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{{work}}
{{Infobox book
| title = Night Watch
| image = Nightwatch-paperback.jpg
| caption = US paperback cover
| author = Terry Pratchett
| central theme =
| elevator pitch =
| genre = Fantasy
| franchise = Discworld
| preceded by = The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
| followed by = The Wee Free Men
| publication date = 2002
}}
{{quote|''There was The Beast, all around him. And that's all it was. A beast. Useful, but still a beast. You could hold it on a chain, and make it dance, and juggle balls. It didn't think. It was ''dumb''. What you were, what ''you'' were, was not The Beast.''
''[[What You Are in the Dark|You didn't have to do what it wanted]]. If you did, [[Complete Monster|Carcer]] won.''|'''Sam Vimes''', ''Night Watch''}}
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''How do they rise up, rise up high?'' }}
The 27th ''[[Discworld]]'' novel and the sixth in the Watch theme.
The 27th ''[[Discworld]]'' novel and the sixth in the Watch theme. Should not be confused with the ''[[Night Watch]]'' books by Sergei Lukyanenko, or the film adaptation. The novel is named after the famous Rembrandt painting ''The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (The Nightwatch)'', to which the front cover art by Paul Kidby is an [[Homage]] and a reproduction of which adorns the back cover in the Hardcover edition. Also not to be confused with the Night's Watch, an organisation in [[A Song of Ice and Fire]].▼
The framing events take place at the same time (such as it is) as the previous novel ''[[
The book has been noted for a much darker than usual tone, with fewer obvious jokes and a more serious story than previous installments.
▲
{{tropelist|page={{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
* [[A Nazi by Any Other Name]]: Captain Swing and the Cable Street Particulars
* [[A Storm Is Coming]]: And with it, Sam Vimes' finest moment.
Line 26 ⟶ 39:
** And when the newold Patrician is appointed, a bilingual pun.
{{quote|'''Slant:''' "''Ave! Duci novi, similis duci seneci.''",<ref>Hail! New leader, same as the old leader. Or, here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.</ref> or as we used to say in school, ''Ave! [[wikipedia:Bossa nova|Bossa nova]] similis bossa seneca.''" Of course, grammatically...}}
* [[All the Myriad Ways]]: Lu-Tze and Vimes discuss the concept of many universes (which Vimes already knows about from ''[[
** This is a reference to a reality in which young Sam Vimes is given guidance by Carcer, if old Sam fails. Hence the ''as he is now'' instead of just there is no universe. That Sam recognizes this on some level is alluded to in other parts of the novel.
* [[Annoying Arrows]]: Justified; they didn't bother Reg much because he was practically ''born'' to be a zombie.
* [[The Apprentice (trope)|The Apprentice]]: Jocasta Wiggs realising, at her [[Sink or Swim Mentor|mentor's]] devising, there's a ''long'' way to go before she's good enough to graduate as an Assassin. Young Sam Vimes learning from his older self.
* [[Arc Words]]: "Just do the job in front of you." and its variations.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Truth! Freedom! Justice! Reasonably priced love! And a hardboiled egg. Because Vimes won't be finding truth, freedom nor justice by the next morning, but he might just be able to eat a hardboiled egg. {{spoiler|He isn't.}}
* [[The Artful Dodger]]: Young Nobby.
* [[Banana In the Tailpipe]]: Well, cars do not exist on Discworld, but you can create quite a bit of havoc with oxen and a handful of fresh ginger...
** Which combines with a [[Brick Joke]] and [[Truth in Television]]. A jade is a worn out, tired horse. To sell it, you make it look more youthful and lively. To do that, you fleague it. What you do is shove a bit of ginger in its keister, which makes it a little antsy. If you've ever heard the saying "gingering things up" i.e. make them go a bit faster, you have the rough idea already.
* [[Bavarian Fire Drill]]: Vimes pulls this well enough to make Moist von Lipwig weep. First he talks himself into becoming Sergeant-At-Arms to his superior. Then later, using this and a combination of [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] and [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], he manages to get one up on ''[[Secret Police|Unmentionables]]''.
** Also how he fleagues up Old Mary.
* [[Begone Bribe]]: Young Nobby follows people around until they pay him not to.
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Although he doesn't exactly say it out loud, at the beginning of the book Vimes longs for the old days when things were simpler and he actually did real copper work. Then he gets transported back to ''really'' old days.
* [[Berserk Button]]: Fred Colon's reaction to a young corporal asking why they were wearing sprigs of lilac seems quite disproportionate, as it seems like a fair question to us, but as the reason becomes apparent later in the book the incident implies that the subject of the revolution is a [[Berserk Button]] for Colon.
** Let's not forget Vimes' epic rant to Vetinari when the Patrician wants to put up a monument to the dead watchmen.
* [[Bothering by the Book]]: The oath for joining the Watch. "... uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morpork comma serve the public trust comma and defend the subjects of His stroke Her bracket delete whichever is inappropriate bracket Majesty bracket name of reigning monarch bracket...". Nothing in there about ''obeying orders''.
** It also doesn't say anything about serving or defending the ruler (King, Queen, or otherwise). Just the public.
** Vimes also pulls an [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] on Unmentionables with paperwork to sign when he has to hand over curfew breakers to them. The Unmentionables are expectantly uncooperative and Vimes gets them off the hook.
** Also, one of the reactions of the coppers to Vimes insisting they do things by the book. They get very precise.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] Reg Shoe learns that (badly planned) revolutions tend not to live up to the revolutionaries' expectations. He [[Heroic BSOD|doesn't take it well]].
** Not to mention [[The Alcoholic|what happens]] to the 18-year-old Sam Vimes in the years between this book and ''[[
* [[Call Forward]]: For instance, Vimes accidentally inspires [[CMOT Dibbler|Cut-Me-Own-Throat-Dibbler's]] [[Catch Phrase]], establishing a [[Stable Time Loop]]. More cynically, the new would-be ruler Snapcase is spoken of with praise by some characters
* [[Can't Take Anything with You]]: When going forward in time.
* [[Captain Obvious]]: Imposed on Lords Selachi and Venturi, who due to their [[Feuding Families|history]] have to avoid any topic that they might possibly disagree on. Leading to conversational topics like "I see you are standing up."
* [[Characterization Marches On]]: Remember when Vimes [[
** The ending of ''Night Watch'' even justifies the Vimes from early ''Guards! Guards!'' {{spoiler|After waking up to find his mentor and six other Watchmen dead on the Patrician's orders, Vimes spent about three decades having the potential to be the badass we know and love but not being able to do anything for fear of another attack on the Night Watch. That or his lack of confidence in the Law meant that the bottle was the only thing keeping the Beast at bay}}.
* [[Circling Monologue]]: The early part of Vimes vs. Swing.
* [[Click. "Hello."]]: The two Vimeses' first meeting.
* [[Cold-Blooded Torture]]: The Cable Street Particulars' method of extracting confessions.
* [[
* [[Contest Winner Cameo]]: Dr Follett of the Assassin's Guild is actually a cameo for fellow British novelist Ken Follett.
* [[Continuity Nod]]: Many of them. The Night Watch is based at the old watch house that the dragon burned down in ''[[
* [[The Creepy Undertaker]]: Legitimate First.
* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]: Despite the fact that he is a complete ass in his youth, it's pointed out that the young Downey is still quite capable and dangerous, such as when he instantly suspects that a dark passageway is a trap, despite being ''very'' drunk at the time. {{spoiler|He's right.}} Not to mention that he goes on to become Head of the Assassin's Guild, which has an internal [[Klingon Promotion]] system.
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* [[Doomed Moral Victor]]: Parodied, as the villains consider "You may take our lives, but you'll never take our freedom" to be the dumbest revolutionary slogan ever. Specifically, Carcer replies "Wrong," and cue the hail of crossbow bolts.
** However, [[Fridge Brilliance|if you think about it]], they did take Reg's life, but they never took his freedom.
* [[Dramatic Irony]]: In spades.
{{quote|'''Reg''': I only regret that I have one life to give for Whalebone Lane!
'''Vimes''': (thinking) If only you knew. }}
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* [[Evil Counterpart]]: "Carcer had, in his own way, some of Vimes's qualities, only they were inverted."
** Similarly, Captain Swing is an idealist, he simply looks at the problem the wrong way around.
* [[Eyepatch of Power]]: Like Keel before him, Vimes gets one of his own.
* [[Fascists' Bed Time]]: One of the jobs of the Night Watch is to patrol this and take people breaking curfew to Cable Street House. The first thing Vimes does when he becomes Sergeant-at-arms of his station is bring this system to the ground, release the people he's captured and make himself a reputation in the process.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: Lots of it. Both the lilac blooming and, as the story starts, with Sam Vimes and other Night Watch survivors of the Glorious People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road solemnly commemorating the anniversary of the deaths of their comrades, among them Sergeant Keel's.
** All The Little Angels.
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* [[Get Back to the Future]]
* [[Give Me Back My Wallet]]: Vimes to Young Nobby.
* [[Gone Horribly Right]]: In a non-science trope, Vimes' plan for the barricade. The original John Keel may have been a revolutionary, but Vimes just wanted to keep a few silly, innocent people safe and protect those in his street.
* [[Gory Discretion Shot]]: The description of the [[Torture Cellar]], a rare literary variant.
* [[Handy Cuffs]]: Happens with Vimes in Night Watch as part of the "Were we ever really that bad?" sequence. Vimes' internal monologue points out how stupid this is.
{{quote|"He had several pounds of metal on his wrists or, to put it another way, his arms were a hammer." }}
* [[Having a Heart]]: Sergeant Keel has the eye of a mass-murderer. They're in his other coat.
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{{quote|''He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew... then it was too high.''}}
** Reg Shoe also has one when he realizes that the revolution he wanted so badly has only served to put an equally corrupt ruler in power. He sits dejectedly on a cart for a few minutes, then snaps into a [[Unstoppable Rage|rage so powerful not even getting killed can stop him]].
** The bit when Vimes is sitting helpless, staring blankly at a mirror as his son is born; this even shuts down {{spoiler|his internal watchman, revealed in [[
** Vimes has an extremely powerful one right when he is ordered by Rust to take down the barricade. As he starts to tell the people behind the barricade that they shouldn't take the law into their own hands, he realizes suddenly that he has no idea what the law ''was'' at that moment. The feeling of despair and disconnection is so powerful in brings Vimes to his knees. Thankfully, the Time Monks show up at that very moment to provide him with the Heroic Reboot Key, a connection to the future that seems so distant: his silver cigar case.
* [[Highly-Visible Ninja]]: Vetinari when he kills
** The Assassin's Guild in Discworld always wears the stereotypical ninja black clothes on the job. Vetinari shows the readers how much smarter he is when he reads a book on animal camouflage and goes for more appropriate clothes when they are called for. Downey shows how he isn't a match for Vetinari by burning the book instead of reading it and Vetinari shows what a [[Magnificent Bastard]] he is by {{spoiler|having destroyed nearly every other copy of the book so no one else can learn from it}}.
* [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold]]: Rosie Palm
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* [[I Did What I Had to Do]]: Vetinari suggests "They Did The Job They Had To Do" as a slogan when he talks about putting up a monument for the fallen watchmen. Vimes' deconstruction of it as he shuts Vetinari up is both epic and heartbreaking.
{{quote|"They did the job they didn't have to do and they died doing it and you can't give them anything."}}
* [[I Hate Past Me]]: Sort of. While Vimes doesn't hate young Sam, he's certainly put off and ashamed of how incredibly naive and idealistic he is.
{{quote|"You're not me. You can't be. I don't think I was ever as young as you." }}
* [[I Just Shot Marvin in the Face]]: Detritus and the Piecemaker. Although in this case, it's more like I Just Almost Blew Up My Boss' House and Its Gardens.
{{quote|Vimes: What did I tell you about Mister Safety Catch?
Detritus: When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend. }}
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* [[If I Had a Nickel]]: If Colon had a dollar for every watchman's funeral he'd attended, he'd have $19.50. (One of them wasn't actually dead; fortunately he regained consciousness ''before'' they buried him.)
* [[I Found You Like This]]: When Sam Vimes is unexpectedly thrown backwards in time, Rosie Palm finds him unconscious in the street and rescues him.
* [[In Spite of a Nail]]: History always finds a way in the end.
{{quote|Well, it would have to come up with something good, because it was up against Sam Vimes now.}}
* [[Jerk Jock]]: The young Lord Downey.
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* [[Kill It with Fire]]: The Cable Street House.
* [[Knife Nut]]: Carcer.
* [[La Résistance]]: But of course.
** Mais oui.
* [[Lightning Can Do Anything]]
* [[Line in the Sand]]: Vimes makes one right before training his men for the barricade; later, history books will disagree about what happened but they all agreed about Sergeant Keel and the Line. Young Sam is the first to step over.
* [[Mauve Shirt]]: Sergeant Abba Stronginthearm, who previously appeared in ''[[
* [[Meaningful Name]]: Captain Swing was the name used on a number of threatening letters sent by participants in the Swing Riots in Britain in 1830. In a typical Pratchett twist, Swing is now working for the other side.
* [[Meet the New Boss]]: Said by Mr Slant and Dr Follett after {{spoiler|Winder dies and Snapcase becomes the new Patrician}}. In Latin, no less.
* [[Mercy Kill]]: Perhaps the most controversial line in any Discworld novel if fan reaction was anything to go by:
{{quote|''"Just in case, and without any feeling of guilt, Vimes removed his knife, and... gave what help he could"''}}
** Terry Pratchett
* [[Misfit Mobilization Moment]]: In a city where the citizens are attacking Watch houses for being tools of the oppressive state, Vimes wins over his neighborhood and oversees their barricades.
* [[Mugging the Monster]]: Carcer lands in [[The City Narrows|the Shades]] and gets his first weapons and cash delivered straight into his lap.
* [[My Future Self and Me]]: Vimes and Young Sam, although Sam is ignorant of this fact.
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Although they are not given their epithets in this book of course, regular readers will recognize the Patricians here as Homicidal Lord Winder and <s>Psychoneurotic</s> Mad Lord Snapcase.
* [[Necessary Fail]]: Consciously averted, look at the example higher on this page.
* [[Noodle Implements]]: The Ginger Beer torture method. Though Pratchett eventually did reveal what the "Ginger Beer Trick" actually is, although he despaired a bit that people actually had to be told. You shake it up real good to get the fizz going, then you stick it up the poor bastard's ''nose''. '''''Ouch.'''''
** For those familiar only with Ginger Ale, Ginger Beer is a whole different, and much HOTTER, sort of animal.
* [[Noodle Incident]]/[[The Fun in Funeral]]: If Colon had one dollar for every officer funeral he went to he'd have nineteen and a half dollars. A half because in one of them, the officer woke up just in time and banged on the lid.
* [[No Sympathy]]: ...Sort of. While Lu-Tse sympathizes with Vimes and tries to help him, we also have...this:
{{quote|'''Vimes:''' I've been talking to people who are going to die today. Do you have any idea how that feels?
'''Qu:''' Er, yes? ... Everyone I talk to is going to die. Everyone you talk it going to die. Everybody dies. }}
* [[Not in This For Your Revolution]]: Keel may have been a revolutionary, but Vimes only raised the barricades to keep a handful of people safe.
* [[The Obi-Wan]]: Thanks to time travel, Vimes gets to play this role for himself ... though in reality he spends only a small portion of his time training his protege and much more doing badass and heroic (or anti-heroic) things on his own, and takes pains to keep young Sam from doing anything that'd attract attention to himself. Also spending money like water, because he knows for a fact that he will "die" at the end of the week.
* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Vimes plays the stupid, loud but unshakable copper to arrest an Unmentionable.
* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: Vimes pulls this on the Unmentionables.
* [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome]]: Just after Vimes has apprehended Carcer in the cemetery after both returned to the present, Lord Vetinari turns up. During the following conversation, it transpires that Vetinari was watching the final fight between the Night Watch and Carcer's gang of Particulars and, after Vimes-as-Keel disappeared, Vetinari joined the fight. It's described by Vetinari over one page, and that's it.
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* [[Only Known by Their Nickname]]: Snouty. We find out his real name at the end of the book, though.
* [[Opt Out]]: Ned Coates seems to do that in the middle of the book.
* [[The Password Is Always Swordfish]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]]
* [[Percussive Prevention]]: Vimes knocks out his younger self to keep him out of a fight at one point.
* [[Perspective Flip]]: Basically, the novel can be read as one of these on ''[[Les Misérables]]'', with Vimes as a virtuous [[Inspector Javert]] and Carcer as an evil Valjean, and other characters filling roles from the novel.
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* [[Pet the Dog]]: Emphasizing the fact that she is Vetinari's prototypical [[Distaff Counterpart]], Madam's façade only cracks around her cat.
* [[The Poppy]]: The way the survivors of the last battle against Carcer treat the lilac on May 25 is very reminiscent of the Remembrance Day poppy: when new recruits don't understand its significance, they find themselves treading on a taboo.
* [[Posthumous Character]]: Keel. Vimes makes his moves and decision with Keel's previous acts in mind, and we get a pretty good sense of who he was.
* [[Powder Keg Crowd]]: People are already rioting against Watch houses elsewhere in the city. Vimes gives orders to prevent anything like that happening in his precinct. See [[To Win Without Fighting]] below.
* [[Production Foreshadowing]]: Early in this novel Vimes mentioned having to worry about some far-flung country going to war affecting Ankh-Morpork. Said war was the main conflict in the following novel, ''[[
* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: The Night Watch were the ones too scruffy, ugly, incompetent, awkwardly shaped, or bloody-minded for the Day Watch.
* [[Rain of Arrows]]: Reg's "death".
* [[Rats in a Box]]: Sped up brilliantly. Vimes finds he has three assassins in custody, two of whom are thoroughly professional, but the third is a showoffy twerp; Vimes classifies him as "the sort that gets a kick out of showing his dagger to women in bars". So, enjoying a ham and hoosegow sandwich, he drags the two others in back, but leaves the door open so Showoff Dan (who Vimes has dubbed "Ferret" for his weaselly demeanor) can hear all the screaming. Before he gets a chance to even grab the keys so Ferret can have his turn, the guy spills - and Vimes reveals that the screaming was just him and the boys goofing around. Ferret starts doing some mental arithmetic, then demands protective custody in return for ponying up everything ''else'' he knows.
* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Vimes, of course, but also the Abbot of the History Monks. He absolutely forbids Lu Tze to do what he's going to do, but follows it up by acknowledging that when he does, it will probably be for the best.
* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised]]: Mentioned by Vimes numerous times.
{{quote|"But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions."}}
* [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]: Intentionally invoked and discussed.
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** Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast is a possible reference to the [[The Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]] as he was born in Quirm but considers himself a patriotic Ankh-Morporkian, just like how Arthur Wellesley was born in Ireland but thought of as the greatest English general of all time.
* [[Shut UP, Hannibal]]: Vimes to Carcer.
* [[Stable Time Loop]]: Averted, sort of. Lu-Tze explains John Keel was a real person and the Sam Vimes we know now was not tutored by himself, unlike Vimes had thought. However, Vimes and Carcer arriving in the past changed that timeline when Carcer killed Keel and so Vimes has to substitute for him as mentor.
** Lu-Tze also claims that it is not quite a [[Stable Time Loop]] in the first place, that Vimes was trained by John Keel, that the rebellion was crushed as he remembered, and all that. Strangely, though, Vetinari remembers the events of the book's past, and not the one that Vimes remembers. Which means either the Sweeper was wrong, that the past and present changed but only Vimes remembers it, or that Lu-Tze was lying to make sure Vimes maintained the loop.
* {{spoiler|[[Staged Populist Uprising]]}}: the rebellion against Lord Winder is being subtly masterminded by {{spoiler|Madam Messerole}}.
Line 193 ⟶ 206:
** There's also something of a [[Genius Bonus]] [[Title Drop]] in the ''cover'', which is a restaging of the Rembrandt painting nicknamed "The Night Watch".
* [[To Win Without Fighting]]: Inverted: Vimes wisely choosing not to fight is what defuses a mob situation without incident.
* [[Took a Level
* [[Torture Cellar]]: What the Cable Street Particulars have. The [[Torture Technician]] that Captain Swing employs, however, is not a sadistic self-declared "artist" but merely a big bruiser who - as Vimes suspects - thinks nothing of hitting people long after they're unconscious and beating (or raping) them to death. It's all just a job to him.
* [[Verbal Judo]]: Vimes handles a [[Powder Keg Crowd]] amazingly, making sure not to provoke them in any of the ways almost anyone else in his position would have felt only the natural way to react.
* [[Villains Blend in Better]]: Carcer adapts to being sent back in time a lot faster than Vimes: although when Vimes catches up, he catches up rather spectacularly. It's reflected by Vimes that, in a time of chaos, those who remain firm and authoritative and full of conviction can rise to the top very quickly and dictate major events. Which is of course very similar to how 'revolutions' can sometimes succeed despite what seem titanic odds.
* [[Verbal Tic]]: Swing's unusuallypaced...speech pattern and Captain Tilden, what. Snouty, hnah, too.
** Carcer's patronizing little chuckle, haha.
* [[What You Are in the Dark]]: The entire book is one giant one for Vimes, but especially when he takes Carcer down ''by the book'', in one of the best [[Shut UP, Hannibal|Shut Up Hannibals]] ever.
* [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]]: Young Sam, to Vimes' great annoyance and disbelief.
* [[World Half Empty]]: Past Ankh-Morpork sucks even worse than present, with insane rulers, tyrannical and cruel authorities and even more rampant crime. Vimes repeatedly calls the Watch "just another gang" in his monologues. And he's explicitly told upfront that he cannot, ''cannot'' change any major events, such as a clearly pointless war borne of the Patrician's insanity which will last just long enough to kill many innocent people, or the deaths of many watchmen. However, rather than sitting there and taking it, he makes efforts to reform the watch, prevents a bloodbath on Morphic Street, and changes history by holding his barricade through the entire night when the original Keel failed halfway through, reducing his side's casualties to perhaps a dozen (during the battle, anyways). And he takes down Carcer in the most lawful way possible.
* [[You Will Be Beethoven]]: Vimes takes Keel's place after Carcer murders him.
** A minor subversion, though, as it's openly stated that the John Keel that Vimes knew ''was'' the real John Keel...but time travel works as it does in the [[Back to The Future]] series, meaning that Vimes' replacement of Keel {{spoiler|and the much longer-lived barricade}} don't undo the fact that Vimes originally was taught by Keel himself. The book is then Vimes' attempt to replicate Keel as accurately as possible.
{{reflist}}
{{Discworld novels}}
{{The Big Read}}
[[Category:Literature of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Night Watch]]
▲[[Category:Discworld]]
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