Men At Arms: (Discworld Novel 15) (Discworld series)

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Edward d'Eath is probably the closest any Discworld villain comes to this, as his reasons for wanting to restore monarchy are based on a misguided and idealistic impression of that system, and he's used as a pawn by less well-intentioned characters. Plus, it turns out he's been dead most of the book, and the only person he actually killed was a horrible accident. fernandan on Reading The Wheel of Time: Taim Tells Lies and Rand Shares His Plan in Winter’s Heart (Part 3) 5 hours ago Tranquil Fury: Angua finds Vimes' notebook with the names of women and sums of money, and is upset that he's spending his money on prostitutes despite being engaged to be married. Carrot, without looking at her, without even raising his voice, shows her that those are the pensions he pays (out of his own salary) to the widows and orphans of the Watch. It's worth noting that this is quite likely the angriest Carrot has ever been in the entire series- he grips Angua by the wrist and refuses to release her or budge an inch until Sergeant Colon comes in and explains who all the women on the list really are. Resist the Beast: Vimes does this when the Gonne tries to take control of him. It will become a running theme for his character in later books.

She’s got to marry someone once she’s turned up. Can’t have unmarried brides flapping around the place, being a danger to society.” 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. Sub-Par Supremacist: The main subplot involves a flatulence-prone dog named Big Fido advocating that dogs should rise up against their human masters, and makes long speeches about the nobility and savagery of wolves despite never having met one and being a tiny poodle himself. No prizes for guessing which short, grandiloquent politician Big Fido was based on.Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot." The story of Fingers-Mazda stealing fire from the gods, here a one-off footnote joke, forms the basis of the plot of The Last Hero.

Meta example: The reader is led to believe that Vimes objects to Angua joining the watch because she's a woman. It's really because she's a werewolf. Beano the clown isn't comforted when Edward d'Earth says his death was "nothing personal." In fact, that makes him feel even worse - he died for what amounts to no reason.Meanwhile, Captain Samuel Vimes, captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, prepares for his imminent wedding to Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork. He also must deal with a new group of recruits that he has been required to take on for the sake of diversity: Cuddy (a dwarf), Detritus (a troll), and Angua (a werewolf—but Carrot is unaware of this, and believes she is included because she is female). When a string of seemingly random murders occur among the Guilds of the city, Lord Vetinari forbids Vimes to investigate in a successful ploy to ensure Vimes does investigate. Cuddy and Detritus are forced to work together, resulting in them becoming friends as they overcome their deep-seated racial enmity. Angua works with the talking dog Gaspode, and also forms a romantic connection with Carrot, who loses his virginity to her but handles the discovery that she is a werewolf poorly. The Patrician’s smile remained, but his face seemed to pull away from it, leaving it stranded and all alone in the world. Gaspode tells Angua that other dogs don't bother him because "I got the Power". When he is eventually forced to use it against Big Fido's minions, this turns out to be The Power of Speech, something Hidden in Plain Sight all along because we always knew Gaspode can speak like a human; to dogs, this is effectively a Compelling Voice.

Eldritch Abomination: Played for Laughs with the shadowy lemma, an animal mentioned in one of the footnotes. The creature exists in only two dimensions and eats mathematicians. Terry's household nursery rhyme book must strike a balance between these two versions. The rhyme is said to be about the mob of Dutchmen that William of Orange brought over with him to England in 1688, with the "one in a velvet gown" being the Prince himself. It has also bee said to be a reference to Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, forcing monks to beg on the streets for a living. Pun-Based Title: "Men-at-arms" is a real phrase for soldiers or guards, but "arms" can also refer to weapons. So we have "men at arms" who are also men (though Angua would object) "at" (against) "arms" (the Gonne). The "Men" part itself refers to a major plot thread in the book; the hiring of non-men (a dwarf, a troll and a w erewolf in particular) into the Watch, aka the "men at arms". Making this an even more convoluted pun. Red Herring: It turns out Edward d'Eath, despite all the foreshadowing surrounding his unstable mind and, you know, family name, only ever killed one person during the story, and that was quite by accident. Heroic BSoD: Detritus, after Cuddy is killed. Subverted with Carrot after Angua is shot; there's a different reason why he missed a wedding to stay with her. Those bullets weren't silver.

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Inner Monologue: Parodied. After Carrot chases Angua out of his bedroom, his inner voice chews him out for driving away the one he loves. No, wait, it's Gaspode. How well Terry did this is still a little dumbfounding to me. All of his characters seemed pretty single-sided at the beginning. And, they didn’t really get that much deeper as the story progressed. Yet, they became irresistible. Disappointing Heritage Reveal: Big Fido the poodle is a canine supremacist who praises the ideal of wolves over civilized dogs. While he never finds out about the real thing, Angua's narration makes it clear he would suffer from this, as real wolves are nowhere near as big or strong as Fido makes them out to be and don't match his highly romanticized concept of the Noble Wolf. Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne C. (2018). "Shoes, the Sole of Fairy Tale: Stepping Between Desire and Damnation". Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition: What Cinderella Wore. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.180, 213. ISBN 978-3-319-91100-7. Also there are a couple of errors on the Josh Kirby version, such as Cuddy not having a beard. Several of Kirby's covers show dwarves as completely different to how Pratchett describes them.