oh! Also I should take this opportunity to air my crack theory about Night Watch, to wit: Ned Coates is a time-traveling grown-up Young Sam.
My evidence:
Ned is the only other Watchman who is new to the squad, and new to Ankh-Morpork.
He is supposedly the only person who knew the real John Keel, but he never calls Sam out for it. If there ever was a real Ned Coates, and he really knew John Keel, we only have Ned’s word for it.
When he and Sam spar, he fights just as dirty as Sam does, and claims John Keel taught him the tricks Sam uses himself.
He’s protective of Vimesy, moreso than other Watchmen though he’s known them all for the same length of time.
He is clearly up to SOMETHING; Sam thinks he’s one of the real revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Winder, but none of the other revolutionaries interact with him or seem to know him that I can recall.
When Sam admits he’s a time traveler, he’s unfazed; his question “From how far back?” would make perfect sense as “from how far back in my timeline, where you are my dad?”
He supposedly dies in the last fight, but Sam doesn’t see it, and Sam supposedly died in that fight too.
Lu-Tze is 100% good enough to have two time-travelers operating at the same time without breaking the timeline; he does, however, worry about the unusual strain he’s creating.
So, let’s say an adult Young Sam has a time-travel accident. Possibly after some sort of major falling-out with his dad, one that’s got him still pissed off at him. And now he’s stuck in a vastly more shitty version of the city he grew up in, and the versions of his dad he has met so far are a) a dumb kid and b) kind of a dick. He is not having a great time. He really, really wants to go home, but first he has a revolution to see through.
Just consider the fact that Vetinari wears the lilac for a second.
It’s one hell of a political statement, coming from a man who is typically all about being very subtle and understated and keeping his cards close to his chest. Just consider how much of a—
aha… ballsy move that is.
He’s openly stating with each passing year that he believed in the Glorious Revolution, that he believed that Lord Winder should have been assassinated, that he believed that police brutality on that scale needs to be stamped out once and for all.
That he believed, and still believes, that unfit rulers should be overthrown.
He meets with aristocrats and the “perennial waverers” as they are termed in the book with a lilac bloom pinned to his robe. He wears a symbol of the hopes and dreams of his youth, every year.
It almost reads as a throwaway statement at the end of an incredibly emotional book, but it’s far from it. There’s so much meaning in the fact that Vetinari wears the lilac and visits the little graveyard each year under the cover of darkness. Is it any wonder that he wound down a corrupt City Watch, and is so vehemently against the prospect of war and loss of life?
This 25th of May and the People’s Republic of Treacle Mine Road hits a bit different this year after 2020 and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
I’m thinking of how furious Vimes is at the idea of a statue and a slogun to commemorate. I’m thinking of how my city painted ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ in giant yellow letters on my city’s main downtown through street and then six months later and one neighborhood over kettled and mass arrested sit-in protestors outside the police station and destroyed all their belongings in the tent city that had grown up around the protest. I’m thinking of how many of the original Ferguson organizers are dead now.
Today is a day to commmorate and honor Sir Pterry ofc, but I think in the spirit of his work it’s also a day to reflect on what happens to people who do the job they didn’t have to do, and about the people who are doing those jobs now. And to get angry about it. We’re posting the lilacs, but were we there?
Night Watch is the winner of the “how many people are there named Samuel Vimes in the book?” Award, coming in with a whopping THREE Samuel Vimes! Congratulations!
