literally I am just adding to my collection

dog motif this, i'm his guard that. can we talk about the disability i want to talk about how vimes knows vetinari's body in maybe the second most intimate way (being aware of what a disabled person's Situation is). everyone knows it's OOC for vetinari to ride off, but vimes says character be damned i don't think he could ride a horse. yes it's charged and sort of funny but in feet of clay when vimes wants to stay with him and it's transparently to tend to him - i can tell you there is nothing more truly an act of love than not for a second thinking you are a burden for your illness and impairment, just immediately wanting to shove everything else in your life off the table and be with you even if it doesn't do any good.

vetinari is fascinating because the patricianship really does not work with anyone else. like. it IS a seat of absolute power. he IS a tyrant. but he genuinely has the objective interest of the city at heart. he can hardly be self-serving as a leader because to him being self-serving means serving the city (insert that one post that theorized that vetinari was like the anthropomorphic personification of ankh-morpork, i can't remember who the op was). he's manipulative, he's an Assassin, he's purposely threatening and he has almost no true friends, AND he can also push the city in the right direction with such self-sacrificing directive that it shifts from the ankh-morpork of night watch to the better ankh-morpork of going postal (or the 'present' of night watch; idk, i think going postal is the latest version of AM i've read so far). in the hands of anyone with even a fraction of a percent more selfishness, the patricianship becomes a true tyranny. but because vetinari is such a weird bastard, what's broken starts to be fixed, rather than be built into something that consolidates his power. si non confectus, non reficiat, but also whatever the latin is for i'm on an altar for this monster of a city