We’re back and ready to watch some Entertainment that will unfortunately serve as catnip to the Lords and Ladies.
Summary
Ridcully and his coach crew arrive at the bridge to Lancre, and the troll that guards it makes the mistake of upsetting the Librarian. They head into town and run into Shawn, to whom they hand off the post. Verence shows up for the helpful book he ordered for him and Magrat, but a spelling error means he actually ordered a book on martial arts. Jason Ogg’s crew of players wake up, having slept by the dancers all night. They head back into town and all go home. As all the preparations for the royal wedding begin, Magrat is busy coming to terms with the fact that she has no interest in being queen. She goes to see Diamanda and finds that Granny has ordered iron to be placed around her to keep the elves away. Magrat thinks it’s nonsense and insists the iron be got rid of. She goes to speak to Verence about all of this, but finds that he’s not in his room—she also finds that Verence doesn’t sleep in the royal bed, preferring to sleep at the door, just as he did when he was a fool. She also finds a folded piece of paper.
Buy the Book
Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak
Outside, everyone is setting up and Nanny gets a little wooed by Casanunda, and Granny runs into Ridcully for the first time in decades (since she refused his marriage proposal). He uses magic to bring them to the troll bridge and talk about their affair in youth. Ridcully begins talking about Ponder Stibbons and his theories about parallel realities where possibilities came to pass, and suddenly Granny realizes that she’s not about to die—she’s just keying into a life she didn’t live. She insists they head back to the castle, so she can get things sorted. In the meanwhile, everyone’s trying to get Magrat to come out of her room for the Entertainment, but she refuses. Nanny insists that Verence leave it to her, but Magrat won’t explain why she’s upset. Nanny goes for her dinner with Casanunda. A unicorn shows up in Granny and Ridcully’s path, and since the wizard can’t magic them back to town, they’re forced to run and jump into the river.
Magrat tries on her wedding dress, thinking angrily about how she was wronged. Nanny enjoys her meal with Casanunda, and he enjoys it too despite the lack of naughty business. Granny and Ridcully emerge at a weir downstream and head back to town again; they get lost, but Granny presses on. Diamanda wakes and slips out of her room. Shawn hears a noise and goes to investigate and finds Diamanda at the door of the elf prisoner’s dungeon cell; she tells him to take off his iron chainmail and he refuses and runs. Magrat hears singing and opens the door only to have Shawn run in and tell her that elves are coming for them. He suggests that she stay locked in her room while he leaves with the key and goes to find help. Magrat agrees, but realizes that if Shawn is caught with the key, it could get taken from him. There’s a scream and then scrabbling at the door with the key. The elves burst into the room only to find Magrat outside, climbing the keep wall in her wedding gown. She gets into a guest bedroom, hides under a bed after putting the garderobe lid up, and when the elf goes to check, she hits it over the head with a chair and sends it down the chute. She continues on her way through the castle and comes across a royal portrait she never saw, of Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered, one of Lancre’s founders. She comes across Greebo, who is terrified, and takes him with her, dispatches another elf, and throws herself into the armory.
Granny finally realizes that they’re being “mazed” and that’s why they’re not getting out of the woods. Granny fights with Ridcully, who now has enough power back to get himself to town. She tells him he has to go, then tricks him into it and waits for the elf queen. Magrat finds the armor of Queen Ynci and puts it on. The elves have Shawn tell her to come out and she does, proceeding to lay waste to the lot with a bunch of iron weaponry and Greebo angrily deployed from a box. The one that’s left alive is chained up in the armory. They come across Diamanda, and Magrat tears up her wedding dress to stitch the girl up and bandage her wounds. Then she gets on an elven horse and goes to fight for the kingdom (against Shawn’s protests). At the center of town she begins to have doubts and goes to the home of Weaver the thatcher, asking where Verence is. Weaver explains what happened during the Entertainment, how the elves showed up, and how they don’t know where the king is. Magrat decides to head where it all happened: the Dancers.
Commentary
Similarly to the last section, not much is happening here until toward the end as the elves show up and start causing trouble. But we’re still spending time with each witch of the coven separately; Granny is reconnecting with Ridcully; Nanny is on her fancy dinner date with Casanunda; Magrat is fuming over everyone manipulating her. Each of them is accompanied by a counterpart who has something to say over the current state of their life; Ridcully wanting to reminisce over the past and what might have been between him and Esme; Casanunda learning new things about desire as he watches Nanny eat; and Greebo (and Shawn afterward) bearing witness to Magrat’s come-to-Ynci moment of actualization. It’s fun having them all in different corners to examine each witch a little better.
Magrat’s transformation into a Boudicca-style warrior is an effective culmination of everything that Pratchett has been doing with the character since her introduction. Magrat’s struggles are often bound up in the fact that’s she’s a thoroughly wistful person who wants to believe in slightly soppy and impossible things. She’s an optimist where the rest of her coven are realists (even if they both go about the realism very differently). But there’s still an advantage to her perspective, despite how silly it can sometimes seem—because optimism unfulfilled can beget a fierce drive to right things. That’s what we witness as she dons armor and gets on an elven horse and decides that she’s going to take back this kingdom.
There are clear opposing modes of thought between Nanny and Granny here that also bear some closer examination. While the two aren’t at odds before being thrown into very different evenings (albeit both with potential paramours), Granny’s insistence throughout Ridcully’s starry-eyed musings is perfectly clear—this doesn’t matter because it’s personal. Personal things aren’t important. Ridcully begs to differ on that front, but it doesn’t matter because Granny doesn’t agree, and we all know that no one changes her mind.
On the other side of this, the whole town is in the throes of elven influence, and here’s Nanny, having a feast with a potential lover because she wants to and she’s never done it, so why not? And that would seem to suggest that the personal is very important. But I think the real point is that neither of these perspectives are inherently correct; they’re just true for Nanny and Granny in these moments. Sometimes the personal is what’s important, and sometimes it’s not, and some people will boil that down to a philosophy, which is all well and good. You do you, as we say.
The argument between Granny and Ridcully is actually about the pointlessness of wondering over what might have been. The concept of infinite parallel realities where every possibility occurred is fun to think over in theory, of course. But mulling it over to distraction is a waste of time when you’ve got a real life and real problems that need tending to in the present. There’s no practicality in that, and we all know Esme Weatherwax won’t stand for it.
Asides and little thoughts:
- “Well, you know what they say. You can’t cross the same river twice, Archchancellor.” “Why not? This is a bridge.” You know what, Ridcully? …Fair.
- Magrat is thinking that Diamanda is gorgeous and also willing to stand up to Granny, and that she can’t wait for the young woman to get better and wake up so she can “envy her properly,” and I’m like, Magrat, honey, there’s a different option here…
- I kept thinking, Schrodinger’s Cat is being brought up an awful lot, why—and forgot the payoff with Greebo and the elf. Also, the idea of the elves having green-blue blood because their blood obviously can’t be iron-based (which was also true in Star Trek with the Vulcans, a fun parallel there).
Pratchettisms:
The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding.
Let’s be clear. Many authorities have tried to describe a hangover. Dancing elephants and so on are often employed for this purpose. The descriptions never work. They always smack of, hoho, here’s one for the lads, let’s have some hangover machismo, hoho, landlord, another nineteen pints of lager, hey, we supped some stuff last night, hoho…
Rdicully had never liked horses, animals which seemed to him to have only the weakest possible grip on sanity.
Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she’d reached the end of the bottle.
Hope showed in his voice like a toe peeking out from under a crinoline.
Magrat went on, like some clockwork toy that won’t change direction until it bumps into something.
Next week we finish the book!
As an aside, I don’t remember the circumstances but many many years ago in my youth I was mortified when I mispronounced marital as martial.
The Witches’ arcs are the best part of this section. Nanny once again proves herself the greatest of the three and her scenes teaching Casanunda about love are exquisite.
Granny is still Granny. She might have a soft spot for Ridcully but she’s not about to admit to it. I disagree with your view on her disavowal of personal feelings and problems. The key to Granny is that other people’s personal feelings and problems don’t take precedent but Granny’s personal feelings are always number one on her scale of importance.
We see yet again that Granny refuses to treat Magrat in any positive way. Her refusal to explain to Magrat why Diamanda needs to be surrounded by iron causes avoidable problems. Her letter to Verence regarding Magrat seems unfeeling, at best, and cruel, at worst.
It’s great to see Magrat as the avenging angel as she’s empowered by a portrait. After years of, let’s be honest, abuse she now has agency. In many ways she reminds me of Lady Sybil.
Along those lines, I wish the Watch could have taken on the Lords and Ladies in a book. They seem to be involved with every other race and are certainly known in the Ramtops.
“Magrat, honey, there’s a different option here” If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking I shudder to think what Terry would do with this. He’s brilliant in so many ways except for scenes that even hint at romance.
@1: ISTM that Granny differentiates between feelings (personal) and opinions (professional); she doesn’t have any time for the former, but rarely gives an inch on the latter. And given Magrat’s beliefs about elves, it’s not clear to me that telling her the iron is necessary would make a difference; Magrat claims elves are good (if they exist at all) — apparently she has to experience them herself to realize just how chaotic-evil they are.
Pratchettisms:
You couldn’t stamp your personality on that stone. It stamped back harder.
She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
I had forgotten Ponder’s observation that there probably wasn’t a deli anywhere. I remember enthusing to a Seattle resident about the beauties of a drive (off the highways, with many side trips) down the coast to San Francisco, and his response that there was no deli between Portland and SF. It was certainly an exaggeration, as Eugene is a hundred miles south and definitely urban/cosmopolitan (per Damon Knight, who lived in the area), but I sympathize with Ponder’s issue.
@2 – as far as Magrat and elves, Magrat explains that Goodie Whempler (maysherestinpeace) never told her about them (or the Dancers). It is Granny who refuses and forbids Nanny for naming them or explaining anything. “You probably won’t feel the same way about Them, is what I am saying,” said Granny.
Like you, I sympathize with Ponder, although I measure culture through cuisine rather than delis. I wonder why Terry chose delis since that sounds like a New York City thing. Perhaps the British concept of a deli is different.
Yeah, I’m guessing these elves have copper-rich blood, though the description of their blood as blue-green sounds closer in color to oxidized metallic copper than oxygenated hemocyanin (the copper-based oxygen carrier in the blue blood of some invertebrates). Outside the Discworld multiverse, I don’t know how common it is for elves in fantasy to have non-iron-based blood. Most Fae in the October Daye series have red humanoid blood — which makes very frequent appearances — despite their normal extreme aversion to “cold” iron.
I love the footnote about wigs. I want a wig with a take-away linguini shop. Well, not really. I just want the linguini shop. For headgear, I’d rather have Ridcully’s hat, with its many cupboards, pockets, and other storage spaces that he keeps full of useful items.
I’ve seen fanart of Granny and Ridcully’s meeting here, where each pictured the other’s younger self and Young Mustrum appropriately looked very much like Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
The way I habitually dither over decisions and then shame myself for them, I should try to remember Granny’s speech on being too certain about what you think the alternative outcome would have been.
We’re told that the Librarian usually insists that theatrical productions involve custard pies to the face and suchlike clownish antics. So he was guaranteed to be disappointed in Lancre, where the king is a former clown and would strongly dislike that sort of thing. The Lancre Morris Men are lucky the elves showed up before he could maim anyone with peanuts.
I’ve been trying to find information on the accuracy of the statement, also made in Good Omens, that bees will accept and ignore an intruder such as a wasp if it gets inside the hive. I find plenty about wasps (including yellowjackets and Asian giant hornets) attacking beehives when their other sources of sugar and insect prey diminish, and honeybees robbing other hives of honey when food is scarce, but little about bees mounting or not-mounting interior defenses. I see scattered information that some bees will sometimes fight and evict intruders inside a hive, such as hornets, bees, wax moths, or tiny beetles, but I don’t know how common that is. (Now I’m thinking about the “myrmecophile” beetles that specialize in more effectively infiltrating and exploiting ant colonies.)
I used to enjoy the scene of Casanunda giving Nanny a real Lancre Gorge. Now that I’ve got early satiety and need to spend every meal trying to eat juuuust the right small amount of food to sustain me for a little while without making me feel sick, a particular struggle at restaurants where the portions are nearly always too big for me, the scene just makes me sulk with envy.
@1: I’m not entirely sure Emmet is thinking of acknowledged desire and attempted romance as the alternative to resentful envy. I can see that possibility, as the people I’m attracted to are often among the people who I enviously want to be (though Magrat has never been notably attracted to women). But it seems most people are able to think someone is admirable and/or fortunate and simply…choose to admire them and wish them well. Whereas I tend to react by sliding into a pit of seething envy, sometimes to the point of powerful despair, and take opportunities to “envy them properly” as tools in my arsenal of emotional self-flagellation. If Magrat became able to non-enviously admire someone like Diamanda, and perhaps value herself more than she does, she would be happier.
Pratchettisms:
“All these highborn folks. I feel like a fish out of water.” “Well, the way I see it, it’s up to you to make your own water.”
“I wants your body, Mrs. Ogg.” “I’m still using it.”
Call-backs/Looking ahead:
There’s a call-back to the Archchancellor’s hat that caused quite a lot of trouble (in Sourcery) after developing a mind of its own. Ridcully is noted here to have put a stop to that risk by replacing it with his custom hat. But Ridcully will eventually say that he still has it and doesn’t use it because it “grumbles” a lot.
“Elves and humans breed all right, as if that’s anything to be proud of. You just get a race of skinny types with pointy ears and a tendency to giggle and burn easily in sunshine.” That’s a call-back to Moving Pictures when perhaps even a few elves, the most elusive of Discworld races were among the people drawn to Holy Wood. And it will come up again in Soul Music, with the running joke of a rock musician being told he looks “elvish.”
Food as an aphrodisiac was not a concept that had ever caught on in Lance, apart from Nanny Ogg’s famous carrot and oyster pie. Actually, Nanny invented a great many aphrodisiac food recipes.
It’s normally impossible to know with absolute certainty the precise outcome of an action you didn’t take. But we will see this happen on Discworld, as the result of an extremely rare freak accident in the bifurcating Trousers of Time, and it will be chilling.
@3 – A deli in the UK is a posh food shop. The deli sections of Harrods and Fortnum & Mason are insane and shouldn’t be approached when hungry unless you own at least half a county because otherwise they’ll bankrupt you, and you know a supermarket isn’t a discount one when it has a deli counter; Waitrose (stereotypical supermarket of the upper middle class) has pretty good ones in general.
An area without a deli by snobbish middle-class British standards would be an area entirely bereft of culture and thus not worth visiting.
@3: Magrat obviously learned something (Will Rogers style) somewhere about elves; I don’t know whether Goodie Whempler made a mistake in not telling Magrat about their true nature (leaving Magrat’s mind … open), or concluded (as Granny Weatherwax did later) that Magrat had already made up her mind and wouldn’t listen to the facts.
Deli is hardly limited to New York (notes this Bostonian, who frequently stops for pastrami in the further suburbs of Hartford); I suspect that in the US it’s an easy marker for this-area-supports-a-wide-variety-of-tastes (e.g., cuisine?). I’ve never looked for deli in London, and admit it’s not the first thing I would have thought of as a British mark of urbanism. Is curry (which we know exists on Discworld) so widespread that its absence wouldn’t be a marker?
@@.-@: I suspect that bees not defending against wasps once they’re inside is a common belief from lack of detailed observation. It’s definitely not 100% true now; there’s video of bees (IIRC available on the BBC) mobbing a wasp inside a hive (they cover it so thoroughly that it dies of ~heatstroke). OTOH, ISTR that the wasp had bulled in through the front entrance rather than getting into the depths of the hive from behind; it’s possible that some hives add “this is too big and doesn’t smell like a queen; mob it” to their behaviors and survive, and some don’t.
@@.-@ – I’m not entirely sure if Emmet is referring to that either but I’ve got a dirty old man mind.
Bee defense – apparently they have two defensive strategies (besides stinging) which are triggered by bees “shrieking”. One is to coat entrances with animal dung which confuses or repels predators. The other is to form a ball of bees around the predator which suffocates or overheats the predator. I’m not a bee expert but I noticed this article on murder hornets:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/asian-honeybees-shriek-to-alert-their-colonies-of-murder-hornet-attacks-180979046/
Ridcully’s hat – I assume the inspiration was the D&D transdimensional Bag of Holding and I wouldn’t mind having one too. Far in the club’s future we will see the concept explored in the Cabinet of Curiosity. As far as the original hat, I always visualize it as a grumbling Sorting Hat.
The Librarian – I think that Morris dancing might qualify as ‘clownish behavior’ to the Librarian so they’d be safe from a peanut barrage.
Greebo went off like a claymore mine.
Magrat was the nice one…who had just shot an elf in the eye through a keyhole.
Seriously, do not get between Magrat and what is hers; her king, her kingdom!
@5, that’s interesting. In the US every supermarket features a deli section, if not a particularly good one.
@5 – now it’s clear to me. I had singled out NYC because of their bagels. The rest of America thinks of delis as places which slice mass market meat for sandwiches.
@8 – Magrat reminds me of the tag line for Jaws – the Revenge “Now it’s Personal” (n.b. the movie was awful). It’s a fitting argument that personal can be important.
@7: Yes, but they weren’t planning to include Morris dancing in the play, though they were luckily prepared to do so.
The video I saw of Japanese honeybees heat-killing a giant Asian hornet “scout” said they allowed the hornet to enter the hive first, but I don’t know if that’s really true. I mostly found talk about wasps and robber bees getting into hives by overpowering or killing off the guards at major entrances, though beekeepers are advised to make sure the hives don’t have other gaps where invaders could enter. (I also found info on specialist “beewolf” wasp species that raise their larvae on venom-paralyzed bees in underground burrows, but it appears that those catch their prey outside the hive).
“Not only had the bandits invaded the village, but the Magnificent Seven had decided to go bowling instead.”
What is Verence complaining about here? Just Nanny’s previous comment?
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There are many references to “our mom”, “our Shawn”, etc., even when the speaker is not including the other person in the “our”. Is this a common dialect form somewhere?
@11
It’s a common form amongst many working class English people crossing several dialects. It’s used when referring to a member of the speaker’s family regardless of who the speaker is talking to.