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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Pratchett thus has sympathy for the idealists - consider Sergeant Carrot, or the good Omnians like Brutha or Mightily Oats - but ultimately he's closer to Vimes or Weatherwax or Susan Sto Helit.

And even more importantly, he is closer to Vimes as a matter of worldview, but he isn't on Vimes' side because there are no two sides to this question. Carrot and Vimes are absolutely and always on the same side. (And the one time it comes up, Vimes and Brutha are also on the same side). In the Discworld, Good is good no matter whether it is real or not. And part of what is good is systems that work - Vetinari reads as an amoral snake, but he is also consistently on the same side as Vimes and Carrot because what matters is that Anhk-Morpok remains safe, free and prosperous.

Vetinari may be very scary, but I can't remember a single not only evil but even ordinarily corrupt thing Pratchett would make him do. He's essentially a saint philosopher-king, or a patron god of what government bureaucracy would be if only it could be what statolatry adepts envision it to be.

There's an ongoing joke that Vetinari has mimes tortured for yucks, but the deeper commentary is that his corruption is good governance. At the end of almost every Vimes book, he makes not-very-subtle notices of what the guards need (aka he thinks is just), right after he's done some significant task or discovered some information that gives him power.

Vimes is a good man, and Vetinari at least isn't a fan of letting bad people have power over him, so his demands are things like 'better support for widows' instead of 'throw a pile of money into my bank account'. But it's the same route.

Before the events of the various Watch books, policing in Anhk-Morpok is provided by a criminal gang that has cut a corrupt deal with Vetinari (the Thieves' Guild) to fund itself by explicitly permitted arbitrary confiscation from citizens (thief licenses). That is corrupt by modern standards.

Vetinari comes across, and this is deliberate on the part of Pratchett who has said that he is modelled on, among others, Machiavelli, as someone who would cheerfully engage use aggressive war, assassination, torture etc. as policy tools if there was a way to do so to advance what he really cares about, which is the good of the city. But Pratchett's worldview (which I share) means that there rarely is - Ankh-Morpok works as well as it does because those things are rare. Also, if there was wetwork to be done for raison d'etat then he would outsource it to one of the dodgier guilds, so his hands would stay clean from the reader's perspective.

to fund itself by explicitly permitted arbitrary confiscation from citizens (thief licenses). That is corrupt by modern standards.

Modern standards are very, very recent... For example, remember letters of marque? But even now, there are regulatory agencies, financed by the fines and settlements they extract. Before SCOTUS cut down the Chevron doctrine, they pretty much have been kings in their own little kingdoms. And as we are witnessing now, while in theory they are under democratic control, in practice everything is set up to make it next to impossible to cut down or remove their privileges. So yes, they are not openly called "Thieves' Guild" but something like "Commission on Enhancement and Regularization of Code Compliance" or something like that. But if they get talking to you, you'd wish you were mugged ten times over instead. And yet, most of the people do not consider them corrupt - in fact, most of the people are blissfully ignorant of their existence. Of course, "robbery licenses" are a comic exaggeration, but once you start thinking about it, it's not that far from what we have... Oh, and I didn't even mention California's "theft under $900 is legal" bright idea.

And also, why Thieves' Guild deal is corrupt for Vetinari? As far as I remember, he personally gets nothing out of the deal, except the crime being regularized and institutionalized.

Technically as former leader(or at least member) of the Assassin's guild, and current leader "behind the throne", it was implied that he killed his way into being the ruler of Anhk-Morpork. He might technically rule now with the current consent of the legitimate king/heir, but he did murder his way to the top in typical tyrant fashion.

Not necessarily the good example of morals.

he killed his way into being the ruler of Anhk-Morpork

The previous ruler was literally Mad Lord Snapcase (described by wiki as "sadistic, and extremely fond of torture"), so I think he was clearly entitled to the "Kingslayer exception" here, if you get what I mean. I can't count getting rid of such ruler as an evil deed, not unless every other hero in every other fairy tale who overthrows a mad tyrant is deemed "evil".

I might be getting my memory mixed up, checking the wiki, I've not read Interesting Times. I was going from memory of Guards Guards. But apparent it was Suffer-Not-Injustice Stoneface Vimes (what a name) who killed the king and ushered in the age of Patrician-Tyrants. I think Vetinari's general vibe is more that he is supremely pragmatic. Killing and torture, is a tool in his toolbox, I got the impression it's not his favorite but he wouldn't also not. There has a certain moral compass to it, not necessarily evil, but also not really good either.

I don't think he as a person recognizes good and evil - unlike e.g. Vimes who does. Vimes is lawful good, Vetinari is lawful neutral - he's just optimizing for certain functions (prosperity of AM, preservation of his own rule, manageability in order to achieve the above) and if somebody needs to be tortured, so be it, but there's no pleasure in it. Basically ideal common good maximizer, with common good defined by him alone, only Pratchett writes him as actually hypercompetent, so his understanding of common good is pretty close to the actual common good. If people like that could really exist, they'd probably made not a bad king, too bad it's all fantasy.

Vetinari is possibly good in a utilitarian sense, just not in most virtue or deontological senses. The vibe I get is a cynical "it's okay for me to be bad enough to prevent my being replaced with something even worse". He does seem to be grooming people like Vimes and von Lipwig to actually make things better, but even his attempts to delegate strike me as a mix of pessimism ranging from "I could retire before I'm killed if things go well enough" to "I could need scapegoats if things go poorly enough"

Yes, in the the utilitarian sense if we include the caveat that he is, without a doubt, an egoist. He does want what is best for Ankh-Morpork, but what is best for Ankh-Morpork is Him. Common failure state of Tyrants in general. The city is lucky he is a philosopher-king. I think he wants competent people doing stuff, idk if its exactly retiring or scapegoats as much that recognizes talent, he's very good at finding and applying leverage, talent working for you makes things easier and better for the city. Happy populaces means less attempts to overthrow him.

He does want what is best for Ankh-Morpork, but what is best for Ankh-Morpork is Him. Common failure state of Tyrants in general.

Yeah, but the trouble is that the other failure state is "when the tyrant is gone, people fighting over the power vacuum tear the place apart". Monarchy (with one well-defined rule of succession or another) was actually a valuable social technology at one point, and it's one that Ankh-Morpork doesn't currently have access to!

It's entirely possible that, even if Vetinari decides that Carrot (or someone else, considering Carrot's objections) would be a better leader, he still doesn't see any way he can name a successor and retire or die without that successor being under more threat than he was and the city needing a successor to the successor in short order.

It's a shame we never got to see how Pratchett would have had things all turn out. I like the "Vetinari tries to leave von Lipwig in charge, and Moist weasels out of it by hastily inventing democracy" fan theory, personally. That's not a story, though; you could describe most of the Discworld plots that plainly and unimpressively. The stories didn't get great until you got down into the details.

Certainly for me, as a Christian, one of the things that made Pratchett not-intolerable was his sense of genuine sympathy for those who want to make sense of the world and do right. If you sincerely and humanely asks those questions, Pratchett is on your side.

'I feel I should thank you,' said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase.

'For helping you across the mountains, you mean?'

'The world is... different.' Oats's gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy.'

For the first time since he'd met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she'd heard.

'That's a start, then,' she said.

Pratchett himself is not a believer, but his worldview allows for believers who are genuinely good people, whom he regards as friends and allies.

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