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Samuel Vimes
From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
His Grace, Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.
| Vimes | |
 | |
| Name | Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh |
| Age | b. 1941? UC |
| Race | Human |
| Occupation | Commander of the City Watch (Badge No.177) |
| Looks | Skinny, balding and unshaven |
| Residence | Ramkin Residence, Scoone Avenue, Ankh |
| Death | |
| Parents | Thomas |
| Relatives | Gwilliam (grandfather) |
| Children | Young Sam Vimes |
| Marital Status | Married to Lady Sybil Ramkin. A previous girlfriend, alluded to in passing in Thud!, is Mavis Trouncer. |
| Books | Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, Where's My Cow? |
| Cameos | The Truth, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal |
Contents |
Biography
Sam Vimes was born in Cockbill Street, the Shades, Ankh-Morpork, and went to the local school, where he was a blackboard monitor. After that, he spent some time in street gangs, then signed in the Night Watch, shortly before the birth of the Glorious People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road during the Glorious Revolution. He then made his way to the top, and was Captain when the Night Watch consisted of four people: him, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs, and newly appointed Constable Carrot. It is at this time that the Watch began to grow again, and Vimes was made Commander, with which came the unwanted rank of Knight, then, even more unwanted, the Duke of Ankh, by Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. He also married Lady Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, and has a son, called Sam. He is the descendant of 'Old Stoneface' Vimes who committed regicide to end the monarchy in Ankh-Morpork; this relation causes frequent comparisons of Sam to his ancestor.
Characteristics and Habits
According to Fred Colon, Sam Vimes was born two drinks under par. He says that the human body makes a sort of natural alcohol to make the person relax, but Vimes's body doesn't make enough of that. In short, he is perpetually slightly knurd (more sober than sober). For a long time he tried to fix that problem by giving himself alcoholic drinks; he often over-dosed himself, and as a result became an alcoholic. After meeting Lady Sybil, with her help Vimes quit drinking and found consolation in smoking cigars instead. He still keeps some strong liquor in the desk drawer of his office at Pseudopolis Yard, as a permanent test to see that he would not start drinking again. The last time that he was known to drink alcohol was in Men at Arms. Nowadays, he does not consume alcohol, even in small quantities during social gatherings.
As Vimes's long-time close friend Sgt. Colon puts it, Vimes could get drunk in better style, Vimes could be baffled about a case with better vocabulary, and Vimes could deal with the paperwork. To himself, Samuel Vimes is a not very intelligent man with a sordid personal history that he'd rather forget. To many others he is, somehow, the person to look up to. Captain Carrot quotes Vimes's ideas about social justice, and tries to make them a reality. Lady Sybil Ramkin, Vimes's wife, thinks that he can sort out anything. The new policemen trained in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and then hired elsewhere, though they haven't seen Vimes in person much, are called Sammies.
Vimes is far from being perfect, and he knows the fact better than anyone. In addition to former alcoholism, Vimes has many prejudices. He hates many kinds of people and many things, and he has quite good reasons to. He hates the upper class because they look down on the rest of the society while exploiting it (eg charging high rent from the poor people living in slum properties). He hates dwarfs and trolls because just as humans they commit crimes, and these two species especially cause ethnic troubles in what Vimes considers his city. He hates zombies, werewolves and vampires; for unashamedly discriminative reasons, among them being that they cannot be killed if police duty necessitates that Vimes should fight them, and that vampires are often rich and snobby. He hates Assassins and Thieves because their crimes are legalized and he cannot arrest them, and their leaders are even city dignitaries now. He hates Alchemists because they blow things up. Just about the only kind of people that he doesn't hate are the wizards; they may mess up the space-time continuum and destroy the universe, but they do not commit the crimes in Vimes's jurisdiction. Vimes hates the city of Ankh-Morpork, too. It has been said that he protects the city just as he protects the dwarfs and trolls, so that he can go on hating them. In truth, Vimes has seen too many bad things in his line of work, and now finds it difficult to have a good opinion of anything in general; he is far too cynical (and yet depressingly sometimes not cynical enough).
He is capable of accepting specific individuals. He has married Lady Sybil and certainly loves her. He accepts members of ethnic minorities in his Watch, has personally trained some of them, and is quite proud of them. He promotes Watch officers according to merit and ability, regardless of gender, species, or seniority. He also has a soft spot for the poor, the working class, or the young. When he finds younger Assassins failing their attempts on him, for example, he lets them go with only minor wounds; older Assassins, on the other hand, have been known to be painted and tied up left in public, or even chained up and sent on a sea voyage all the way to the other end of Klatch. To put very simply, he tries to look after those who have nobody else looking after them.
In attempting to carry out justice, Vimes has arrested sons of Ankh-Morpork nobles as well as city dignitaries, all the way up to Lord Vetinari. This has put Vimes high on the hit list of the Assassins; recently, however, he has been taken off the register, the Guild of Assassins no longer accepts contracts on his life. This may be because he is somehow vital to the running of the city, like Lord Vetinari is, or it may be because no sensible Assassin will volunteer for the task anyway. Vimes has personally designed and installed many traps and deadfalls all around the Ramkin family home and the Watch headquarters at Pseudopolis Yard. So far, Vimes hasn't been even injured by any Assassin. The Assassins Guild now has some of its trainees conduct "dry run" assassination attempts on Vimes as a matter of testing the trainee's skills (see Night Watch).
He is also fiercely anti-nobility, possibly a facet of his character which he inherited from Old Stoneface. That he manages this whilst actually being part of the nobility is, as Lord Vetinari put it, "practically zen". He regards being the duke of Ankh as a job title and always prefers commander or sir to any of his other titles, which include "His Grace", "His Excellency" and "his blackboard-monitorship" (The Fifth Elephant and Thud!). His full title is "His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes".
Members of the Watch earn the privilege, and it is a privilege, of calling him "Mr. Vimes" only after very long association (ie, Nobby Nobbs or Fred Colon), or after watching his back in a street fight to the extent that they have demonstrably saved his life (A.E. Pessimal). He does not tolerate the "Mr" from outsiders.
Activities and Duties
As other noblemen might ride horses, Sam Vimes walks the city on endless patrols. As other noblemen might wear laces, ruffles, and plumes, Vimes wears his old battered Watch armor and leather shirt and jerkin, with the standard sword and truncheon. Since becoming the Commander of the Watch and as such a popular target with the clients of the Assassins' Guild, Vimes also started the exercise of personally engineering pitfalls and death traps around his house and outside of his office at the police headquarters. Formerly a drunkard, Vimes is now a cigar smoker.
As the top officer in the Watch, Vimes has to deal with a lot of paperwork, a job which he hates but accomplishes adequately. As the Commander, Vimes's job is to oversee the operations of the Watch. He still tries to go on patrol whenever he has a chance; to him, walking the quiet streets in the dark is a calming, almost relaxing activity. When there is an important occasion on which crime is anticipated, for example, that a foreign dignitary may be attacked during a public appearance (in Jingo), Vimes likes to personally check suspicious places such as an abandoned building that an assassin might use.
Deduction is not Vimes's favorite activity; he distrusts clues and loathes mysteries ("mysteries get you killed"), and he now has the Cable Street Particulars to deal with peculiar crimes, but sometimes Vimes still personally investigates a case. When he witnesses a crime occurring, he abandons everything and chases the miscreant. It is possible that he uses police work to escape the social life of "Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh".
As both urged by Lady Sybil and ordered by Lord Vetinari, Vimes now often has to appear at dinners and parties. Most of the nobles and government officials that he sees at such social occasions, he considers stupid or obnoxious. Should he be accosted by one of these people, he does not hesitate to make clear how and why he loathes them. Vetinari likes to use Vimes as a diplomat, but more often than not Vimes is the cause of diplomatic incidents.
The former Lord Ramkin, Lady Sybil's late father, had always had servants to shave him, to lay out his bath, to brush his back, to lay out his clothes, to clean his shiny boots, and so on. Vimes now takes a bath every day and allows the butler to lay out his clothes, but that is about all. He insists on shaving himself as he dislikes other people putting a razor blade, (or indeed any sort of sharp edge) to his throat, and attempts to wear cheap boots with cardboard soles. He has been walking the city in such boots for decades, and he likes being able to feel the different types of cobblestones so that he can tell which street he is on. Besides watch armour, Vimes has some gentleman's suits, a dress uniform of the Watch Commander, and a dress uniform of the Duke. He is often required to wear the ducal dress uniform, which has ruby tights ("you wouldn't wear tights to battle if you thought you would be taken prisoner"), a spiky coronet, a gilt armour ("toy armour"), and no place to hang his sword ("you got made a duke for fighting and then they gave you no sword to fight with"). Vimes compromises by wearing the Watch Commander dress uniform.
Nowadays, Vimes has to eat fancy food as cooked in the Ramkins' house. Personally, he prefers simple, greasy food with burnt crunchy bits, and so he is happier when he eats things that Lady Sybil has personally cooked by a dragon's fire.
After the birth of his son Sam, Vimes now also faithfully gets home by 6 p.m. every evening to read a certain picture book called Where's My Cow? to his son, Young Sam. This has become such a point of pride that he now has nightmares about not being home by 6 p.m. There is absolutely nothing that takes precedence over this; Vimes believes that if he misses it even once for a good reason, the next time he might miss it for a bad one, and eventually this attitude might spill over into the rest of his life.
Annotation
Philip Jackson from the British Robin of Sherwood TV series provides the voice for Vimes in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Night Watch.
Books
Vimes appears in all of the Watch books as the leading character, but also makes appearances in The Truth, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, Where's My Cow? and Making Money.
