Where was Pratchett Taking Ankh-Morpork in Discworld? (warning, spoilers in the open!)

Cafe Society
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WARNING: Spoilers for the Discworld Novels ahead!

So, after banging my head to near-death against my desk as I read on news and current events, my bludgeoned mind turned, as it does, to happier thoughts. Specifically, all the joy that Terry Pratchett had given me over the years. Yes, some books are better than others, and some characters resonate with me while others leave me flat, but overall, it was always a fun place to visit.
With TP’s passing, we will likely never know for certain if he had any sort of final destination (joke based on horrible movie omitted) for the characters of Discworld, but I’m certain we all had our own theories. I’m going to share mine, and would love for you to share yours as well.

The Great Social Experiment - Lord Havelock Vetinari was always the man to plan ahead, prepared for any possible future. While rarely surprised, he was able to use his considerable intellect to adapt and overcome. But there is one thing no human on Discworld escapes, and that is Death. So what is his plan for his inevitable end, whether by the hands of one lucky assailant on that day he’s too tired or old, or just the failing of his body?

I’m not sure he would have had one at the start of the series, but with the introduction of Carrot, I believe the wheels began to turn. Of course, Carrot was useful in that he (much like Vetinari for that matter) put the order of the city before his personal profit. Not to mention, as he was loyal to the idea of law and order, any effort to put the true king on the throne would have to convince Carrot that their cabal would do a better job than Ventinari - a very high bar to set.

Later, with Vimes becoming the highest ranking noble in the City, he becomes more secure - now any faction trying to build an alliance of nobility has to co-opt or eliminate Vimes, a man who is notoriously hard to kill. And again, another man who values order, as well as justice (if he can swing it), but who is lacking in personal ambition.

So both are good for the city, but neither have any desire to be a ruler. And while both are thinking, able, and intelligent men (even if Vimes denies it), neither are particularly flexible. They both accept all the gray parts of the city as a part of the current order, but both at some level would prefer it gone. After all, they identify themselves strongly by their position in the Watch.

And finally, the third piece arrived. Moist von Lipwig. A conman, thief, and swindler. A man who redefines himself constantly and is constantly plotting for the next event. A man, in many ways, similar to Venitari himself, but lacking direction beyond the next payday and thrill. Such a tool put itself into his hands, and proved able indeed.

So with these three, the Patrician builds his future, one hopefully more stable that the one he has created around himself. Likely using a faked health emergency, Venitari brings these three to him and explains that his time is nearly up. That after him, all three will be targeted by those who want to rule the city as they have great influence. That the time of one man, one vote must end - because few men will put the city first.

The Plan - for legitimacy, Carrot will become King, a role he has rejected, even if he does his best to serve his subjects. For fear of a future tyrant, it will be a constitutional monarchy, most likely modeled on the UK, with Carrot having limited personal power, but great power of influence, something he has always had.

Vimes, despite hating his role, would be the King’s support in the new House of Lords, and the return of influence of those landed families would buy their agreement to something they would otherwise never accept, the creation of a House of Commons. Likely, they’d make sure the power of the purse was with the Commons, but the pomp and circumstance with the lords. Combined with the considerable influence of Vime’s wife among the ladies of quality, it wouldn’t quite end up as a rubber stamp, but would not hold much in the way of true power.

And Moist . . . well, he is as he always has been, a literal self-made man. He’s an immigrant who has made himself and city wealthy, and is married to a local girl who is one of the most open-handed employers in the city. He is the perfect man to lead the House of Commons and the top pick for Prime Minister. He would complain at length, but enjoy the building of support, and coaxing people to do what is needed for the future. And he’d love every minute of it.

Anyway - Discworld is too huge a subject to cover in a single post, full of characters great and small with their own stories and ambitions. I’m sad of course that we’ll never have an end, but hey, this way we all get to dream a little dream. Tell me your stories!

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Could be, makes sense.

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Not so sure about King Carrot, but otherwise I do think Vetinari was grooming Vimes and Moist to be his replacement(s). However, I also don’t think Terry ever planned to get there. It was an endgame that was only to be interpreted like you have, a possible future plan, not a plot to be implemented in any “last” book.

I think if he had any ending in mind at all, it’s exactly what he wrote in The Shepherd’s Crown, not to use Vetinari or Ankh-Morpork, but using Granny’s death as a symbolic ending of the series, through which he also used as an analogy for his own passing.

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I think I said a few times that I’d like to see a book just of the death scenes of all of the major characters, probably set aside to be published after Pratchett’s own death. I know it sounds morbid, but with the way Pratchett wrote death scenes, not really.

Granny was one in particular that I wanted to see, and so I found The Shepherd’s Crown satisfying. But I still want to see just how Carrot, Vimes, Vetinari, Rincewind, and Lipvig interact with DEATH.

To the topic, Lipvig was certainly being groomed, but I think that Vetinari would keep the same basic structure as he had: Lipvig as Patrician, with Vimes and Carrot to keep him honest (er, honest-ish).

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The only thing I would change about Granny’s death would be to have her holding a sign reading, “I am ded.” And in case anyone forgot, in one of the earlier books Granny would hold a sign reading “I am not ded” when her mind left her body to scurry around in animal form. I also found The Shepherd’s Crown to be satisfying as well. The book was unfinished, there are some threads to the story that are never fully fleshed out or resolved, but it was a satisfying conclusion to the series.

The possibility of Carrot becoming king of a constitutional monarchy crossed my mind at some point in the series. I don’t know if that’s where Vetinari was going, he most certainly had a plan for what to do after his eventual demise. But I prefer the more personal ending we got with Granny’s death and Tiffany taking over. Even without Granny, life continues on the Discworld.

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I’d read those books. And probably like them more than his last 2-3 Discworld novels.

Carrot as the true, hidden King was lampshaded a few times by Pratchett.

EDIT: And I’d really like to read @Chronos 's idea for a book too. IIRC, everyone gets the afterlife and experience with Death that they thought they deserved. I’m probably remembering it wrong though.

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There’s almost no detail about the afterlife itself. The closest we see to that is in Small Gods, where there’s a desert to be crossed, but that rather implies that there is something across that desert, and no clue is given as to what that is (though it’s implied that Brutha gets something good). And there’s a short story (which may or may not be set in Discworld) where DEATH himself expresses uncertainty over whether Heaven and Hell exist.

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I agree with those who think Vetenari was grooming Lipwig as his future replacement. Carrot would refuse the crown and Vimes would go spare if he had to be part of them rather than us. Because Moist was such a conniving bastard, he’d be the perfect Patrician, especially if Havelock took out some insurance on the smooth transition of power the same way Topsy Lavish did.

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Great discussion all. To clear up the understanding on my points (and again this is IMHO) - one of the most common tropes we see in Discworld is change, new technologies, new peoples, new understandings. This is the main reason I always pictured Vetinari planning for something different, rather than a new Patrician. Although, granted, Moist would be very capable of becoming a Patrician that would convince you it was for your own good!
The thing with Carrot though, is that he accepts all the responsibility of being a King in his attitudes and roles, but feels a King is no longer needed - indeed the city has moved on and is strong on it’s own, without one. The only way I see Carrot as King is my scenario, where he realizes he can do more for the city, by being it’s moral heart as it were, but simultaneously stripping it of power to control, in this case as a very limited constitutional monarch. It would give him more ways to serve, as well as protect against future mad kings. I absolutely believe that Carrot is practical enough to worry that his own children or grandchildren may not be as ‘good’ as he is.
And the great thing about Vimes is that he both an idealist as well as a horrible cynic. He’s already the Duke, he’s already stuck doing diplomacy, he’s already forced to be civil with the aristocrats in AP. Being in the house of Lords would be more of the same, and he’d go spare, but . . . he’d be in the position to force order on it, which at some level he’d love. And, absolutely worst case scenario, he and his heirs would be in a position to control a future Carrot descendant who wants to ‘restore’ the past monarchy.

Meh, I spend too much time on this, and I absolutely agree with @GuanoLad that Pratchett was never intending to get there, that the road was more interesting than the destination. But as I said many words ago at the beginning, that it would be a key change, a handing over of the guard as it were, which I have always found at the heart of Discworld.

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I Aten’t Ded .

I doubt she’d have wanted to hold up a sign declaring the affirmative.

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The sign wouldn’t be for Granny it’s for whoever discovered the body. But since people felt her passing I guess it was unnecessary.

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IMHO, the sign was so some ignorant fool wouldn’t assume she was dead and act to her detriment as a result. I can’t see her caring if some ignorant fool assumed she was alive, as there’s no way said fool could act to her detriment.

At least that’s me applying headology to Granny Weatherwax, which could in itself be the act of some ignorant fool.

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In the event of a Carrot monarchy (of any flavor), do we assume that he marries Angua? If so, do we assume that their union produces issue? ISTM that the heir apparent should be sent to the Ramtops to be essentially raised by his grandparents and their kin.

Frequent visits from Mum and Dad, of course.

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The name of the character is “Death”. HE SPEAKS LIKE THIS but his name is not affected by his speech patterns.

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I don’t think Vimes would tolerate a King in any form, even if it was Carrot. Not Sam. I also don’t see Carrot accepting the position, either. He was raised better than that. I know Angua wouldn’t want him to take it.

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Pratchett was not a monarchist, I don’t see a return of monarchy to A-M in any form being his plan for the future. I’m pretty sure the implied future was just Moist replaces Vetinari, end of story.

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This. Carrot would take over from Vimes (who thought he and Vetinari were about the same age) as Commander of the Watch in the fullness of time, whereas the Patrician’s job requires the twistiness of Lipwig. The fact that Lipwig wouldn’t want the job is one of the reasons he’d be perfect for it.

Also remember that Vetinari hated the idea of democracy, so he’s not going to put an elected Parliament in place.

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Yeah, exactly.

There’s a bit in Night Watch where Lu Tze explains parallel world theory to Vimes, and finishes with reference to the world where Sam Vimes murdered Sybil.
…
And then explains that there’s no such world because anyone who did that would be so fundamentally altered from Sam Vimes that it’s incoherent to conceive them as being the same person, even if they share a name. A person’s circumstances can vary in different worlds, but their core personality won’t.

The Sam Vimes we know would never murder Sybil; it’s just as obviously true that the Sam Vimes we know would never take any kind of leading role in a monarchy, constitutional or otherwise. The descendant of Old Stoneface serving under a King? Not even for Carrot.

Vetinari had worked hard to create a system where (imperceptibly) the main power players of Ankh Morpork came to realise that their best interests were served by maintaining said system, and specifically maintaining Vetinari in place. (Hence the threats to Vetinari coming from bitter newly powerless aristocrats, incomers to the city etc.) The ultimate end goal of such a system is that it keeps running even without Vetinari. We saw hints of this is Raising Steam where there is a essentially a coalition of forces (Harry King, Moist, Vimes, Vetinari) who may bicker with each other but are on the same page with respect to where Ankh Morpork needs to go. (In fact, one of the problems with RS was that there was never any genuine sense of peril or opposition - just a series of entertaining minor difficulties).

There’s a plausible post-Vetinari system which is essentially government by council (which in fact already exists under Vetinari) with the question of who leads the council being fudged politely because no one wants to tell Vimes that it’s him.

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Well, he was a big proponent of “One Man, One Vote”
He was the Man, and he had the Vote :slight_smile:

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Although I like the OP’s speculations, ISTM that being an assassin is a huge advantage for Vetinari that neither Moist nor any other potential replacement has. That skill and mindset has frequently been key to his survival, at least as much as his clever maneuvering to balance the various powers within A-M.