#guards guards

its a heavy burden, having a heart as big as a city. and heavier still when it loves you back

Just something I thought was really interesting, when Terry describes Sybils size its almost always to emphasize her power and pressence not just a joke about her being fat. I've seen a few people talk about fatphobia in Terry books and while thats a bigger discussion I think his descriptions of Lady Sybil are a great example of how a character just being "fat" is not an insult to them in any way.

Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armor-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.

Lady Ramkin drawing herself up haughtily was not a sight to forget, although you could try. It was like watching continental drift in reverse as various sub-continents and islands pulled themselves together to form one massive, angry protowoman.

A furious vision in padded leather, gauntlets, tiara and thirty yards of damp pink tulle leaned down toward him and screamed: “Come on, you bloody idiot!”

“Where’s he off to?” boomed Lady Ramkin, emerging from the mists dragging the horses behind her. They didn’t want to come, their hooves were scraping up sparks, but they were fighting a losing battle.

It had been dragged into the center of the plaza, and Lady Sybil Ramkin had been chained to it. She appeared to be wearing a nightie and huge rubber boots. By the look of her she had been in a fight, and Vimes felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever else had been involved.

In fact all of them just paint the picture of a woman who could command armies with her voice and wouldn't bother launching ships with her face since her hands would do just fine.

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.