Lavishes

Originally, in the days when spelling was more optional, the La Vice family. This presumes a Genuan connection, especially as the origins of the family fortune lie in Mercantile Venturing, a delicate euphemism for dealing in slaves and dangerous drugs.

As all that is several hundred years ago now and the family fortune is consolidated into cleaner methods of reducing people to slave-like destitution - ie, banking - it would be jolly poor form to mention the origins of the cash and only a bounder, who is patently not One of Us, would do so. (Moist von Lipwig proves this point in every respect)

The various branches of the family live off their trust funds and Bank dividends, and are sundered and estranged to the point where every branch of the family appears to be suing every other branch of the family for a greater share of the money. This inevitably means only the Lawyers benefit, an obvious point no Lavish appears to have grasped yet. In this, they come across as rather like the Oggs, but without the style or the redeeming qualities. (No Ogg would ever dream of employing a lawyer in a good old family feud nor likely would any lawyer allow himself to be involved in one). But like the Oggs, the moment the family is threatened from the outside, every Lavish will turn to face the interloper and deal out vengeance. As Moist von Lipwig is to discover...

Prominent Lavishes who appear in Making Money

• Mrs Topsy Lavish, née Turvy;
• Cosmo Lavish;
• Pucci Lavish
• Josephine Lavish;
• Sir Joshua Lavish;
• Marko Lavish, Sir Joshua's brother, lives in Genua;
• Capricia Lavish, Marko's wife

Annotations

Again a long-established family with a vaguely Italianate name are introduced as part of the political and social cream (well, they rose to the top...) in Ankh-Morpork.

In Italian history, a brother and sister born into the nobility, amoral, unscrupulous, knowledgeable about poisons, users of seduction and bribery, sometimes allies and sometimes opponents, fighting for mastery of their father's estate? This is a reference to the Borgias, of whom Cesare and his sister Lucrezia were the most notorious... and in the BBC TV drama, wasn't Cesare's pet name for his sister something like Luzzi or Lucci? (We won't dwell on other aspects of their family relationship, as TP doesn't...)