 | This article consists almost entirely of a plot summary .(May 2023) |
 | This Discworld-related article describes a work or element of fiction in a primarily in-universe style.(May 2023) |
| Ankh-Morpork | |
|---|---|
| 'Discworld' location | |
 Ankh-Morpork City Arms | |
| Created by | Terry Pratchett |
| Genre | Comic fantasy |
| In-universe information | |
| Type | City-state |
| Locations |
|
| Characters | |
Ankh-Morpork is a fictional city-state the setting for many Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.
Pratchett describes Ankh-Morpork as the biggest city in Discworld and its corrupt mercantile capital.
In The Art of Discworld , Pratchett explained that the city is similar to Tallinn and central Prague, but adds that it has elements of 18th-century London, 19th-century Seattle and modern-day New York City. He also said that since the creation of The Streets of Ankh-Morpork , he has tried to ensure that the descriptions of character movements and locations in the books matched the Ankh-Morpork map; this allowed him, and fans of the series, to visualise the story more clearly.
The name "Ankh-Morpork" refers to both the city itself, a walled city about 5 miles (8 km) across, and the surrounding suburbs and farms of its fiefdom. The city itself lies on the River Ankh, the most polluted waterway on the Discworld, which divides it into the more affluent Ankh and the poorer Morpork (including the slum-like "Shades"). Lying approximately equidistant from the cold, mountainous Hub and tropical Rim, Ankh-Morpork is in the Discworld's equivalent of the temperate zone.
Ankh-Morpork is built on black loam, broadly, but it is mostly built on itself; pragmatic citizens simply built on top of the existing buildings rather than excavate them out as the river flooded and the sediment grew too high. There are many unknown basements, including an entire "cave network" below Ankh-Morpork made up of old streets and abandoned sewers. [1]
The succession of the Patrician normally occurs by either assassination or revolution. Patricians have been known to resign, but this is very much the exception. Power is, to some degree, shared with the many Guilds and the surviving nobility. They form a sort of advisory city council, with a system of one man, one vote – the Patrician being the "one man" in question. According to The Truth , as per the city charter, a new Patrician must be elected with the unanimous approval of all Guilds.
The primary engines of Ankh-Morpork's economy are the Guilds. There are hundreds of Guilds, for every conceivable profession, from clowns to butchers, and each has its own strictly maintained laws and trading practices. Many Guilds have assumed roles which in real-world cities would be assumed by government agencies, such as the Guild of Historians, comparable to English Heritage.
The City Watch is one of the great success stories. It originally consisted of the Day Watch, popinjays headed by Captain "Mayonnaise" Quirke (rich, thick, oily, and smelling slightly of eggs) and the Night Watch, three unemployable men: then-Captain Vimes, a drunk, Sergeant Colon, whose idea of major crime would be the theft of a bridge and Corporal Nobbs, who has a certificate to prove that he is probably human. The addition of Lance-Constable Carrot was the catalyst for their reform in Guards! Guards! . The Watch grew under the leadership of Commander Samuel Vimes to become the most modern police force on the Disc.
The Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild was widely considered by the elite to be the best option anywhere for a well-rounded education. Lord Vetinari received an Assassins' Guild education in his youth.
The Guild of Assassins is located in a light, airy series of buildings next to the Guild of Fools and Joculators, which, being a far more sinister building, is often mistaken for the Assassins'. The Guild was headed by Lord Downey.
The Assassins' Guild was founded on 27 August AM1512 by Sir Gyles de Munforte as the de Munforte School for Gentlemen Assassins. Sir Gyles was a warrior knight who, during his crusades in Klatch, was intrigued by the Klatchian tradition of professional gentleman assassins, and decided to set up a similar organisation at home, only without the drugs. In AM1576, it became a Guild and changed its name to the Royal Guild of Assassins. The "Royal" was dropped after the "events" of AM1688 (i.e. the Ankh-Morpork Civil War, in which the monarchy was overthrown).
For most of its history, the Assassins Guild School was a male-only establishment (although talented, self-taught women might become members of the Guild itself); however it became co-educational.
It is said to be the only school of assassination on the Discworld. However, assassination began in Klatch, and it is stated in Interesting Times that there is a small, very select Guild in Hunghung, in the Agatean Empire.
The unwillingness of the Assassins' Guild to accept contracts that might undermine the city led it to suspend contracts on both the Patrician and the Commander of the City Watch. This led to the rise of unlicensed assassins such as the banshee Mr Gryle in Going Postal and Mr Pin and Mr Tulip of the New Firm in The Truth.
The AM$ (Ankh-Morpork dollar) is equal to 100 pennies (pence). The AM$ is reputedly the hardest currency outside of the Agatean Empire. A dollar coin is the size of a Venetian sequin, and although theoretically made of gold the metal has been adulterated so many times that, according to The Discworld Companion :
There is more gold in an equivalent weight of seawater. In a sense, then, Ankh-Morpork is on the gold standard in all respects except the one of actually having any gold to speak of. [2]
In Making Money , Moist von Lipwig, as deputy chairman of the Royal Mint of Ankh-Morpork (acting under authority of the actual chairman, a small dog named Mr. Fusspot), sought to take Ankh-Morpork off of the gold standard and make the Ankh-Morpork dollar a fiat currency backed by the economy of the city. And, inspired by the Ankh-Morpork citizens using stamps as currency, he introduced banknotes for multi-dollar denominations. Making Money "has often been highlighted as an example of Pratchett’s perspicacity, thanks to its superb depictions of the precarious unreality of banking systems." [3]
Ankh-Morpork was twinned with the town of Wincanton in Somerset, in the south-west United Kingdom on the spherical planet Earth (known in the Discworld books as Roundworld) on 7 December 2002. [4] The town is home to a shop called "The Discworld Emporium", [5] which also doubles as an "Ankh-Morpork Consulate" according to the shop sign. However, due to legal reasons, the twinning was not officially displayed on the road sign. Fans, however, added stick-on notices to some of the signs. [6] In 2009, this was changed, and a new town sign prominently declaring the twinning with Ankh-Morpork and other Roundworld places was erected. Several streets in a new housing development in Wincanton have been named after Ankh-Morpork Streets, including Peach Pie Street and Treacle Mine Road. [7]
The word "Morpork" is from a type of New Zealand owl called the morepork, which is depicted holding the ankh on the coat of arms.[ citation needed ]
"Discworld: Ankh-Morpork" was published as a board game in 2011.
Many details of Ankh-Morpork appear to have been inspired by Fritz Leiber's fictional city Lankhmar (although Pratchett has said "I didn't – at least consciously, I suppose I must say – create Ankh-Morpork as a takeoff of Lankhmar"); [8] John D. Rateliff notes that Leiber's characters "the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd guest-star in the very first Discworld story, The Colour of Magic, under the pseudonyms of The Weasel and Bravd". [9]
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by American author Fritz Leiber. They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories. One of his motives in writing them was to have a couple of fantasy heroes closer to true human nature than the likes of Howard's Conan the Barbarian or Burroughs's Tarzan.
Jingo is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, part of his Discworld series. It was published in 1997.
His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel "Sam" Vimes is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Vimes is depicted in the novels as somewhere between an Inspector Morse-type 'old-school' British policeman, and a film noir-esque grizzled detective. His appearances throughout the Discworld sequence show him slowly and grudgingly rising through the ranks of both police force and society. As of his latest promotion, his full name and title is stated as being "His Grace, His Excellency, The 1st Duke of Ankh; Commander Sir Samuel Vimes". When serving as Ambassador for Ankh-Morpork, he is also referred to simply as "His Excellency", and is also nicknamed "Blackboard Monitor Vimes", "Vimes the Butcher" and "Vetinari's Terrier". According to his wife, Sybil, Vimes is recognised by many as Lord Vetinari's right-hand man.
The Colour of Magic is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns."
Guards! Guards! is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the eighth in the Discworld series, first published in 1989. It is the first novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The first Discworld point-and-click adventure game borrowed heavily from the plot of Guards! Guards!
Rincewind is a fictional character who appears in several of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He was a failed student at Unseen University for wizards in Ankh-Morpork, often described as "the magical equivalent to the number zero". He spent most of his time running away from people who wanted to kill him for various reasons. That he was still alive and running was explained by noting that while he was born with a wizard's spirit, he had the body of a long-distance sprinter. Rincewind was also renowned for being able to solve minor problems by turning them into major disasters.
Lord Havelock Vetinari, Lord Patrician of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Vetinari has written an unpublished manuscript known as The Servant, the Discworld version of The Prince by the Italian statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli.
Men at Arms is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 15th book in the Discworld series, first published in 1993. It is the second novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch on the Discworld. Lance-constable Angua von Überwald, later in the series promoted to the rank of Sergeant, is introduced in this book. Lance-constable Detritus is introduced as a new member of the watch as well, though he had already appeared in other Discworld novels, most notably in Moving Pictures. Also notable is the only appearance of Lance-constable Cuddy.
The Ankh-Morpork City Watch is the police force of the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld series by the English writer Terry Pratchett.
Lankhmar is a fictional city in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber. It is situated on the world of Nehwon, just west of the Great Salt Marsh and east of the River Hlal, and serves as the home of Leiber's two antiheroes.
Moist von Lipwig is a fictional character from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. A "reformed con-man" who is one of the major characters of the series, von Lipwig is the protagonist of the novels Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam.
The Discworld is the fictional setting for all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels. It consists of a large disc resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle, named Great A'Tuin as it slowly swims through space. The Disc has been shown to be heavily influenced by magic and, while Pratchett gave it certain similarities to planet Earth, he also created his own system of physics for it.
Making Money is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, part of his Discworld series, first published in the UK on 20 September 2007. It is the second novel featuring Moist von Lipwig, and involves the Ankh-Morpork mint and specifically the introduction of paper money to the city. The novel won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2008, and was nominated for the Nebula Award the same year.
In popular fiction, a thieves' guild is the concept of a formal association of criminals who participate in theft-related organized crime. The trope has been explored in literature, cinema, comic books, and gaming, such as in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story "Thieves' House" by Fritz Leiber and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Though these more modern works are fictitious, the concept is inspired by real-world examples from history, such as Jonathan Wild and his gang of thieves.
The Discworld Diaries are a series of themed diaries based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Each one is based on an Ankh-Morpork institution, and has an opening section containing information about that institution written by Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.
Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic is a fantasy-comedy two-part British television adaptation of the bestselling novels The Colour of Magic (1983) and The Light Fantastic (1986) by Terry Pratchett. The fantasy film was produced for Sky1 by The Mob, a small British studio, starring David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry, and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death. Vadim Jean both adapted the screenplay from Pratchett's original novels, and served as director.
Swords and Deviltry is a fantasy short story collection, first published 1970, by Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the first volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. The book was first published in paperback form during 1970 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through November 1985; later paperback editions were issued by ibooks (2003) and Dark Horse (2006). It has been published in the United Kingdom by New English Library (1971), Mayflower Books (1979) and Grafton. The first hardcover edition was issued by Gregg Press during December 1977. The book has also been gathered together with others in the series into various omnibus editions; The Three of Swords (1989), Ill Met in Lankhmar (1995), The First Book of Lankhmar (2001), and Lankhmar (2008).
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd's Crown, which was published in 2015, following Pratchett's death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from classic works, usually fantasy or science fiction, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and often use them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues.
Raising Steam is the 40th Discworld novel, written by Terry Pratchett. It was the penultimate one, published before his death in 2015. Originally due to be published on 24 October 2013, it was pushed back to 7 November 2013. It stars Moist von Lipwig, and features the introduction of locomotives to the Discworld, and an entirely new character.