This is something I’ve been DYING to write about, so thank you for giving me the perfect basis.
‘She sounds like a witch to me, whatever she thought she was. A good one, too.’
Tiffany inflated with inherited pride.‘
Did she help people?’ Miss Level added.
… ‘She made them help one another,’ she said. ‘She made them help themselves.’
In the silence that followed, Tiffany heard the birds singing by the road. You got a lot of birds here, but she missed the high scream of the buzzards.
Miss Level sighed. ‘Not many of us are that good,’ she said. ‘If I was that good, we wouldn’t be going to visit old Mr Weavall again.’
This is a conversation about Granny Aching in The Wee Free Men. She never had the label of “witch” in life, but it seems that Miss Level, who is a witch finder, believes that making people help each other and themselves is a large part of the definition of what a witch really is. And what is means to be a really good witch.
And Vimes, Lipwig and Vetinari all fit that definition.
Vimes… Well, he does it out of sheer stubbornness. He works every hour the gods give to make the city a slightly better place, to take a little more evil out of the world, to create a little bit of justice. He looks after his Watchmen, he always has their back (he’s always right behind them, even when their back is against the wall) and in turn they look out for one another. Do I even need to talk about the Guarding Dark? I think that speaks for itself.
Lipwig’s motivations for doing what he does are a little different to say the least, but you can’t argue with the end result. He has this delightfully chaotic energy that somehow means that everything all works out for the best, and the city loves him for it. They’re under a sort of spell, watching the magic show, wondering how the trick is going to be done, and they don’t realise all along that in doing so, they’re contributing to real progress in the city.
And finally, Havelock “alloys are stronger” Vetinari. Through the Guild system, he tricks some incredibly selfish, self-serving, scheming people into helping one another in a roundabout way, while they go on believing that they’re only serving their own interests. The Guilds look after the families of their members, because it’s in their best interests, so children get a much better education than ever before. People just don’t slip through the cracks. And people have opportunities to better themselves like never before.
And it’s the city where, for some reason, everybody wants to live.
I’ve never thought of it as a coven before, however, and I love that. It’s beautiful.
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