Welcome to the Discworld & Pratchett Wiki. Have fun, contribute and be warned articles may contain nuts and spoilers to the plots of the books.

From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki

Time is the most secretive among the more important anthropomorphic personifications of the Discworld. Unlike those personifications who reside with and act as gods (such as Fate and the Lady) or those who appear often at their related events (ex. the Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse), very few people have seen Time or know much about her, even though her phenomenon occurs every moment in the space-time continuum. Time makes a personal appearance in Thief of Time.

Interestingly enough, there is a discussion between Death and Samuel Vimes, in The Fifth Elephant, which offers clues as to the nature of Time, to those who are alert enough to get the hint. Death, whilst trying to cheer Vimes up in the face of his impending death at the paws of the Werewolves, is attempting to explain the Uncertainty Principle, but He digresses into musing about why humans refer to the Trousers of Time when Time has never been known to... at this point Vimes' boat plummets over a waterfall, and the terminal words "wear any" are lost in the roar and the spray..

Time has the appearance of a tall, beautiful young woman with dark hair. She fell in love with Wen the Eternally Surprised, a monk-philosopher who, thousands of years ago, pondered the phenomenon of time so thoroughly that Time appeared to him as a person. Wen left the monastery of the History Monks that he founded, and the two have been living in a Glass House ever since. Time and Wen have a son, who was born twice because, at that time, Time was an inexperienced new mother, and at that naturally stressful event let time flicker. The two versions of the son are known as Jeremy Clockson of the Clockmakers' Guild (Ankh-Morpork), and Lobsang Ludd (formerly Newgate Ludd of the Thieves' Guild, Ankh-Morpork), an apprentice of the History Monks. After a major time anomaly started by Jeremy was repaired, the unified son (who preferred the Lobsang Ludd identity) took over the functions of Time. So, now, Time the beautiful young woman has retired, and the new anthropomorphic personification of Time is a young lad.

Annotation

The concept of anthropomorphic personifications with conditional immortality, who may retire as they choose and pass their conditional immortality onto a chosen mortal successor (not necessarily a family member) has been most thoroughly explored by Piers Anthony in his Incarnations of Immortality series of fantasy novels. Anthony's range of anthropomorphic personifications include Death (naturally), Time, War, Fate, Nature, Satan, God, and Nox (the incarnation of Night).

There is also Neil Gaiman's Sandman series of graphic novels where, amongst the pantheons of gods and demons, there is a family of seven siblings, each of whose names are also their raisons d'etre: Destiny, Desire, Dream (the Sandman of the title), Death, Delirium, Despair and Destruction.