by increasingly desperate Germans.
There are other movies with the same sort of theme: 1948's ''Berlin Express'' references similar ideas, set in Germany during the Cold War at its coldest, with the Russians monitoring activities closely, as the train is in East Germany...

Strange people aboard a train whose stories don't fit, sleeper carriages on a long-distance express heading in the Discworld referent of East.... ''Murder on the Orient Express''... all it needs is a murder and a French-speaking detective... although it all ''began'' in Quirm... and on '''page 370'''. Vimes lets slip that Lady Sybil has decreed the next Ramkin family holiday will be on the Überwald Express. He notes, in a metter of fact sort of way, that it doesn't matter if he's on holiday or not. He will inevitably walk into a crime. Is a sequel being set up here?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p290:'''''
''Too much travelling on the railways could make you a philosopher, although not a very good one''. A reference to the very popular radio philosopher of the 1940's. Doctor Joad, whose pronouncements were witty, down to earth and listenable, was a fixture on BBC panel show ''The Brains Trust''. Joad often travelled by rail and used railway analogies to explain philosophical conundrums, including the inevitable ''life is a journey..'' to explain determinism/free will. (Joad's analogy was that life is a train journey. The lines are fixed - determinism - but you have a choice of routes - free will Your starting point - birth - and terminus - death - are also predetermined. But in between your choices of stations and routes are your own - free will.). Unfortunately, Joad's exercise of his own free will granted him the power to evade his fares and travel for nothing. Determinism caught up with him in the form of a ticket inspector. After the court case for fare evasion, Joad was sacked by the BBC and faded into obscurity...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p293-294 et seq:'''''
Moist von Lipwig gets practice at moving safely and confidently on the roof of a moving train and leaping from carriage to carriage. Why do you feel this is building up to the regular movie cliché of the protaganist slugging it out with the bad guy on the said pitching and rolling roof of a hypothetical moving train... Moist is seen getting practice in early, as if out of Narrativium nudging him and advising that this is something the good guy about to engage in battle aboard a train needs to learn, ''really quickly''.

Also, Moist thinks of it as another extreme sport: like Edificeering or Extreme Sneezing. It could just be that he has introduced the Discworld to the Roundworld do-not-try-this-at-home of Train Surfing.

Fittingly, both he and Sam Vimes - and an unremarked stoker with a shovel - all get to do this together in a stand-up fight, as befits Narrativium.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p296:'''''
On the social heirarchy of railway workers and their being hard-drinking men on their down time. Wheeltappers and shunters are mentioned. A popular TV show of the 1970's was ''The Wheeltappers and Shunters' Social Club'', a live cabaret set in a fictitious Northern working-mens' club of a sort rooted in everyday reality. The real-life W&S Club would have been set up by and for wheeltappers and shunters; all other trades by invitation only. The show was hosted by the egregious Bernard Manning - think of a Harry King who also made money from muck, in this case dirty and doubtful jokes. Manning was a larger-than-life character who could have been a Roundworld Harry King, both in looks and attitude.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p299:'''''
''[[Downsized Abbey]]''. Heh.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp309-312:'''''
The reference is to Edith Nesbit1, ''The Railway Children'', originally serialised in ''The London Magazine'' during 1905 and first published in book form in 1906. It has been adapted for the screen several times. 1''But see also {{wp|Oswald Barron|Oswald Barron}} and {{wp|Ada J. Graves|Ada J. Graves}}; it's quite complicated.''

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp317-320:'''''
A King, on a mission to rescue a people from the Forces of Darkness, is stalled in impenetrable forest. with his way forward blocked, the forest-dwelling race, who are somewhat behind the times, timidly step out begging not to be hunted or killed. They provide the key to forward progress, and the King vows they will evermore have his protection. The whole scene between the Low Monarch and the forest Gnomes echoes King Theoden and the Wild Men of the Druadan forest in ''Lord of the Rings''.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p336:'''''

A gender revelation receives the response from Moist von Lipwig: "Well, nobody's perfect, your majesty." This is an echo of the response to a reverse relevation in ''Some Like it Hot''.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p361:'''''
'''''Tak save The Queen!'''''
Almost the opening line of a national anthem. And one whose first verse at least will be almost as easy to remember as ''Gold! Gold, Gold, Gold!''

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p364-366:'''''
The Brick Joke from the beginning of the book : the brick finally drops as Iron Girder reveals who she ''really'' is. It hearkens right back to the very first page.

'''Corgi Paperback (UK), p468:'''''
"the queen has changed her name to Blodwen". Blodwen is the name of the first opera in the Welsh (Llamedos) language and of the main character in it. In the opera the real father of Blowdwen is Rhys Gwyn. So both the male and female names of the Low King seem to refer to the opera. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blodwen.

'''''Unsorted and needing page reference'''''; the scene where Moist is seen pretending to get drunk but diverting his host's alcohol to a hidden container inside his clothing. This wasn't made up. In the interesting days of American Prohibition, FBI agent Izzie Einstein had a funnel and tube setup in the lining of his coat which allowed him to have any alcohol he got out of illegal bars poured into a flask he kept in an inside coat pocket - the contents of which he would use as evidence in court.
[[Category:Annotations|Raising Steam]]

Urn

2021-07-27T05:14:23Z

Lias Bluestone: Standard form of that joke

'''Urn''' is an [[Ephebe|Ephebian]] [[philosophers|philosopher]], who appears in {{SG}}, and works for his uncle [[Didactylos]]. He is of a more practical turn than his uncle, sometimes causing friction between the two.

Urn has an interest in mathematics, mechanics and physics, and was the inventor of the Discworld's first combustion engine, which he installed on short-lived [[The Unnamed Boat]].

==Annotations==
His name refers to the pun "What's a Grecian urn?" (answer: "about 10 drachma an hour").

The fact that he is a nephew may link him to Ern, PC Theolophius "Clear-Orf" Goon's nephew in Enid Blyton's ''Five Find-Outers and Dog'' Mysteries...

:
[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[de:Urn]]

Um

2021-07-26T21:17:11Z

Lias Bluestone:

The ancient city of Um is where people first created golems. In the current day, priests generally condemn the building of golems -- creation of life, they say, is for the gods alone. However, in Um of very old, the priests and citizens took to the golem creation task with relish. They built thousands upon thousands of large [[Umnian Golems|golems]], including golem "men" as well as golem horses, who were exclusively loyal to the gold-clad Umnian priests. Gold was so plentiful in Um that the golems themselves were made of pure gold.

Thus, in their golems the Umnians created an unlimited labor source and defense force. No one attacked Um for fear of their golems. No one in Um performed menial work, as the golems could perform almost every task.

Um was destroyed by a volcano, with all Umnian people and golems buried beneath the ash. Over the millennia, the golems fell deeper and deeper under the disc's surface, but they did not perish -- as golems neither breathe nor eat, mere burial could not "kill" them. Finally, though, as more and more of the Umnian golems succumbed to the intense pressure of the depths under the land, several of the remaining Umnian golems began to sing in search of help. Their song was heard and acted upon by the free golems of present-day Ankh-Morpork, who helped the Umnian golems dig out into the city... and the events of [[Making Money]] eventuated.

== Annotation ==

Almost too obvious to mention the ancient Roundworld city of {{wp|Ur|Ur}}.

[[Category:Discworld geography|Um]]

Book:The Colour of Magic/Annotations

2021-07-26T21:11:53Z

Lias Bluestone: /* The Colour of Magic Annotations */

== [[Book:The Colour of Magic|The Colour of Magic]] Annotations ==

'''''Prefatory Note:-''''' It should be remarked here that since publication of {{COM}} and {{TLF}}, both books have been conflated into a TV movie which is reviewed and commented on elsewhere in this Wiki. The TV adaptation introduces new characters and details which were not part of the original book: for instance, those heads of the Eight Orders of Wizardry who are not mentioned in the books are given names. As a general principle, if you have an annotation to quote which is based on the TV version and not on the book, do feel free to summarise it here, but do be sure to reference it as part of the TV adaptation and not the book. Thank you.

* A general thought on Rincewind: sci-fi authors Margaret Hickman and Tracey Weiss, in their '''''Darksword''''' trilogy, came up with the idea of a parallel Earth which is governed by magic, where technology is either basic or non-existent. Everyone on this planet has some sort of innate magical ability, apart from a few unfortunate mutants who are regarded as "Dead" because they can use no magic at all and have no magical sensibility. The Dead are normally killed at birth as a kindness to them, and to prevent their passing their taint on to children. But every so often, one slips through the net and has to live a life of subterfuge and concealment in order to fit in. They are naturally drawn to science and technology as if to compensate for their lack of magic. One such, Jorum, becomes first the possible destruction of his world - he slips through the dimensions to our planet Earth and allows Earth to invade the magical world. Then Jorum becomes its salvation. While Rincewind has no conscious desire to destroy the Discworld, the rest of the description, as well as the setting, is oddly telling...

* "Death himself turns up to claim him (instead of delegating the task to a subordinate, such as Disease or Famine, as is usually the case)." - this is the only Discworld book to suggest that Famine is subordinate to Death. The non-Discworld [[Good Omens]] also suggests this. Disease may be another name for Pestilence, or perhaps a subordinate for Pestilence?

* "the combined talents of the Faculty of Medicine had been unable to coax it." - indicates that Unseen University has a medical department, which seems unusual, since {{P}} tells us that "medicine was a new art on the Disc". Of course, given the time mangling in {{TOT}}, maybe {{P}} comes before {{COM}}? Or perhaps the Faculty of Medicine specialize in curing ''magical'' diseases, such as [[Planets]].

* "Turning To Animals is an Eighth Level spell" - a reference to {{wp|Dungeons_and_Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons}}

* "I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEUDOPOLIS [...] I COULD LEND YOU A VERY FAST HORSE." - a reference to the short story {{wp|Appointment_in_Samarra|Appointment in Samarra}}, which is itself a retelling of an ancient Jewish tale from the Talmud.

* People walk through Death in this book; in {{M}}, they walk around him.

* "dispatched to the islands by the Minor Religions faculty of Unseen University" - an indication that the university dabbles in religious study at this point. I wonder how the priests feel about that?

* "stable magic aura of at least [...] several milliPrime" - here, magical aura (not an amount of magic) is measured in prime, indicating that [[prime]] is a unit of field strength, not a unit of magic.

* "His sister had told him they didn't really exist" - this is the only time we hear about Twoflower's sister. She's not even mentioned in {{IT}}.

*The Brown Islands are mentioned in this book as well as others, The joke here I think is Brown eye is slang for the "Anus", the exit hole so the brown islands become the 'Brown eye lands' Not a place to go shoeless.

* "Dr Rjinswand, 33, a bachelor" - one of the few indications that Rincewind is fairly young, despite [[Josh Kirby]]'s tendency to draw him as ancient (assuming Rjinswand is a fairly close parallel to Rincewind). Although people forget that in the book the author describes a 'years' length. Which is twice what our year is, ours being 365 days and a Discworld being 800. However, it is stated that most people use the agricultural year for age purposes.

* "Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut's point of view, the past. Strange but true.". Interestingly, Twoflower doesn't seem to be able to see into the future after drinking this wine (perhaps because he lives entirely within his own head?) Or perhaps "certain" drinkers doesn't happen to include Twoflower, who's far from psychically-inclined.

* "'You know that I never even made it to Neophyte,' said Rincewind". Apparently, "neophyte" is another name of "level 1 wizard"? (Explanatory: the revived systems of occult magick and wizardry that appeared in the later 19th Century created a rigid formal hierarchy among the new Wizards. In the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O. systems, the lowest, least and most despised rank was indeed the '''''neophyte'''''. Slightly higher up the chain were ''zelators''. Lovers of conspiracy theory should go and discover the sign to be exchanged by which one Zelator should recognise another....)

*The Octavo is kept in a room of absolute silence that no can withstand for more than four minutes thirty two seconds. So 4'33" of complete silence will kill you ... c.f. John Cage, 4'33"

*Rincewind talks about a spell making beautiful virgins appear in your room, and also takes many pictures of the Seamstresses, contradicting later comments about wizards and sex. But then, Rincewind isn't much of a wizard and given that the first time we meet him he's sitting in the most disreputable pub in Ankh-Morpork, it's probably safe to assume he treats the whole wizardly aversion to sex (or, at least, the pursuit of it) with a pinch of salt.

*In "The Colour Of Magic", Death or a subordinate evidently do have to make a personal appearance at a death, as he sends [[Scrofula]] to kill Rincewind. But then this could just be because Rincewind is, sort-of-kind-of-technically-more-or-less a wiz(z)ard. A similar scene occurs in the BBC Radio comedy ''The Burkiss Way''.

*Although in [[Book:Guards! Guards!|Guards! Guards!]] Carrot's sword is remarkable because it is one of the only known non-magic swords on the Disc, Rincewind comments that magic swords are expensive in ''The Colour of Magic''. Possibly ''all'' swords are expensive.

* The [[Great Nef]] Desert (mentioned) with its negative humidity and its [[Dehydrated Ocean]], plus the strange ships that sail on it. This has got to be a parody of the deserts of '''''Dune'''''. All it needs now are sandworms. Or dehydrated water worms. It is also notable that "nef" spelt backwards is "fen", which is used to denote a land area whose characteristics are significantly opposite to those of a desert.

* We have a continuity problem, I fear. The article on reannual plants says:-

''"the Rehigreed Province in the Agatean Empire is another. The reannual Vul Nuts are mentioned in The Colour of Magic as being grown in the latter place, and when harvested they make a drink called Ghlen Livid....."''

Ref. {{COM}}, Corgi PB, p189. Twoflower is sampling the hospitality on offer in Krull to those who are about to be sacrificed.

''"Ghlen Livid" he said. "The fermented vul-nut drink they freeze-distil in my home country....''
''"from the western plantations in, ah, Rehigreed Province, yes?"''

The clear implication from Twoflower's words are that Rehigreed Province is a part of "my home country", ie the Agatean Empire. Otherwise, he might have said it was imported?

The problem is, {{DM}} places the Rehigreed Province in the opposite corner of the Discworld from Agatea - the two could not be further apart if you tried. Either the Rehigreed is a "lost colony" on the Central Continent originally settled by Agateans, or else in between {{COM}} and {{DM}} this fine detail was lost. --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 20:37, 14 November 2010 (CET)

Or it could be that, (My personal theory), that Agatea sources the nuts from Rehigreed, but does not own it. Twoflower only said they ferment and distill it in Agatea, and the fact that Rehigreed is sending the nuts all away around the world mirrors Roundworld China's fame of importing and exporting. Also, he drinks the wine in Krull, which has little affiliation with Agatea, and probably got the nuts from Rehigreed directly (By run ashore vessel)--[[User:TNTiger]] 10:48, 8 October 2017 (GMT)

[http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/the-colour-of-magic.html ''The Colour of Magic'' Annotations - The Annotated Pratchett File]

[[Category:Annotations|Colour of Magic,The ]]

Year of the Lice

2021-07-18T06:55:24Z

Lias Bluestone: Grammo and improvement

Lady Sybil's great-grandmother cooked, personally, a full dinner for eighteen in a military redoubt that was entirely surrounded by bloodthirsty Klatchians, and she felt able to include sorbet and nuts.

Roistering

2021-07-17T21:45:00Z

Lias Bluestone: typo

'''Roistering''' is to [[quaffing]] what Defcon Three is to Defcon Two.

It is a deliberate escalation of an evening spent in a [[pubs|pub]] into reckless practical joking, hinting at the existence and then the resolution of old grievances, and dirty looks exchanged, until a tiny little spark can set off a good old roister. Roistering is the reason why [[the Mended Drum]] has been mended so often. This sort of roistering is an exclusively male activity.

The female equivalent of roistering has been described by [[Fred Colon]] and [[Nobby Nobbs]] as '''minge drinking'''. This is an arena where the weapons employed are - mainly - cerebral rather than physical, although any drinking session involving Watchwomen such as [[Sally von Humpeding]] ([[Vampires|vampire]]), [[Angua von Überwald]] ([[Werewolves|werewolf]]), and [[Cheery Littlebottom]] ([[Dwarfs|dwarf]]) is likely to have its moments of interest. Add in other identified policewomen such as the redoubtable [[Precious Jolson]] and a honorary copper such as [[Tawneee]] (well, the Watch girls accept she has to don a police uniform occasionally in her own trade and are inclined to be generous about this), and interesting events of a hopefully sub-lethal sort will no doubt follow.

[[Category:Discworld culture]]

Thrope

2021-07-14T08:49:16Z

Lias Bluestone: typo

In the modern-day [[Citadel]] of [[Omnia]], he is the deaf old deacon who instructs candidates for the priesthood on demon-slaying and vampire hunting. The module in ''Revenants and Ungodly Creatures'' rates low in the theological studies hierarchy, meriting a mere hour every fortnight, and doesn't even count for the final exam. However, in {{CJ}}, Thrope's wisdom becomes an indispensible part of [[Mightily Oats]]' pastoral practice when he gets a parish in [[Lancre]] at a time when [[Vampires|vampires]] are foolishly invited in by King [[Verence II]].

[[Category:Discworld characters]]

War

2021-07-14T08:48:30Z

Lias Bluestone: extra close brace removed

{{Character Data
|title= War
|photo=
|name= "''War''"
|age=
|race= [[Anthropomorphic personification]]
|occupation= Personification of War [[Four Horsemen|Horseman of the Apocalypse]]
|appearance=
|residence= War's Longhouse
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= [[Valkyrie|Mrs. War]] (spouse)
|children= [[Terror]] (son) [[Panic]] (son) [[Clancy]] (daughter)
|marital status= Married
|books= {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{IT}}, {{TOT}}
|cameos=
}}

'''War''' is an important [[anthropomorphic personification]], and one of the [[Four Horsemen]] of the [[Apocralypse]]. War appears to be a large, jolly man in red armor, with a huge sword, riding on a large red horse, with skulls around the saddle horn. As a Horseman, War has played obligatory roles in {{S}} and {{TOT}}.

War lives in a longhouse, the type that is ideal for eternal carousing with dead warriors. However, War has married a retired [[Valkyrie]], who has changed the house somewhat and chased out his "friends". War also stores his memory in his wife. War and Mrs. War have two sons, [[Terror]] and [[Panic]], and a daughter, [[Clancy]], who are introduced in {{IT}}.

The phenomenon of war may be most notably practiced by humans, but is also practiced between wild animals such as ants. Nevertheless, War the anthropomorphic personification has picked up a human-like personality, marrying and, as it were, getting soft, thinking that he has grown old and ill like a mortal old man.

Gods of War, as distinct divinities in their own right, are mentioned in ''[[Discworld Noir]]''. It is unclear how [[demarcation]] operates here or what the exact professional relationship is. Perhaps they are local franchise-holders, in the way [[Scrofula]] and others have delegated for [[Death]] in times of great volume of business.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Krieg]]

Talk:Araminta Garlick

2021-07-13T15:12:25Z

Lias Bluestone:

Further to the argument that TP never makes anything up:
*It (the name "Araminta") was created by the versatile Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim Palace as well as a playwright, for his comedy ''The Confederacy''.
*American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Harriet Ross.
*In the Enid Bagnold novel National Velvet, Araminta is the name of the central character's mother. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:33, 25 August 2013 (GMT)

:: Also note the existence of the novel ''Araminta Station'' (1987) by Jack Vance, set on a planet of outstanding natural beauty whose inhabitants are restricted by decree to a strictly limited custodial staff. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 15:12, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The Neverlands

2021-07-13T15:02:51Z

Lias Bluestone: minor typo

Not to be confused with the [[Netherglades]] Swamps in [[Quirm]], this country/region is located on the turnwise coast of the [[Main continent|Central Continent]] with its neighbours being [[Genua]] to the turnwise and [[Brindisi]] to the widdershins. It is bordered to the hubwards by a region un-named on the map but which may be a part of either [[Mouldavia]] or [[Muntab]]. One of a chain of four islands is marked as belonging to the Neverlands, whilst the remaining three are marked as part of [[Kythia]].

There is a reference to the country having once been populated by a race of giants who dug deep canals so as to drain the land for farming and habitation, and who built high thick dykes to reclaim more land from the sea. Windmills and tulips are not mentioned but can be presumed to not be far behind. The Neverlands has a crescent-shaped coast and a huge bay, known in the ancient language as ''De Wendersee''. It is implied that the island chain stretching from the Turnwise peninsula of Brindisi to the widdershins peninsula of Kythia (marking the extremes of the bay) is all that remains of what was formerly a huge dyke enclosing what once was reclaimed land; the sea broke through in several places and reclaimed the land, precipitating the end of the original Neverlands civilization.

These days it is the home of a hardy seafaring people who may have found and colonised other lands, but are renowned for being fierce rapacious pirates. Indeed, pirate language and law prevails in the country today, and the Neverlands' insular posession of Barrie Island now hosts a Free Port, amusement centres, casinos, and a Pirate theme park depending on the tourist trade and ferry boats from the nearest thing to a capital city, Hooke Point. The residents have found this to be a far simpler, easier, more risk-free and above all ''lucrative'' method of piracy than merely running down other peoples' ships and capturing them and their cargoes.

==Annotation==
The references to a Discworld version of Holland with all the knobs turned up to eleven - or at least, ''some'' of the knobs marked "Holland" - are suspicious. And in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch were indeed the world's foremost maritime power, even raiding London with impunity in the late 1600's. The Dutch mercantile fleet (like the English of the time) had the world's best fighting ships and only common courtesy, plus an awareness they ''had'' the best fighting navy, prevented everyone else from calling Dutch mercantile venturers "pirates".

Barry Island is a holiday resort in South Wales made famous by TV romcom ''Gavin and Stacey'' and is indeed the epitome of shabby, rundown, British coastal resorts where you just ''know'' everything is set up to rob you blind.

And of course J.M. Barrie is the author of ''Peter Pan'', a fantasy adventure featuring the Lost boys of er - Neverland in their incessant battle with Captain Hook's pirates... and do we need to mention Michael Jackson....

The coastline of the Neverlands even evokes a horizontally flipped Holland, with the Wendersee having overtones of the Zuiderzee/IJsselmeer and the island chain being where you'd expect to see the West Frisian Islands. Hell, on a map of the Netherlands, the water inland of the Frisians is called ''De Woddenzee''. the Other Wiki also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland| notes] that in the early mediaeval period, the Netherlands was under extreme danger of being overtaken by the sea unless drastic measures were taken: the massive civil engineering works that transformed the country began here, with the construction of the ''polder'' system of man-made sand-dunes, dykes and drainage systems. Which took seven hundred years to create the Holland we know today. Is this what Terry was thinking about when he created the legend of long-gone giants building the dykes and barriers? (As people will when they look around and see clearly "made" old things. If the things they see are beyond their own level of organisation and technology, people always consider it would have been impossible for mere humans to conceive or build such marvels. After all, the Saxons thought the Roman roads and remains they found in England, like Hadrian's Wall, were the work of long-gone giants... and don't get started on pyramids and aliens!)

[[Category:Discworld geography]]

Talk:Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2021-07-09T15:28:04Z

Lias Bluestone:

In fact ''The Lincolnshire Poacher'' seems to have been the official march of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_Regiment_of_Foot 10th Foot] of Lincolnshire, but why can't I search out any reference to the novelty hit of the fifties that used the tune to tell how "you'll never get rid of the ''bomp-bomp-bomp'', no matter what you do"? OK, it was ''The Thing'', by Phil Harris. It's always in there somewhere. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The website of the American contingent of the [http://tenthfoot.org/Songs/tunes.html Tenth of Foot] (Bostonian [[Peeled Nuts]]) includes a wonderful page of songs of the era, including ''Polly Oliver'' - a rather different story from our Polly/Oliver's. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 17:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

== Eternal Soldiers? ==

I've still got it in my head that Polly and the girls are also a re-imagining of the "eternal soldier" types most famously used by Sven Hassel in his series of pulp-fictions about the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment in WW2. Although the first book in the series, '''''Legion of the Damned''''', is itself a homage reworking of Erich-Maria Remarque's '''''All Quiet on the Western Front''''', updating the action to WW2 Nazi Germany and still using Remarque's original characters. A direct link back to Remarque's clasic anti-war novel - not to mention the classic film made from it - might be wholly in keeping with Pratchett's intentions here.

* Major [[Clogston]] - Oberst Hinka

* Lieutenant [[Blouse]] - Lieutenant Lowe

* Sergeant [[Jackrum]] - Oberfeldwebel Willi Bauer, "The Old Man"

* Corporal [[Strappi]] - Sergeant Heide, the die-hard Nazi, snoop, and informer

* [[Polly Perks]] Fahnenjunker Sven Hassel

* [[Igor#Igor in the Ins-and-Outs, Borogravia|Igor]] -

* [[Maladict]] - Corporal "By The Grace of God" Josef Porta

* [[Carborundum]] - Private Wolfgang "Tiny" Creutzfeldt.

* [[Tonker Halter|"Tonker" Halter]] - the Legionnaire?
* [[Shufti Manickle|"Shufti" Manickle]]
* [[Wazzer Goom|"Wazzer" Goom]]
* [[Lofty Tewt|"Lofty" Tewt]]

I also wouldn't be surprised if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''Good Soldier Svejk[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk]''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

There are also interesting resonances with Alan Moore's comic serial (in ''2000AD'' in 1984-85) ''[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBalladOfHaloJones|The Ballad of Halo Jones]]'', later published as a sci-fi graphic novel. After several false starts in life, Halo Jones enlists in an all-female Army unit and fights in several wars. Again the eternal Soldier types recur.

--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 08:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

== Cheesemongers et al ==

A rather funny line in University Challenge in summer 2009

PAXMAN: "The names 'Cheesemongers', "Cherrypickers', 'Bob's Own', 'The Emperors Chambermaids', and 'The Immortals' are or have been used for which groups of men?"

BUZZ

CONTESTANT: "Homosexuals!"

PAXMAN: "No! They are regiments in the British army and they're going to be very cross with you."

[[User:Chrisboote|Chrisboote]] 14:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

== Sgt. Towering's Battalion ==

Lt. Blouse's description of Sgt. Towering's regiment, as contained in the book, is rather clear:

''‘You’ll have noticed, sergeant, that the men were wearing the '''dark-green uniform''' of the First Battalion the Zlobenian '''Fifty-ninth Bowmen'''. A '''skirmishing battalion''',’said Blouse, with cold politeness. ‘That is not the uniform of a spy, sergeant.’''

This is, of course, a reference to His Majesty's 95th Regiment of Foot, established during the Napoleonic wars and featuring in Cornwell's Sharpe series (Sharpe, it's main character, being an officer of 2nd Battalion/95th Rifles for a time). 95th Regiment, also described as 95th Rifles, was an experimental units specialised for skirmishing, armed with rifles instead of muskets and, indeed, wore dark-green uniforms. Due to higher accuracy of rifles vs. muskets, the 95th was often able to inflict casualties from a safe distance, just as described by Sgt. Jackrum in this scene.
:Seems more like an actual annotation than discussion thereof. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 01:47, 24 November 2011 (CET)

== N-n-nineteen ==

I'm pretty sure last time I read this one that there's a line where one of the soldiers is asked her age, and she replies "N-n-nineteen" but I can't for the life of me find it again. I'm not up for reading my way through it all over again, I have things do to, but speed-reading and skimming has not revealed itself. Anyone care to find it? (If you can find the page number in the Doubleday 1st ed that would be dandy.) --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 23:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

:okay got it --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 15:28, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2021-07-09T15:20:11Z

Lias Bluestone: spello

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}, except for her childlessness, which makes her more akin to {{wp|Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 39|"Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the duchess I see before me?" ... "Well, it won't be in front of me for long."}}

Compare and contrast the famous '''{{wp|Max_Reger|Max Reger}}''' quote:
:"I am in the smallest room of the house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 143|"How old are you Wazz?" she said, shovelling dirt. "N-n-nineteen, Polly," said Wazzer.}}

Impossible to believe TP did not have '''{{wp|19 (song)|Paul Hardcastle's ''19''}}''' in mind here.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a revenant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from the early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2021-07-09T15:18:30Z

Lias Bluestone:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}, except for her childlessness, which makes her more akin to {{wp|Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 39|"Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the duchess I see before me?" ... "Well, it won't be in front of me for long."}}

Compare and contrast the famous '''{{wp|Max_Reger|Max Reger}}''' quote:
:"I am in the smallest room of the house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 143|"How old are you Wazz?" she said, shovelling dirt. "N-n-nineteen, Polly," said Wazzer.}}

Impossible to believe TP did not have '''{{wp|19 (song)|Paul Hardcastle's ''19''}}''' in mind here.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from the early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2021-07-09T15:13:48Z

Lias Bluestone:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}, except for her childlessness, which makes her more akin to {{wp|Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 39|"Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the duchess I see before me?" ... "Well, it won't be in front of me for long."}}

Compare and contrast the famous '''{{wp|Max_Reger|Max Reger}}''' quote:
:"I am in the smallest room of the house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 143|"How old are you Wazz?" she said, shovelling dirt. "N-n-nineteen, Polly," said Wazzer.}}

Impossible to believe TP did not have {{Wp|19 (song)|Paul Hardcastle's ''19''}} in mind here.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from the early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2021-06-23T20:25:30Z

Lias Bluestone:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}, except for her childlessness, which makes her more akin to {{wp|Anne, Queen of Great Britain|Queen Anne}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 39|"Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the duchess I see before me?" ... "Well, it won't be in front of me for long."}}

Compare and contrast the famous '''{{wp|Max_Reger|Max Reger}}''' quote:
:"I am in the smallest room of the house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from the early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Talk:Hex

2021-03-17T22:59:07Z

Lias Bluestone: /* GBL */ new section

Broken umbrella with herrings: some kind of antenna?
I still wonder about the beach ball thing that goes parp, though.
--[[User:Confusion|Confusion]] ([[User talk:Confusion|talk]]) 20:18, 27 November 2012 (PST)

Amusingly, a prototype computer-like structure has in fact been built which is driven by soldier crabs. It has a long way to go before becoming complex enough to rival conventional PC's, but the idea shows promise. Scuttling crabs powering a low-tech computer... Google on [[http://www.i-programmer.info/news/112-theory/4071-a-crab-based-computer.html|Lucy Black and “A Crab-Based Computer”]] There is also a Java program called "Shellfish".[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 16:33, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

The cookie thing is not a virus its from UK GEC computers used for telecom engineering such as system x. It was based on the idea of fortune cookies and besides the syntax described had commands to add to the database via the bake command
The reason I haven't referenced in main text is because its hear-say. I was told it many years ago by an ex-GEC engineer who was working in the city using the then ultra new operating system from IBM/Microsoft OS/2 version 1 [[User:Big Kate|Big Kate]] ([[User talk:Big Kate|talk]]) 14:47, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

The android in Red Dwarf (Kryten) who briefly called himself 'Rameses Niblick III Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops! Where's My Thribble?' did so as a result of external trauma, i.e. an axe being forcibly buried into his 'spinal column', rather than computer senility. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOE7qTAK87o] [[User:Lhspanner|Lhspanner]] 23:17, 31 October 2019 (GMT)

== GBL ==

The "GBL" makes me think of the great big lever on the side of vintage antique one-arm bandits, the ones before the boring electronic ones with lots of buttons and lights and nudges and all that. When you pull it, all the wheels spin like crazy before settling down one by one ... reminiscent of Hex much? --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 22:59, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Tuckerization

2021-03-17T22:43:58Z

Lias Bluestone:

[[John Lawn|"Mossy" Lawn]] was reportedly named after a real English doctor, but I can't Google him, only some American politicians. Can anyone place the original? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC) 
See [[Talk:Book:Night Watch/Annotations#Dr Lawn|here]]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Some others listed [http://file770.com/?p=21656 here]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 18:07, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

== Gytha Ogg ==

I can vouch for the info about Gytha North -- I was acquainted with her in the 1980s. We conversed long on SF and fantasy, and particularly their writers. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 23:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
:Ah, but did she pay something for the inclusion or was she owed something for the suggestion? Tuckerization or inspiration? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:43, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
::I confess I honestly don't know. It was long, long ago. 1987 was the last time I saw her. I believe it was inspiration. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 22:43, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
:Or Colette Reap, come to think of it. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Hubbub

2021-03-17T22:32:38Z

Lias Bluestone: niceties of spacing

This is a specialised fugue state known only to [[wizards]], where in an academic discussion everybody involved is shouting to be heard and resolutely refusing to listen to the views advanced by other participants. The ideal is for nobody to be allowed to finish a sentence because somebody else will surely step in and drown them out. It is possible a Mozart or a Bach would detect wonderful mathematical and musical progressions by listening to wizards in a hubbub state, and translate it into wonderful music.

==Annotation==
Mozart is said to have created fugue music - advancing a musical phrase through all its logical permutations before returning to the point of origin - by listening to children in the street reciting often obscene and scatological jingles, sung as rounds. A typical fugue might be, for instance, Bach's famous Toccata And Fugue for organ (young ladies in underwired nightdresses optional).

[[Category: Discworld concepts]]

Talk:Latatian Phrases

2021-03-12T22:40:58Z

Lias Bluestone: /* Duplicate */ new section

Perhaps this page should just redirect to [[Latatian]], as they are the same article with a different intro. --[[Special:Contributions/121.223.191.158|121.223.191.158]] 23:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd say leave it in hopes of filling in all the guild and family mottoes and whatever else may turn up.
It could then be linked from [[Latatian]]... but it's not necessary. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 00:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Well In which case should the list of Latatian phrases be removed from the Latatian article? Because it seems redundant having the list in both --[[Special:Contributions/121.223.191.158|121.223.191.158]] 02:23, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

"Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire" seems to be mostly misspelled Quirmian and I can't find "tackulatum" anywhere. Where are these from? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 21:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

They both appear in Pyramids as the explanations for what's wrong with Pteppic--[[User:Attercop|Attercop]] 23:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, Ankh-Morpork Medical Latatian. That'd be it. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 00:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 00:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Pretty bad dog-latin but then again it's uttered by a pretty bad doctor [[User:Iron Hippo|Iron Hippo]] 13:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

== Remove stub? ==

This article seems pretty fleshed out. Remove the stub? [[User:Iron Hippo|Iron Hippo]] 20:50, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Is there any reason for the capital T in the alchemists guild motto "Omnis Quis Coruscat Est'''T''' Or - "All that glitters is gold"" --Confusion 05:10, 16 October 2011 (CEST)

==History?==
There's something strange in the history here. It claims I deleted Kbytes of stuff when I wouldn't even have had enough time. I'll try starting over. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 01:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC) 
It seems to work now, but there must be a record missing in the last year. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 02:14, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

== Duplicate ==

Is there a reason for Depositatum De Latrina to be in twice? --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 22:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Bel-Shamharoth

2021-01-28T21:46:40Z

Lias Bluestone: spello

[[Bel-Shamharoth]] (also known as the "Soul-Eater," the "Soul-Render," or the "Sender of Eight") is an ancient, dark [[the gods|god]] for whom the description "evil" is inappropriate; "negative" and "void" might be better terms. Bel-Shamharoth is all suckers, tentacles, mandibles, and one giant eye. His dilapidated temple is built of two-to-the-power-three-sided stones, with [[7a]] sided tiles, lit in an eerie dark violet and possibly [[octarine]] light by twice-four-sided crystals, and a number of main corridors one more than seven and one less than nine leads to the center of the temple, where there is a slab with the same number of sides as a spider has legs. [[Rincewind]], unwillingly visiting the temple, has likened it to a spider's web. In addition to leading the visitors to the center, whichever way they may turn, the temple also is bigger on the inside than the outside, a quality often found in buildings that do not occupy real space-time. The temple and Bel-Shamharoth himself appear in ''[[Book:The Colour of Magic|The Colour of Magic]]''. The temple is long since abandoned, worship of the Sender of Eight being a decidedly short term
prospect. These days he is mostly remembered in the name of the [[YMPA|Young Men's Reformed Cultists of the Ichor God Bel-Shamharoth Association]] (which is also known as the Young Men's Pagan Association or YMPA). His likeness is etched on the cover of the [[Octavo]].

It has been speculated that Bel-Shamharoth is a Creature from the [[Dungeon Dimensions]] who has managed to cling onto the [[Discworld (world)|Discworld]] and gathered worshippers (see ''[[Book:The Discworld Companion|The Discworld Companion]]''). This might mean he is in fact less cruel than creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions (whose want for physical existence is what causes them to be cruel), just more capable of hurting non-wizards and therefore quicker to gain a reputation.

Bel-Shamharoth could definitely be seen as a version of {{wp|H._P._Lovecraft| H P Lovecraft's}}
{{wp|Cthulhu|Cthulhu}}.

In {{P}} it seems he is still remembered and referred to by the people of the [[Djel]] as the Eater of Souls.

See also: [[Numerology]], [[Wizard's magic]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[de:Bel-Shamharoth]]

Talk:Mollymog Street

2021-01-28T21:39:57Z

Lias Bluestone:

Does anyone else remember one of the great "lost" movies, George Axelrod's ''Lord Love a Duck''?
Its lead character (Roddy McDowall) was nicknamed "Mollymauk". (A mollymauk is not actually a duck, but a smallish albatross of the Antipodes). The name jumped out at me as soon as I read it and I wonder if it's the source of the name, both "in universe" and as TP's source. It's just as likely to be known in Ankh-Morpork as the Land of Fog's morpork itself. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC) 
The bird is now included in the article as a source, but I'm not so sure. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 06:07, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

:Considering the proximity of Wokingham to Aldermaston, it is probably more likely that TP got the idea from the tale of local lass Molly Mog. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 21:35, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Some of us colonials don't see the relevance of Aldermaston; the town seems to be known for nuclear weapons and cricket bats, although it does have a candle fair (a very roundabout and tenuous connection). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC) 
Edited the "Origins" a bit. Mollymauks and morporks are both Kiwis, mind you. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 01:08, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

:It's relevant because TP worked there in his youth, and so Aldermaston and Wokingham are in his youthful stamping-ground. There is some known overspill from Reading itself into Ankh-Morpork -- note the notorious Smelly Alley -- where it should be noted that Reading is the market hub less than 10 miles from both. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 21:39, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Mollymog Street

2021-01-28T21:39:32Z

Lias Bluestone:

Does anyone else remember one of the great "lost" movies, George Axelrod's ''Lord Love a Duck''?
Its lead character (Roddy McDowall) was nicknamed "Mollymauk". (A mollymauk is not actually a duck, but a smallish albatross of the Antipodes). The name jumped out at me as soon as I read it and I wonder if it's the source of the name, both "in universe" and as TP's source. It's just as likely to be known in Ankh-Morpork as the Land of Fog's morpork itself. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 15:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC) 
The bird is now included in the article as a source, but I'm not so sure. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 06:07, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

:Considering the proximity of Wokingham to Aldermaston, it is probably more likely that TP got the idea from the tale of local lass Molly Mog. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 21:35, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Some of us colonials don't see the relevance of Aldermaston; the town seems to be known for nuclear weapons and cricket bats, although it does have a candle fair (a very roundabout and tenuous connection). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC) 
Edited the "Origins" a bit. Mollymauks and morporks are both Kiwis, mind you. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 01:08, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

:It's relevant because TP worked there in his youth, and so is Aldermaston and Wokingham are in his youthful stamping-ground. There is some known overspill from Reading itself into Ankh-Morpork -- note the notorious Smelly Alley -- where it should be noted that Reading is the market hub less than 10 miles from both. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 21:39, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Mollymog Street

2021-01-23T21:35:17Z

Lias Bluestone:

Talk:Great Maze of Sto Lat

2021-01-14T23:42:16Z

Lias Bluestone:

== Cruet Set ==

"Cruet set": On the Isle of Wight, on St. Catherine's Down, there are the remains of a pair of lighthouses, affectionately known as "the Pepper Pot" and "the Mustard Pot". See https://www.wightpedia.org.uk/detail2.php?id=st-catherines-old-lighthouse-the-mustard-pot-

These are a short walk from the tourist park of Blackgang Chine, which hosts (or at least it did back in the 1960s) one of those mazes which once experienced always remembered.

It is worth wondering whether TP himself visited Blackgang Chine in his youth, and similarly wandered over the down to see those disused (and in one instance incomplete) lighthouses. The connection (maze, cruet set, folly) may well have been the source of the "Great Maze of Sto Lat". --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 23:41, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Great Maze of Sto Lat

2021-01-14T23:41:19Z

Lias Bluestone: Created page with "== Cruet Set == "Cruet set": On the Isle of Wight, on St. Catherine's Down, there are the remains of a pair of lighthouses, affectionately known as "the Pepper Pot" and "the..."

== Cruet Set ==

"Cruet set": On the Isle of Wight, on St. Catherine's Down, there are the remains of a pair of lighthouses, affectionately known as "the Pepper Pot" and "the Mustard Pot".

These are a short walk from the tourist park of Blackgang Chine, which hosts (or at least it did back in the 1960s) one of those mazes which once experienced always remembered.

It is worth wondering whether TP himself visited Blackgang Chine in his youth, and similarly wandered over the down to see those disused (and in one instance incomplete) lighthouses. The connection (maze, cruet set, folly) may well have been the source of the "Great Maze of Sto Lat". --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 23:41, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Broomstick

2021-01-03T21:49:26Z

Lias Bluestone: spello

A device for magically enhanced travel favoured by [[Witches magic|witches]]. It takes the form of the standard [[wikipedia:Besom|besom]], ie a stout stick with a bundle of broom twigs tied securely to one end. (From the broom plant, ie ''broomstick''.) An early, more sophisticated, version encountered and used by [[Rincewind]] and [[Twoflower]] had handlebars, although most witches dispense with this accessory.

While associated with witches, [[Wizard's magic|wizards]] have been known to use them in extremis:
* There is apparently a museum at [[Unseen University]] where several fine examples are kept as curios.
* [[Ridcully]] uses one to launch an aerial assault on the Ginger-monster in {{MP}}.
* Another is used to fetch [[Dr. Lawn]] to a medical emergency in {{NW}}.
* A previous Archchancellor daringly took [[Granny Weatherwax]] on a joy-ride. Well, she was driving and he was pillion, but there's the look of the thing to consider... Granny had just acquired her broom at that time; a low-performance but oddly durable device that has been likened to "a split-window Morris Minor." (It has been noted that in the Dutch translations of Pratchett's early books, the concept of a ''split-window Morris Minor'' has been replaced with a Dutch term used to describe the sort of clunking elderly one-gear bicycle ridden by elderly women in a very unsteady fashion (omafiets).).
* The University provides some in {{T!}} as one of the means to tune the coaches of [[Sam Vimes]]. He needs to get to [[Koom Valley]] very - you could say magically - fast, but only with a little hocus and no pocus.

A wizard's [[staff]] has been disguised as one by the cunning expedient of tying broom twigs to it, and in the hands of a mere cleaner, this potent magical artefact was overlooked by passing wizards. On the other hand, [[Moist von Lipwig]] disguised an ordinary besom as a magical broomstick to wind up (or put the wind up) [[Reacher Gilt]] before the great race in {{GP}}.

There was the suggestion in {{WA}} to create a huge besom with stewardess and meals served. So far nothing has come from this on the Disc.

Elsewhere on the Disc other flying aids are employed: [[Elves]] use yarrow stalks and in [[Klatch]] the [[Magic Carpet|magic carpet]] is the flying aid of preference. A lightly-loaded broomstick can achieve seventy miles per hour, about as much wind as the rider can withstand. (However, in keeping with the Wizardly ethos of "let's see what this baby can ''really'' do!", a wizard's staff used in the broomstick role can and will go much, much, much, faster. As an illustration, consider the [[Dean]], who is undergoing a prolonged second childhood and who would leap at the chance to be considered a boy racer...) The carpet appears to be slower, if more comfortable.

==Annotation==
In the north of England and elsewhere, a '''[[wikipedia:Besom|besom]]''' is a name for the classical broomstick made by firmly tying broom twigs to the end of a long stout staff of wood.

A besom is also a not-entirely-complimentary term for the sort of {{wp|Nora_Batty#Nora_Batty_.28Kathy_Staff.29|Nora Batty}} figure, a stout woman of firm ideas in late middle age (or elderly), who would wield a broomstick with almost as deadly an effect as she would wield her tongue. By natural extension, it was also a synonym for '''witch''' in both its descriptive and pejorative usages.

[[Category:Devices]]
[[de:Hexenbesen]]

Nooty Kiddie-Klothes

2020-12-19T23:20:40Z

Lias Bluestone: typo

A young female [[Nome]] born in The [[Store]]. She is a little plump and normally wears trousers. She was carried to the [[Quarry]] on the [[Long Drive]] and has shown herself to be a fairly good engineer. She plays a large part in the {{D}} story, as a guard, Dorcas's helper, and finally running the team in charge of the hand brake on [[Jekub]]. She is mostly teamed up with another young Nome [[Sacco]].

[[Category:Bromeliad characters|Kiddie-Klothes, Nooty]]

User talk:Lias Bluestone

2020-12-01T22:30:47Z

Lias Bluestone:

Well, we've had a few trolls over the years but not the sort to make useful contributions. Noddy Holder already has a nod in the page [[Noddy]] (makes for a lot of Noddies). Stay cool! --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:11, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

:Sorry, had forgotten about Noddy in SM. You're right. But Noddi sounds like he may well have been inspired by Enid Blyton's creation, and I'm also fairly sure that the latter never existed, then neither would Mr. Holder have acquired Noddy as a soubriquet. I think it is difficult to underestimate the influence {{wp|Noddy (Character)|Noddy}} had on English culture.

:Also remember that Neil Oddy in "I bought a vampire motorcycle" was also nicknamed Noddy, although in this case the humorous nickname probably came first, and the justification "Neil Oddy" came after. Sorry, I don't know why I mentioned that. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 21:50, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

==Deviant speling==
While I use "storey" myself (my American spell-checker just underlined it), Americans generally omit the "e" in the interest of making everything as short as possible. Redundant "u" or not, curb with a "k", double letters, ax or axe, we don't generally correct other widely-accepted dictionaries The [[Help:Editing|rule]] is to continue with whichever form the article started with. Practically, of course, you're right: it's a floor to a ceiling, not a tale. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:11, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

:Well, all right I suppose, I appreciate that American is a highly useful pidgin designed to make communication easier for those for whom English is not their first language, but I do miss the nuances of English. My personal view is that as TP himself was English, with an exceptional grasp of a lot of the deep subtleties of his native tongue, then maybe (in order to maximise the retention of such subtleties) it might be preferable to make more of an effort to use English rather than American. I appreciate I am in the minority, and American has swamped the Internet, but I do hanker for seeing a website that caters specifically to English-speakers. Don't mind me, I'm just getting old and increasingly more intolerant of the Land of the Orange Yahoo. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 08:13, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

...but this wiki was not created as a refuge for speakers of British English, it was started by a Dutch speaker (with international help) for Pratchett readers world-wide. No one has less tolerance than I for the So-Called President, but he doesn't read, never mind Pratchett books. Our valuable US contributors and, of course, our [[User:Osiris|publisher]] do. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:51, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

:And once again I fall foul of Merkin imperialism. The best thing that can happen to America is for every single molecule of its substance to be utterly destroyed. If such intolerance is not tolerated on this website, then I'm afraid you're going to have to ban me, and this site can fester. --[[User:Lias Bluestone|Lias Bluestone]] ([[User talk:Lias Bluestone|talk]]) 22:30, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Foul Ole Ron

2020-12-01T08:33:45Z

Lias Bluestone:

{{Character Data
|title= Foul Ole Ron
|photo= Blank.jpg|
|name= Foul Ole Ron
|age=
|race= [[Humans|Human]]

|occupation= Beggar (unlicensed)
|appearance= Dirty and smelly, speaking incoherently.

|residence= Mostly under [[Misbegot Bridge]], [[Ankh-Morpork]]

|death=
|parents=
|relatives= His [[Foul Ole Ron's Smell|Smell]]
|children=
|marital status=

|books= {{MAA}}, {{FOC}}, {{H}}, {{J}}, {{TT}}
|cameos= Not really a cameo, but his catchphrase "Millennium Hand and Shrimp" is also used in {{JatB}} by Mrs. [[Tachyon]]
}}
'''Foul Ole Ron''' is a beggar in [[Ankh-Morpork]] and a member of the [[Canting Crew]], a group of beggars which other beggars refuse to have anything to do with (even beggars need somebody to look down on). Given that Ron was described as a member of the Beggars' Guild in ''Men at Arms'', before his first appearance in the Crew, he was either expelled or the subject of one of Discworld's various alternate pasts. Ron is known for his [[Foul Ole Ron's Smell|Smell]], so strong the capital letter is fully justified. In fact, Ron's Smell has evolved a personality of its own, and can be found without Ron, attending opera performance or visiting art galleries.

Ron is also known for the phrases "Bugrit!" and "Millennium Hand and Shrimp", whatever that means. He is often accompanied by his thinking-brain dog, [[Gaspode]]. Interestingly enough, when under the extra pressure of [[Elves]] on top of his usual burdens, the [[Bursar]] once started to talk ''exactly'' like Ron; Ponder Stibbons suspected that they'd overdone the [[Dried Frog Pills]].... ({{LL}})

Another Pratchett character who talks as if she could have an animated and mutually coherent conversation with Ron is Mrs. [[Tachyon]], the mysterious time-travelling bag lady in the [[Johnny Maxwell]] series of books. In [[Book:Johnny and the Bomb|Johnny and the Bomb]], Mrs Tachyon displays a personal familiarity with the phrase "Millennium, Hand And Shrimp!" that will be instantly recognisable to connoisseurs of Ron-speak. It raises the question of where, and from whom, she may have acquired the phrase, on her travels in space-time. (It is of course marginally possible that she has read her way through the Discworld books.)

The [[Assassins' Guild]] has an as yet unfulfilled contract for the inhumation of Ron. The value on his head is one groat. Ron is probably safe: a rule of Assassination is that the deed must be done up close and personally if at all possible, and preferably at the home of the inhumee. Getting up close and personal to a man who has no fixed abode would present operational difficulties, not the least of which is that Assassin finery would corrode and rot on first contact with the Smell. Even an arrow or crossbow bolt might corrode in the very air before reaching him. Besides, which self-respecting Assassin would get out of bed for two pennies? (after Guild Tax).

===External Links===
The secret behind the phrase "Millennium Hand and Shrimp" is revealed in the [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/lords-and-ladies.html annotated pratchett files].
Of course, like stage magic, it's no fun when you know how it's done.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[Category:Human characters|Ron, Foul Ole]]
[[de:Stinkender Alter Ron]]

Twurp's Peerage

2020-12-01T08:20:06Z

Lias Bluestone:

'''Twurp's Peerage''' is the directory of all the nobility of [[Ankh-Morpork]] and its satellites, describing their lineage and titles. It lists the positions of [[Sybil Ramkin|Lady Sybil]], [[de Worde|Lord De Worde]] and [[Ronald Rust|Lord Rust]] without moral judgement.

On [[Roundworld]] the catalogue of English nobility is [[wikipedia:Burkes_Peerage|''Burke's Peerage'']]. In colloquial English, "berk" and "twerp" are both pejorative names for an obnoxious, silly person. Rather like a prat.

==Twurp's Peerage==

...as recorded elsewhere: please add anyone entitled.

* [[Duke of Eorle]]
* [[Sir George]] (deceased)
* [[Earl Hargarth]] (deceased)
* [[Keli|Kelirehenna]], Her Majesty, Queen of Sto Lat
* Lady [[Margolotta von Uberwald]]
* [[Lord Monflathers]]
* [[Mort]], His Grace, Duke of Sto Helit (sadly deceased)
* [[Ysabell]], Her Grace, Duchess of Sto Helit (sadly deceased)
* Sir [[Roderick Purdeigh]]
* Lady [[Omnius]]
* Lady [[Sybil Ramkin|Sybil Vimes (née Ramkin)]] - Her Grace the Duchess of Ankh
* [[Brenda Rodley|Lady Brenda Rodley]], Dowager Duchess of Quirm
* [[Lord Rodley]], His Grace, Duke of Quirm
* [[Ronald Rust|Lord Ronald Rust]]
* [[Albert Selachii|Lord Albert Selachii]]
* Sir [[Bernard Selachii]]
* Lord [[Robert Selachii]]
* [[Viscount Skater]]
* Lord [[Snapcase]] (deceased)
* [[Susan Sto Helit]], Her Grace the Duchess of Sto Helit
* [[Venturi|Lady Alice Venturi]]
* Lord [[Charles Venturi]]
* [[Havelock Vetinari|Lord Havelock Vetinari]]
* Commander Sir [[Samuel Vimes]], His Grace the Duke of Ankh
* Lord [[de Worde]]
* Rupert de Worde (deceased)
* [[William de Worde]]
* Lord [[Downey]]
* Lord d'Eath (deceased)
* [[Edward d'Eath]] (deceased)

{{stub}}

[[Category:Discworld culture]]
[[Category:Discworld publications]]
[[de:Twurps Adelsverzeichnis]]

User talk:Lias Bluestone

2020-12-01T08:13:36Z

Lias Bluestone:

Hiver

2020-11-30T23:34:51Z

Lias Bluestone: repeated word removed

A strange organism in many ways. They are like bodiless minds, but incapable of thought. Normally, they cannot be seen. They can be faintly heard, with a sound like a swarm of flies, and animals can certainly sense them. They are parasitic; they take over the mind and body of other creatures. Hivers normally target powerful creatures, like tigers, and when attacking [[Humans]], aim for powerful ones such as [[Wizards]] and [[Monarchy|monarchs]]. The people and things a hiver consumes begin to become incredibly powerful, eventually dying insane. The reason why they do this seems to be because they're afraid of the whole universe. They are completely and utterly aware of everything around them, knowing every single blade of grass, seeing all the colours in a tree. They envy humans because, in comparison, we are nearly blind, with the amazing talent known as 'boredom'.

The chief source of information on Hivers is the book by [[Sensibility_Bustle|Sensibility Bustle]], sometime Professor of Magic, who set out to capture one. His work provides a good resume of what was known about them to that point, and since it trails off into dribbling, paranoid, incoherence, a good example of why they should be avoided. Research students at the Unseen University are advised to read it.

According to Prof. [[Poledread]], Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive, but have the ''shape'' of life. Most often they end up at the bottom of deep seas, or in the belly of volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. They have no body, no brain, no thoughts, but they do have the ability "to crave and to fear." They also have memory.

According to a Hiver, it is naked awareness. Without the limitations and protection of a "me", a self, it is under a relentless noonday sun of sensation.

The Hiver is in some ways similar to the [[Auditors]]. Unlike Auditors, they have no known cosmic function, though Bustle speculates that they may have been a driving force in evolution.

In fact, in the context of living things, a hiver becomes like a kind of hermit crab, or in the example given by Bustle, the [[Hermit Elephant]] of Howondaland. It seeks safety, in the strongest possible refuge. It is not a parasite, does not intend to consume its hosts, but in seeking to reinforce them by giving them the power to fulfil their wishes, it destroys them.

Tiffany may have been the first person on record to have communicated with one. In helping the Hiver, she gave it a story by which it could understand living things, and how it overlooked the most important part of human beings. She helped it find a point in the midst of its multitude of voices that it could call 'me', that could make the journey across the [[The_Desert|desert]].

'''The Hiver and Tiffany'''

Tiffany is taken over by the Hiver twice. The first time she is caught unawares, at a moment when she says "See me", something she should not have done without learning how to protect herself. As [[Granny Weatherwax]] said, "She's learned how to [[Borrowing|Borrow]], has she? Or she's been Borrowed!" Although the Hiver sees the world through Tiffany, and she sees the world under its influence, there is still a part of her that it cannot reach. This part can write "Help me" in chalk on the dairy table without the rest of her being conscious of it. Something similar happened in the drome-dreams of {{WFM}}, when odd images came to her in the dream from herself, trying to wake herself up.

She evicts the Hiver twice. The first eviction is by surprise, when she again says "See me", and finds that the Hiver has been put outside her. It came straight back in, though, and a struggle ensued. Miss Level came into the room at that moment to reprimand Tiffany about something else, and the Hiver killed her instantly. With Tiffany stretched out on the floor like a dead person, the Feegles, who despite their intense earthiness, are magical creatures, find a way into the landscape of her mind, and it is her last refuge, the image of the old shepherding hut on the Downs. It is perilously close to the end, but the un-Hivered part of her communicates with the [[Nac Mac Feegle|Feegles]], the words appearing as chalk writing on the side of the old hut: Sheep's wool, Turpentine, Jolly Sailor. These three things are a tangible memory of [[Sarah_Aching|Granny Aching]], and in their inimitable style the Feegles fetch them. Strengthened by the scent-memory of these, the second eviction of the Hiver is through a rising up in Tiffany of that self that is the same as the Chalk Hills. This self has power, and grasps the Hiver and throws it out.

Granny Weatherwax brings Tiffany back to herself, putting her back to the work of her daily chores, sifting among the voices which speak in her to find the one which is really Tiffany, needling her to bring her un-self-pitying Third Thoughts to the top.

Tiffany is shocked to see what she has done: the cruelty to [[Petulia_Gristle|Petulia]], the tormenting of [[Brian_("A_Hat_Full_of_Sky")|Brian]], the theft from [[Mr_Weavall|Mr Weavall]], the "killing" of [[Level|Miss Level]]. All the Hiver did was give power to thoughts or wishes that were in her, and she fears that these are the real her. Granny shows her how these possibilities are in everyone, and that they were unleashed because the important bit of her, the bit of her which the Hiver could not reach, was shut away. "Learnin' how not to do things is as hard as learning ''how'' to do them. Harder maybe."

Tiffany knows that there is a bit of the Hiver in her, and a bit of her in the Hiver. Each knows something about the other. She knows that they have not been thinking about it the right way, but does not yet know what that would be.

Something worries away at her Third Thoughts. The Hiver gives power to your wishes. In fairy stories, people are always being given three wishes. "What is the third wish?" She asks one person after another. At the last moment, she finds Granny, who tells her that the third wish is to undo the damage that has been caused by the other two. Make this not have happened.

Through her connection with the Hiver, Tiffany realises that although it seems to be bent of attacking her, it is not inherently evil. When it comes the third time, she catches it in a real shamble, the first she has ever made, but also says to it, "Welcome. You are safe here." Through its connection with her, it has also learned from her. It has not come to attack her, but has come with a wish of its own.

In its relationship with Tiffany, it realises what it wants is to learn how to end, to be shown how to die. In this, it is not unlike [[Lady_LeJean|Lady LeJean]], the Auditor who tasted life.

Accompanied by the irrepressible [[Rob_Anybody|Rob Anybody]], Tiffany finds in herself a way to show the Hiver through the dark door, and to set it on the way across the desert. She tells it a story in which it can believe. She says that this is what she is doing, and does not tell any lies. In helping the Hiver to find its 'me' she gives it a name, not unlike that of Miss Level's house-ghost [[Oswald (ghost)|Oswald]], in this case Arthur. She crosses the threshold of the dark door herself to help the Hiver cross. When Rob Anybody says to her that he would not trust the scunner, she says there is part of her in it. She would trust that.

At the end of her encounter in Wee Free Men with the [[Fairyland|Queen of Fairyland]], having seen the Queen transform through many monstrous shapes, but still not letting go of her, Tiffany saw her as she was, small and grey, like a monkey. Telling her to go, and not to touch her land again, she said to the Queen, "But I hope there's someone who will cry for you. I hope the King comes back." There is an echo of this in the {{W}}, where she would herself cry later for the Wintersmith who wanted to be human. You can say "No fight, no blame", but it is more than that.

==Annotation==

In {{wp|Alan_Garner|Alan Garner}}'s fantasy novel, ''The Moon of Gomrath'' (1962), there is a sentient being, taking the native form of a nebuluous black cloud with two glowing crimson eyes, which will possess and inhabit the body of any living creature until that creature dies under the intensity of the spirit posessing it. This creature then looks for another host, and carries on serially possessing living creatures. This may be a version of an old Celtic spirit of evil, rather than something invented by Garner.

Garner's "Brollochan" is to all other intents and purposes identical with the Hiver, in purpose, practice and result. (Although the souls of the Brollochan's victims are forced into Anbarn, the Celtic hell: with the Hiver, some shreds of sentience and independence live on). The only things that defeat the Brollochan are the witches - an altogether darker and more malevolent creation in Garner's world - and the Elves, who have more in common with Tolkien's vision than Pratchett's (although Elves in Garner's world are dwarf-sized). In a Celtic exorcism, the Brollachan is forced from the body of Susan (heroine and in all but name, an apprentice white witch) and the noise is like that of thousands of flies...

Perhaps TP read Garner in his childhood and this is an unconscious borrowing: or like Garner, he has gone back to the same root sources in Celtic myth, which explain the similarities between the two creations? As TP himself put it, when the ignorant accused him of plagiarising JK Rowling: "Look, we're all [[fishing from the same stream|fishing from the same stream]] here!"

[[Category:Supernatural entities]]
[[Category:Discworld concepts|Hiver]]
[[Category:Tiffany Series characters|Hiver]]
[[de:Schwärmer]]

Deep Bone

2020-11-30T23:30:54Z

Lias Bluestone: Not sure about other locales' versions of English, but in British English it's definitely "storey".

In {{TT}}, [[Gaspode]] wants to help William de Worde investigate the conspiracy behind the committee to un-elect the Patrician. Vetinari's 16-year-old dog Wuffles was a key witness to an incriminating event. However, Gaspode understands the difficulties associated with revealing himself to be the famous Talking Dog of Ankh Morpork. That would provoke more questions than Gaspode would want to deal with.

So Gaspode hides in a multi-storey livery stable. When William arrives, Gaspode identifies himself with the name "Deep Bone."

== Resonances ==
In the American Watergate scandal of the 1970s, the Washington Post investigated a criminal conspiracy run by president Richard Nixon's cronies. The Post's reporters' major source was a Nixon insider known only as "Deep Throat," who met the reporters in a multi-storey parking garage to exchange information.

Gaspode's nickname resonates doubly -- the "Bone" part refers to his doggy nature. However, "Deep Throat" and "Deep Bone" would both be, shall we say, appropriate names for Seamstresses' Guild members in the Moving Pictures.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Deep Bone]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Deep Bone]]

Talk:Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2020-11-30T23:02:27Z

Lias Bluestone: /* N-n-nineteen */ new section

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2020-11-30T21:59:03Z

Lias Bluestone: typo

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from the early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2020-11-30T21:54:20Z

Lias Bluestone:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85|''a banknote''}} - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from yhe early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2020-11-30T21:36:22Z

Lias Bluestone: Correction of Italian Job quote. It's vital to get such cultural references scrupulously accurate.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 3 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 14)'''''

The character [[All Jolson]] is a play on the name of Al Jolson, a vaudeville, radio, and film entertainer of the 20th century, perhaps best known for being the star of the first sound movie, [http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/ ''The Jazz Singer''].

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 13 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 26)'''''

"...the deep fat mines at Shmaltzberg..." Shmaltz is Yiddish for chicken fat, as well as Polish for just fat.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 29'''''

Vetinari describes Überwald: ''a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.'' This was - word for word - Winston Churchill's description of Soviet Russia in the 1940's.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 29 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 46)'''''

"Send a [[clacks]] to our agent..."

"Clacks" is obviously a play on "fax." The [[Roundworld]] counterpart of the Clacks was known as the optical telegraph or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line Semaphore Line]. Invented in the late 18th century and operated into the early 19th century before being made obsolete by electrical telegraphy, semaphore lines were used by the governments of France, Britain, and other European countries to convey vital information more rapidly than horseback riders could. Semaphore lines could only send about two words a minute, and were thus much less efficient than those of Discworld.

For some interesting background reading on these real-life semaphore lines, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo] by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas Alexandre Dumas] has an incident where the protagonist deliberately interferes with the semaphore traffic in order to misdirect and corrupt messages. It is inconceivable to think that Pratchett was unaware of this scene.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 58 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 81)'''''

[[Leonard of Quirm]] says of his mechanical cipher device, "I think of it as the '''E'''ngine for the '''N'''eutralizing of '''I'''nformation for the '''G'''eneration of '''M'''iasmic '''A'''lphabets...."

The acronym is ENIGMA, which was the name of the mechanical cipher device used by the Germans in World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine Enigma Machine] entry at Wikipedia.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 99'''''

"There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they say in the trade, ''MMBU''."

The Discworld version of MMFD ("Miles and Miles of F---ing Desert"). Allegedly used by RAF pilots flying in gulf regions, and popularised by ''Frederick Forsyth'''s novel ''The Fist Of God''.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p.223'''''

The Dwarfish idea of the ''Jar'akh'haga''' or ''ideas taster''. Here it is Dee, later seen to be unhappily gender-confused. Interestingly, the great British comedian and nation's favourite intellectual Stephen Fry recounts being given such a job commission for upper-crust society magazine, the ''Tatler'', by its flamboyant editor Marc Boxer. In typically flowery language, Boxer explained he wanted Fry to look after the otherwise disregarded small details and see they were as right and quirky as they could be before going to print. Fry became Boxer's ''ideas-smeller'' with a roving brief to look at all aspects of the magazine as a reader would, and adjust accordingly. ('''''the fry chronicles - an autobiography''''', pp 307-310)

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 161 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 207)'''''

"It's colder up here, Vimes thought. He's quicker on the uptake." [Referring to [[Detritus]].]

Anachronism. In earlier books (''[[Feet of Clay]]'' and ''[[Jingo]]'') Detritus' greater intellectual ability when cold is indicated by a marked improvement in his language. For instance, in ''[[Jingo]]'' (Harper Torch US, p. 295), on a cold night in the Klatchian desert, he has lines like, "What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Vimes?" "All present and correct, sir!" and "With rather more efficiency, sir." No "deses" and "dems," etc. Yet throughout the trip to Uberwald, which is presumably colder than the desert of Klatch at night, Detritus' language never improves.

But Detritus does say that he is undercover as he does not want the dwarves to know about his intelligence! NW - a neatly self-referential idea, since, as demonstrated in Maskerade, *thick* Detritus is useless at undercover work.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 222 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 281)'''''

"...the Koboldean Cycle..." This epic opera of the dwarfs bears certain resemblances to Wagner's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_cycle Ring Cycle], a series of four operas, often performed over four nights, with a total running time of about 15 hours. Not quite as long as the five-week Koboldean Cycle. The eponymous Ring in Wagner's operas was forged by a dwarf named Alberich (reminiscent of [[Low King]] runner-up [[Albrecht Albrechtson]]). Kobold is a German word usually translated as "goblin." It also gives the English language the metal name ''Cobalt''. Interestingly enough, another mine-dwelling supernatural entity is called a ''nickel''.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, pp 238 - 239'''''

Vimes, un-used to Igors, asks "I'm sorry? Is all your family called Igor?" to which the resident Igor serving Lady [[Margolotta]] replies "Oh yeth, thur. It avoidth confuthion".

Compare this with the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch, where the newly-arrived Professor of Hobbes, Locke, Richards and Beneau is asked "That's going to cause a bit of confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?"

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p370'''''

Vimes gives an order to Detritus to fire the [[Piecemaker]]:-

"Blow the bloody doors off!" Which Detritus does, not only taking out the werewolves' castle doors but also a goodly part of the frontage of the castle, which is explicitly described as being "in ruins" following a second shot of the mighty crossbow.

This evokes the 1965 film, ''The Italian Job'', where bankrobbing mastermind Michael Caine upbraids his hapless gelignite man (who has just vaporised an entire security van) with the line which has passed into movie history:-

'''''"You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"'''''
Note that Vimes, who is aware of the destructive capacity of the Piecemaker and normally forbids Detritus from using it, very deliberately omits the ''"you're only supposed to..."'' part of the line....

Shortly after this, Angua greets her family for the first time in years. Two of her female relatives in the Clan, members of the ''"Freuden durch Kraft!"'' movement and faithful followers of her brother Wolfgang, are called '''Unity''' and '''Nancy'''. On Roundworld in the 1930's, there were a famous group of sisters from the English upper classes, who were notorious for effectively being groupies to assorted European dictators and despots. Unity Valkyrie Mitford was devotedly in love with Adolf Hitler and his philosophy, to the effect that she tried to blow her own brains out (such as they were) in bitter disillusionment at the onset of war. She was all prepared to live out the war as an exile in Germany, but delicate diplomatic arrangements were made to prevent something that would have been an embarrassment to all sides, (this threatened to bring the war into disrepute and make it a laughing stock, a prospect that for the one and only time brought the wartime British and German governments into full agreement) and she was returned to Great Britain via neutral intermediaries. Nancy Mitford, in common with a surprisingly large number of members of the British upper-class intelligentsia, had her own flirtation with Joseph Stalin and Soviet communism. (which must have led to some lively dinner-table conversations round at the Mitfords). Stalin was wiser and more fore-sighted than Hitler: he made sure he was out when Nancy called.(More here[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford])--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 21:52, 13 January 2008 (CET)

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p376'''''
"Well, things couldn't get any worse" he said.
"Oh, they could if there were snakes on here with us" said Lady Sybil.

See annotation for page 279 of [[Book:Carpe Jugulum/Annotations|Carpe Jugulum]]. Sybil has changed the setting for the "rural myth" from a coach to a sleigh.

Additional comment: This is also very likely a reference to the Indiana Jones movies, where the title character throws himself into dangerous situations with aplomb, and is afraid of nothing--except snakes. But not {{wp|Snakes on a Plane|Snakes on a Plane}}, which was released some 7 years after {{TFE}}.

When [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]] returns to the Watch House and passes judgement upon [[Fred Colon]]'s time as Acting-Captain, it is interesting to note in passing that the form of judgement follows the time-honoured Royal Navy ritual of "Requestmen and Defaulters". This is where the ship's captain, or in his absence the First Lieutenant, hears petitions from sailors and passes judgement on misdemeanours and disciplinary offences. The Captain's ceremonial sword is laid on the table, forming a physical barrier between judge and accused. It is there to remind the errant sailor that on board Her Majesty's Ship, all justice ultimately originates with the Monarch, who has delegated it to the Captain, via his commission, to use well and wisely. Should the case be found proven, the Captain turns the sword so that the point is directly facing the guilty party - symbolic of the Royal Justice. (We see here that both Colon and Nobbs twist and turn to "escape the accusatory point"). This piece of vivid theatre is something no sailor who has witnessed it will ever forget, and was quite possibly more salutary than the actual punishment. Carrot's eventual judgement wasn't even a reprimand, (Carrot realises that Colon was promoted way past his level of competence, which would not have happened if he, Carrot, had not put personal interests ahead of the good of the Watch, and followed the orders he was given - he was at fault too. So the whole sorry incident needed to be forgiven and forgotten as quickly as possible, and ''certainly'' before Vimes arrived home) but something Colon will in all probability take to the grave with him...

[[Category:Annotations|Fifth Elephant,The]]

Blackbury

2020-11-28T00:09:19Z

Lias Bluestone:

'''Blackbury''' is the fictional town where the [[:category:Johnny Maxwell Series|Johnny Maxwell Series]] books take place. Judging by the BBC TV adaption it is not far from Manchester.

It is also the location of the [[Arnold Bros (est. 1905)]] department store (demolished and replaced by the Arnco Leisure Centre). It is also referred to in later books of the ''[[Bromeliad]]'' (''[[Truckers]]'' trilogy, which gives the town's name as [[Grimethorpe]], but does mention the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall). Several of the stories in {{DCC}} take place in Blackbury.

==Notable places==
* Blackbury Hill
* The [[Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall]]
* The old church, now a community centre
* The Cemetery
* [[Paradise Street]]
* The Blackbury Preserves pickle factory
* The [[Joshua N'Clement]] Block
* The site of the former [[Arnold Bros (est. 1905)]] department store, which mysteriously burnt down in a way the police were never quite able to work out;
* The site of the [[Grimethorpe Dye and Paint Company]], also closed down by the [[Arnco Group PLC]] as surplus to requirements;

==Annotation==

Towns "not far from Manchester":- '''''Black'''''burn; '''''Bury'''''.
Please note that in colloquial British English the ''e'' in the word ''berry'' is a ''schwa'', hence "blackberry" (the fruit, ''Rubus fruticosus'', not the computerised whatnot) is pronounced "blackbury" or "blackb'ry" by most British people.

In [[Book:Johnny_and_the_Bomb|Johnny and the Bomb]], the Blackbury bypass is described as carrying multiple HGVs "taking a million English razor blades from Sheffield to Italy", which would suggest it is located somewhere in northern Nottinghamshire between the M1 (the most direct north-south route between Sheffield and London) and the A1 (the most direct north-south route between Sheffield and the major European container ports). Based on this, its most likely real-life counterparts or near-lookalikes are Worksop, Newark and Mansfield.

Grimethorpe is a small former colliery village in South Yorkshire, located between Barnsley and Wakefield. It has never been a major population centre, and has never been big enough to have its own police station.

It is also worth pointing out the presence of a charming location in rural Oxfordshire called '''Blewbury''' (which sports a hostelry called ''The Blueberry'', natch).

[[Category:Johnny Maxwell|Blackbury]]
[[Category:Locations|Blackbury]]

Klatchian Mist

2020-11-27T21:30:14Z

Lias Bluestone:

An [[Ankh-Morpork]] metaphor for ''a thing that does not exist''. In [[Überwald]] there is a similar expression: [[The Fifth Elephant (expression)|"The Fifth Elephant"]]. (Corgi PB, pp 88-89)

[[Klatch (country)|Klatch]], everyone knows, is an arid desert country with little moisture, mist, or rain. Add the ''foreignness'' of Klatch, where everything is strange, untrustworthy and mysterious and you get a sense of fraud or deceit.

== Annotation ==

Idiomatic in Yorkshire and Lancashire is the phrase '''Scotch mist''' for something that is hard to find or does not exist.

The same phrase is also idiomatic in some locales in the following dialectical structure:

:"I can't find my [domestic object of some kind]."
:"Well, what's that?" (Pointing to it in plain view.) "Scotch mist?"

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]