One thing I notice about Discworld's Nightwatch, when Vimes gets furious about the Glorious(ly failed) Revolution getting Statues...
Like, yeah, its pretty obvious he's angry for the Watchmen.
But when you go through the Nightwatch, 25th of May didn't just include Watchmen and what people could make it behind the barricades. It also included the soldiers. Soldiers that likely made it behind the barricade and fought with the watchmen (A thought that Vimes did bring up at least a couple times), not against them, soldiers that got humiliated by their grannies and were likely marched by ear to the otherside of it, veterans who took their swords home after they left the army... (Hell, one vet taught them the "How do they Rise" as a cadence).
Soldiers who, in the end of it, also wore the Lilac, because they got caught up in the crossfire of arrows alongside the surviving Watchmen.
It brings me to mind a scene. Vimes in front of the Treacle Mine Road watchouse, coco in one hand, cigar in the other, pointing out to a near-mob crowd that the faceless watchmen they came to throw stones at, were more or less folks they knew everyday.
Suddenly "I know where you live" becomes less of an ominous threat, and more like talking sense into someone. You know where they live, because you grew up there too.
That same logic applies to the soldiers.
Now why am I going on about the soldiers and why a statue of Watchmen wouldn't work.
Because the same logic applies... but the result is lopsided.
You put up a statue of Watchmen for the 25th, you're going to inspire "Us vs Them". You'll single Watchmen out for being morally better, when they weren't. You'll remove the soldiers who also wore the Lilac because nobody remembers them (after all, the soldiers were the Bad Guys in the growing narrative of myth around the 25th, even though they were also Ankh-Morpork lads), and end up inspiring war against your fellows for it.
You can't just say that the Watchmen "did the job that was in front of them", because so did the Soldiers. The problem was not the Watchmen or the Soldiers--but by glorifying one, you create that one or the other was problem.
And this goes to another point.
I was confused by why Vimes said that the reason the Revolution didn't work, was because there was Betrayal. And that implies a Traitor. And yes, there are traitorous watchmen, but there's no emphasis that they were the problem. You could latch on to the fact that soldiers slipped through the Barricades, but they weren't the Problem--at least, not the long term one that cause the whole failure.
The fact is, you'd have to go through the rest of the Watch Books to find it. Because out of all of the, the Night Watch (and by extension, Thud) stops monologing about it, where Jingo, Feet of Clay, and Men at Arms burst at the seams to tell you.
And its how Ankh-Morpork is set up, so that the system works towards benefiting the rich and powerful and promotes a culture of single minded pettiness through the stresses of survival.
Where some idiot market can raise the price of bread, without compensating for local wages, and the result is a rightfully angry mob that gets run down by panicking horsemen, and in the blind madness of all sides, the result is the Dolly Sisters Massacre.
Meanwhile, a mad patrician with a paranoia so wild and homicidal its become predictable, gets cake.
And like a poisoned candle--that's the trick. There's the betrayal. Its right in front of you, but you don't see it because its right there illuminating the scene.
The Betrayal was the System that Ankh-Morpork ran in the past (And could fall into again if not kept in check). It's the kind of system that let's madmen take power because they've got the Image people want / expect--Carcer who's friendly and jovial and "cooperative" enough, all the way up to Lord Snapcase who seemed to say all the right things, up until they got what he wanted. A system that would raise the price of bread to a starving populace and allow secret police to take people in the night.
How come nobody does anything about them torturing people? Well its because they torture people. You'd have to burn the torture chamber down and show that the monsters are dead before you did anything more.
Resulting in a culture that simply keeps trading one madman for another regardless of the body count, it keeps its head down, and because there's no solving the actual problem, it goes after the pettiest of problems in the pettiest of ways or finds petty problems. Such isolation does terrible things to a mind.
Like complaining that your rat is actually chicken.
And then the system sent killers to clean up the remains. And one terrible day suddenly becomes just another terrible day in a queue line of terrible days.
To set up the Statue of Watchmen or even a Statue of Soldiers, will always defeat the point.
They didn't solve anything, they didn't change anything, they simply survived long enough to die memorably.
Its especially insulting to do it, because it would inspire more of it, and the very system that betrayed them would use their faces to glorify itself, and perform the same violence it did against the Watchmen and the Soldiers and the People.
You'd end up with people measuring other people by the narrative-image the statue inspired, and nothing will measure up.
I think that's enough of a scene to show off how Vimes and Vetenari, no matter how good a duo of characters they are, are still on entirely different sides.
A statue to placate Vimes would do a whole lot more long term harm than good. It merely shows off the same system of power that put those watchmen in the ground in the first place.
Vetenari, no matter how much he reigns it in, will always be on the side of that system of power (and may the gods help Ankh-Morpork for any patrician that comes after him).
Though he is using it to make systems that will put it in check. Regulating Finances through the Bank, and reinstating Mail, and allowing the Press. Making a Watch that takes in anyone and takes on anyone. Guilds to make constant competition. Having the actual Heir to the Throne is useful, because now him or any of his descendants can, at any point, walk in and kick the patrician out. Checks and Balances, that's the way to go.
Vimes is, effectively, the freest man in the whole of Ankh-Morpork, who can, at any point, simply walk away--and doesn't, because he wouldn't be Vimes if he did.
And Vimes stands with people, regardless of what lines are drawn.