The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 111: Monstrous Regiment Pt. 1 [REDACTED]

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Monstrous Regiment”. Soup! Boots! Women?!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefret Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:TTSMYF Presents Marc Burrows: The Magic of Terry Pratchett - We Got TicketsNo Such Thing as a Fish Scheibenwelt Convention Trans Day of Visibility: A Global Perspective | Stonewall  Tim Clare enthused writing thread - TwitterMonstrous Regiment - Colin Smythe  Terry Pratchett interview - Monstrous Regiment - YouTube   The World Turned Upside Down - Wikipedia Billy Bragg - The World Turned Upside Down - Youtube Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) - YoutubeSweet Polly Oliver - Wikipedia The Warrior Women Project - Wayne StateList of nicknames of British Army regiments - Wikipedia Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Yeah, it was lovely walking back today and it was like, oh, it's really nice and sunny. I can even walk like without my jacket on for a little bit. I can see this guy is literally black just in front of me. Can I make it home before that's on top of me? And kitty? I did. I love that. Now, ticket sales for our live event.

We have sold some, but we still have some left, so let's come to our live event on May the 19th. At the Tokyo live events, there's no such thing as a fish live event on the 21st of April at the British Library and they sold out and I forgot to buy a ticket and I was like, whatever, because I was going to get some for me and Jack. But then on the, like the Patreon Discord, someone said, oh, I can't get the time off work, so anyone want to buy it? Like one ticket.

I was like, yes, actually, yes, I do. And I'll go on my own. It's fine. Like, I'm sure there'll be other people. There are other people because on the Patreon Discord, there are a couple of other people are like, yeah, no, actually, I'm going on my own as well. Do you want to be in that beforehand? So.

Oh, that's really fun. Yeah. And it's not like assigned seating. I don't think so. Oh, that's cool. So you can just go meet people and sit with them and, oh, that'll be awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

It's been a while since I did like something on, like, on my own, on my own. Yeah. I know I'm always like, you'll be fine, Joanna, you can do whatever, but it's actually been quite a while since I traveled somewhere on my own that wasn't just like Jersey or something. So. Yeah. I have flown to America by myself now and gotten over my sort of mild fear I had of traveling to a foreign country alone, because I'd just never done it before as an adult.

But I still would be a bit uncomfortable like going to a show in London by myself, partly because I don't drive. So I'd have more complication of like getting home again. That's yeah. No, that would be a problem. But yeah. So I used to go to London on my own all the time for work. Yeah.

But I know, yeah, something about it being like a social thing is different. I don't know. That's very exciting. Yeah. I hope you have a lovely time. Thank you. I was trying to think, is that when you are likely to be in Germany? No.

Or is that the next week? Yeah. I think Germany is the week after. Yeah. German listeners, if we have listeners by this point in the open. If you're going to be at the German Discord Con, I will, in theory, be around. Giving them up or selling some books. So come find me.

Yeah. Listeners who may be there or are you only interested in talking to Germans? I understand. But no, as I speak, like no fucking German. Yeah. Any other listeners that can manage English come and come and say hi. I would imagine that any listeners do speak English. Yeah, probably.

What has been going on? What has happened in the last two weeks? It's been a week. We've had a week off. Trump got indicted. Oh, yeah. That's fun. It is.

I wonder what will happen there. It's Transday of Visibility, the day that we're recording this, which will be very appropriate considering the book we're covering. Oh, super. I was just reading a couple of the 2021, like, pink news articles about how Rihanna Pratt took down various GC idiots on Twitter. So that's good. Yeah.

I'm glad I managed to do that on an appropriate anniversary point. The transphobes have been insane recently. Like, vulva phrenology is not something. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's just not something I thought I'd say on the Internet. I mean, I'm not that surprised. Tell you what, I'll tell you fucking what. There was a Twitter thread today.

It wasn't terrible, which was by a poet I follow. Oh, Tim Clare's thread. Tim Clare's thread. There it is. Can anyone point towards writing where someone really loves the thing unapologetically and just goes off celebrating the thing? I find it hard that almost all my favorite interests are muddied for the sense of shame and embarrassment, like I'm stupid for loving them so much.

So I picked a couple, and there's lots more in there that I'd like to see as well. Ones I picked for people who are interested in. Such things as the rise and fall of dinosaurs, which obviously I've mentioned many times. Yes. It's then in the art of writing, which obviously I mentioned many a time. Also there's a website called the Universe Inverse, or it's like an annual event thing, but the website as well. I found lots of the pieces where lots of like scientists and people of scientific bent go

in and write about things. And sometimes it's quite angry, but I found that scientists in general actually are more likely than non-scientists kind of embody this unabashed, joyful zest for their subject. I think people like us, let's be honest, are more likely to get weird and meta about it and therefore cringe. And also Ruby Tando is writing about food. I just fucking love boys. Yes.

Have you got her book eats up? I don't think I do. Yeah. That's a big comfort read for me. I love that book. But yeah, no, that was a really lovely thread. I loved that. I liked that.

Speaking of, should we enthusiastically and unabashedly go on about something we love? Yes. Do you want to make a podcast? Yes, let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Two Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one as time in chronological order.

I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of Monstrous Regiment, the 31st Discworld novel. Yeah, it is. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I love this book so much. Yeah, you do.

I like it too. But definitely, Joanna's being a lot more normal about it all, normal T.M. I'm so calm and chill. Like, since we started this podcast, this has been one of the ones I have been so excited to get to. I know. I know. This is a morris.

Yeah, this is a morris. I don't want to, like, overhype this, especially for our, like, first time listeners. It's just, it's a really good book. Yeah, it is. Like, I would say it's definitely at the top end of my top five. But I'm not going to actually say it's my favorite because I can't do that. Yeah, we can't commit like that. No.

What do we look like? Anyway, note on spoilers. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are a Spoiler Light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the Book of Monstrous Regiment. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any in all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Swinging all of our appendages awkwardly.

That's what you try and emulate a teenage boy. I don't need to emulate a teenage boy to swing my appendages awkwardly. I don't have anything to follow up on. Do you have anything to follow up on? No, not really. Do we have, we didn't have any, like, Reddit comments, any emails or? Nothing major for the book, I'll say. Okay, cool, cool, cool.

I did check things. Yeah. No, there were a couple of bits that, like, from the last book I might want to talk about, but I don't feel like I want to talk about it today. It's not like the bad just can't be bothered. So would you like to introduce us to the book, Monstrous Regiment, Francine? I think I'd better. Yes.

So a Monstrous Regiment. It is the 31st Discworld novel, as you quite rightly say, and I am 31. So I feel like this is fortuitous in some way. It was published in October 2003, 20 years ago, almost. The cover illustration of the British edition, which we were linked to, of course, is by Paul Kidby, and it is a parody of Joe Rosenthal's photograph raising the flag on Iodema, the World War II, very famous photograph. Indeed, if you can't immediately think of it, I'll link it and you'll know it when

you see it. Yeah. For sure. And then the title comes from a 1588 work, Attacking Female Monarchs. Is that, that is the other thing I wanted to ask you, have you got this elsewhere or am I good to go? No. Okay.

I figured she's probably. Sorry. I was going to say, I figured you probably did it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, or the monstrous regiment, if you want to pronounce the long S in a humorous way, which I always do. The author, a Scottish Protestant preacher called John Knox, railed against Queen Mary

the First for both her Catholicism and the precedent she set for her for women of the country. A choice quote, for who can deny but it repugneth to nature that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see, that the weak, the sick and impotent persons shall gnawish and keep the whole and strong. I'm just going to pronounce the old word that's felt funny, that the foolish mad and frenetic shall govern the discreet and give counsel to such as be sober of mind and such be all women compared unto man in bearing of authority.

So. Yeah, fuck off, mate. Quite a character. Yeah. And the monstrous regiment is such a catchy phrase that's been used a few times in various works and almost never in a way that that author would appreciate. So we can all be thankful for that. The conceit of this.

But for listeners who I hope have read at least some of it will know it is a young woman who disguises herself as a young man and goes off to war. And of course, this is rooted firmly in Round World precedent, practically mentioned in several threads that the research for this one was extensive. I think we'll go into this at length later on this week or next week. And yeah, it's a really good book and I think you should tell us what's in the first third. It's quite a long book, but I didn't. The first side didn't seem longer than usual.

I don't know if it's just a really well-paced intro or it is. I mean, the whole book is really well-paced. It's really perfectly done. I did think about as it's so long doing this is a four episode thing like we did for Night Watch, but just the timing have not worked out this year. No, yeah. I know you, Joanna, in case I cut this bit out of the intro is working in a kitchen for the first time in a while for this fortnight.

So let's give her a week off at the end of the month, shall we? Listeners, you're getting me at my most excited and sleep deprived. In section one, which I have tweeted ends on page 160 in the call you pay for back with the line tell them their pigeon flew in the wrong window again. Polly cuts her hair as the Duchess watches. She slips out of the inn and heads to plume to get recruited in the never ending war. She kisses the Duchess and an eagle joins behind her while elsewhere, Vimes lands the Borogravi in National Anthem.

Prince Heinrich wants Borogravia for himself and Vimes is there to conclude things quickly. More recruits sign up, including Maladite the Vampire and Carparundum the Troll, and after some bad beer, the new soldiers sleep in the shed. Polly reads the letter from her brother, visits the privy and gets some new socks. After breakfast, the company begins their march to the barracks at Plots, and Corporal Strappy poses a challenge to Polly. The shed burns as they leave. Strappy bullies and gives a brief lecture,

but he's briefly interrupted by the sergeant sharpening. The scavenging parties gather spoiled wheat and Igor helps injured soldiers on the road. Polly goes on an errand and catches lofty in a compromising position. The company meets refugees on the march and Polly catches a torn page of the times as they wonder about winning. The company arrived to an almost empty plots and meet their young officer. Blouse announces the plan to head straight for the front and Strappy's not happy. Jackram's unwittingly discharged and they're due to leave at midnight.

There's rummaged all uniforms for the taking and they learn they're the last recruits. Three parts warns against political types and Polly's recruited to look after the Rupert. Shufty cooks but doesn't swear and Maladite's noticing things. Strappy's gone missing and Shufty tells Polly that she's looking for her husband. Polly notices Wazza curtsying and reads Blouse's letter. Polly's worrying at night and the in-staff of Scarford, enemy soldiers, are approaching. Polly dons a petticoat and knees the moustachioed captain in the socks. The company capture the soldiers but the captain's lying about his name.

Jackram goes civilian and gets violent and Wazza's not happy about the Duchess being slandered. Polly gets parental with Blouse and Jackram gets conscripted. Reinforcements are apparently en route but as the company stands with weapons loaded it's a vampire photographer that enters. According to William Anotto, Borogravia is losing the war and the cavalry was after these last recruits to words excited by the possibility of a new truth. The company briefly reveals some gender-based truths to each other and Maladite's promoted to corporal. The soldiers are left shackled in the inn in the nude with no key to be found

as the squad marches on and the barracks blow behind them. Weim's intercepts a pigeon and reads the story of the squad. The captain's not a captain at all but Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia. Weim's sends Angwer to keep an eye on our monstrous regiment. Nice. God, a lot happens in this section. It does, yeah, no, it just went fast, I guess. There are many events in this book, many, many events.

So many events, yeah, gosh, happenings, plot points. Helicopters, loincloths, speaking of. Well, we're going with loin socks. Oh, yeah, fair. Because I'm very proud of the term loin socks. Okay. And for helicopters, we have Morag, the buzzard. Yes, we do.

Who has been trained. Has promised five times. She has been trained by picnices. As is correct. Which delights me. That makes me very happy. Tying us back briefly to our last book. Very nice indeed.

Well, yes, that is quite a lot of happenings. The beginning, the absolute beginning of this book, I thought was a lovely line. Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very guilty about doing so. I do like that. It just occurred to me, we've never really done a comparison of the opening lines of Discworld books before.

And I think we should do that at some point. Maybe we should do a little, a little 10 minute bonus one day and just pick our favorite of the ones we've done so far. I don't know. We've had a lot of good ones. I mean, there was something we were tracking for a long time is whether or not we opened on the turtle in some way. Yes.

And I think we've definitely shifted away from our turtle openings now. Yeah, the odd explanatory paragraph or like a pre-book explanation seems to be the thing now. But you know when we're recording this podcast, you ever just hear yourself say something in like quite a serious tone of voice and then realize how fucking ridiculous what we're doing is? Was it opening on the turtle? Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah.

I was about to say if the actress said to the bishop, but I just... I decided I didn't want to think about what it was that you had no for. As long as we're on the same page. On the same page, yes. Speaking of pages. Quotes. I think you're first. I mean, I'll do mine first.

Let's see if I can do this in one breath. Private Goom, as you were, that is an order. As you were, I said. Private Melodyte, take that order for Private Goom. That is another order. Sergeant, order your men to ease back slowly. Slowly do it now. Upon my oath, I am not a violent man.

But any man, any man who disobeys by God, that man is looking at a broken rib. Serious Vimes energy. Didn't that hugely remind you of one of the rants that Vimes goes off at, like, as keel? Yeah, no, very much so. It's very like Vimes in the middle of the fray, suddenly putting everyone in the right place very quickly because we have to war we die. Upon my oath, I am not a violent man. We should start using that.

I've been waiting to get to this book so I can start using that. Upon my oath, Joe, I am not a violent man. What was your quote? Oh, yeah. She hadn't set out to be an ornithologist, but birds brought Paul alive. All of the slowness in the rest of his thinking became a flash of lightning in the presence of birds. Suddenly, he knew their names, habits and habitats could whistle their songs, and after Polly had saved up for a box of paints off a traveller at the inn,

had painted a picture of a wren so real you could hear it. And that is followed by a less happy paragraph, which is also very good, but about her mother obviously taking offense to it and burning the wren and whatever. But that's not the bit that made me cry. This bit that I just read out is the bit that made me cry in this section. I don't know why it might be broken, but just the idea of this lovely boy just coming alive because the birds, birds are wonderful, aren't they? They are wonderful.

I've got a bird table now. Maybe that's why. I don't know. I just really like that quote. No, it's beautiful. It's a really beautiful moment. I don't know. I don't know.

Well, speaking of Polly then, let's go into our characters. Yes. So something I noticed, and I've never really thought about comparing these characters at all, I think it's because we've just done the Wee Free Men that I started noticing odd little bits where like Polly and Tiffany have some shared DNA. Oh, okay. And not in like Pratchett's a lazy writer and he's using one like cookie cutter, female character, strong female character.

But the fact that this comes right after the Wee Free Men, he's obviously like, this is the kind of person I'm in the mood to write right now and play with. Yes. So there's that same kind of pragmatism and so the way Polly is going after Paul, it's very, well, who else is going to do it? Of course, I've got to. The specific line that made me think of Tiffany was after Polly's need the captain in the socks and they're getting all the soldiers chained up and Melodyte says,

she's also clobbered him over the head with the barman's friend. And Melodyte says, what did he do to upset you so much? And she says, patronize me. Which obviously made me think of Tiffany and Wee Free Men patronizing is a big word. No, it's not, is it? So yeah, so I just think there's like an interesting bit of shared DNA between them and it's enjoyable just because I'd never thought. So do we know how old Polly is?

No, I think she I'm assuming teenage because she's trying to pass for a teenage boy. So I'm assuming she's around the sort of 15, 16 mark. Maybe slightly older if she's passing as a slightly younger boy. Yes. But I can't imagine she's any older than like 17. No, she's still definitely the way she's thinking reads teenager role as an adult. But you know, she might just be very sheltered. I don't know.

Yeah, there is a mix of teenage and sheltered because of the life she is like, the Nugganatic, Nugganitic life she has been forced to leave. But she's, yeah, she's the the internal monologue stuff for Polly, I think reminds me a little of Tiffany, if I think about it, just in the you get to see this mental journey that she's going on with each plot point and it's very nice. Yeah. And it's not something I've and I've read this book a lot. And I've read The Way For A Man quite a few times.

It's not something I think I've ever noticed as a comparison before, but it's something I think because Tiffany's on the brain right now. Yeah, no, I definitely haven't read them one after the other. So yeah, but I enjoy it. I think it's a testament to how good Pratchett's writing is that you have these two. Obviously, Tiffany's not a teenage girl, but you have these two similar-ish protagonists right next to each other and they are so incredibly distinctive. Yeah.

Whereas a lot of like male fantasy writers specifically, those characters would read as the same character just with like a different haircut. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And then if we take someone maybe a bit closer in age, she's very, very different from teenage Susan. Very much so, yeah. Even though both of them kind of share this whole, I'm not interested in getting married or whatever, normal girly stuff.

They're just the way they think is entirely different. There's the shared pragmatism. And we know Polly didn't go to Querm College for ladies, but seems to have it anyway. Yeah, I think you can either get her at a fancy private school or just through having a bit of a tough life maybe. Sheer force of will. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I really loved, you know, I really loved the way she was able to like

improv the barmaid bit, even though she's a barmaid, just the whole like, and I told him, I told him, but the fucking twas on the thing. And Molly never puts the cloth over the spigot. But I like that she's shown as incredibly observational. Like she's learned all these things about birds from, you know, she said she never meant to become an ornithologist because of her brother. She's learned all these things about how to pass herself off as a boy, but also specifically as a soldier.

The staying clumsy in the sword fight with strappy and then using the specific trip that Gummy Abbons taught her. And learning to kind of read and write without outwardly learning to read and write, even though her father was in on it, she learned by watching and then. Yeah, which I wanted to sidebar quickly. Her father has the widow clambas staying over. And as she's leaving, she has this nice thought of,

I hope she keeps staying over. She's a good baker and she makes my father happy. And it's just this not evil stepmother. Yeah, I think the widow clambas is a wonderful name. Yes, absolutely. Definitely up there for a non-speaking, project name rankings, which I never actually bothered keeping track of one day. I'll go back and why do I say that?

Maybe I will. We'll make a spreadsheet, Joanna. That's what we'll do. I've seen you're not allowed to make a spreadsheet. Oh, what? Really? No, you can make a spreadsheet. Obviously.

I wouldn't take that from you. Let's say this is unusually cruel of me. I'm trying to save you like a minute of distraction. Yeah, fair. That's never going to work, though, is it? So we see Polly as this really observational character. And then when you get to this bit where they all reveal in the tent, you know, Carba and the Ms. Jade and Lofty and Tonka and Shufti and Waza's Alice.

I'm going to keep calling her Waza because I enjoy saying it. And Polly realises that while she's been this observational, maybe even a little bit, I'm slightly cleverer than you. Like she's thinking about the fact, you know, I don't want to have to like look after other women who are doing this. I've planned they, Shufti's just come along. And then she gets this, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick. You are not the only one watching the world.

She gets this very humbling moment. And you know, I love that. Yeah, absolutely. Especially when it's like a call out. Which I feel like it kind of is. Yeah. That's as well, maybe. Oh, I felt very called out.

They kind of pass into like look around while everyone's praying. Yes, definitely. But then she also starts building up this confusion. She's there panicking when these soldiers are about to come into the inn and she has this inner monologue moment of, what do you mean you're not a soldier? You kiss the duchess. She took the shilling. You're a soldier.

I find soldiers. Absolutely. And then this horrible moment where she's really frustrated because she's in the petticoat and she's this sort of girl dressed as a boy, dressed as a girl. It's all very Shakespearean. It's like, what am I doing? Let's not show Polly twelfth night. I think it'll upset her.

So are we going to move along to our second Sergeant Jaffram? Yeah, we finally, I think, hit the ultimate sergeant in our long discovery of sergeants. I have a listening email. So April last year we got this email and I mentioned on the podcast before this email from Ellie who went to win Canton had a lovely time. But I was saving part of the email until we got here. You're out and out, yes.

Because we had a question about Terry Pratchett and his predilection for powerful sly and slightly crooked sergeants. So long, long time ago, Ellie visited the Discworld Emporium and wandered around the shop, blah, blah, eventually a man named Bernard, this is Bernard Pearson, longtime Pratchett collaborator, wandered out to preach his personal parables of his long, long partnership with our precious Terry. Among a great many other things, Bernard was a police sergeant in his day. After my visit, I learned that he was in fact the inspiration for one Sergeant Jaffram in

Monstrous Regiment. Excellent. So this is our inspiration, but I just want to follow up one other bit from Ellie's email. Among the blatantly illegal things he told us about doing were planting a marijuana plant on the property of his rural police station, getting his policing orders directly from the local wealthy matron, rather than the law, like dude went and had a veterinary style briefing with her on the daily, where she told him what to look into and what not to and provided either tea or whiskey, depending on how pleased she was with his work.

Goodness. Which is like objectively looking at it and how horribly corrupt the police force can be, obviously that's awful, but at the same time, that's kind of fucking cool. I think sometimes you've just got to look at people as if they are a part of a novel. And I think we can very much do that with Ben a person. Yeah, absolutely. Goodness me. But yes, Jaffram is a favorite character of mine, hence the quote,

I just like the ability to furiously bellow. I like the type, like reading this again, like trying to analyze whenever again. I like how he has the odd little moment of like a wink and a nudge, even at this point in the book where you're like, where he points out that like, Polly has a nice round hand and doesn't call her out on this or that. And I'm like, ooh, is this little sneaky words or is that? Because like just like around how like handwriting generally, like round round at handwriting is quite girly, isn't it?

That's a thing. Yeah. Or am I reading into it too much? I don't know. Quite possibly. I think going on that theme of observation, I think I like that Jaffram comes across as this very big, jolly and possibly slightly dumb, but also quite conniving sergeant and is clearly incredibly closely watching things like sharpening the stone when Strapi is getting too big for

his boots. Yes, absolutely. And just occasionally stepping in with a, not enough to make Strapi really, really petrol and at him, but just enough to like tone it down, mate. Come on. Yeah. Can't mute it. Who's the bigger man in like command and stature and everything really?

Just come on. And if you need to prove your authority like this, then you have no authority. Absolutely. He's very much implied underneath. Yeah. There's also one moment I liked quite late in the section after the soldiers have been captured is that Jaffram uses the word in buggerence. Oh yeah?

It's not something I've been looking for, but I don't remember seeing it in another Discord book. And so for listeners who don't know in buggerence became the term that Pratchett used to refer to his Alzheimer's diagnosis. And I really like seeing it here in a completely different context because I do like to think, I feel like because it's Jaffram that says it, that maybe it was a term of phrase that came from Bernard Pearson, but either way, I like that it was like something that was part of his lexicon outside of that and it has more meaning than that.

Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you think about the way his size is described as opposed to some other characters we talk about? I don't hate it. Yeah.

There's one line, he didn't have a waist, he had an equator. I think because everything about his character is written to be so specifically larger than life, it doesn't feel gross or sneering. No. I also quite like the fact that his fatness is written as a part of him. Well, in the same way, actually, now I think about it, that Agnes was as well, but it's just Pratchett never kind of leans into the, and so he was eating 10 pork chops, whatever. He's marching up and down as a recruiting sergeant.

He's eating the same as everybody else. He's just this size. He just is this very big bloke and it's part of who he is as a character. I feel like, yeah, we definitely don't lean into any like harmful misconceptions, which is nice. Yeah. It didn't feel sneering. It didn't feel like objectifying. I also quite like that he cleaned out his own wound with like maggots and honey and like

sewed it up. It's just nice little. Yeah. It's like another side to that aggressively pragmatic type character, except with maggots. Yeah. And you definitely get like another underlining of this thing that's obviously stuck in Pratchett's mind a bit, which is that old doctors were fucking horrendous and he keeps bringing up and the odd person was like a bit more reasonable.

And we're just going to, yeah, we're just going to keep bringing that up. Well, especially as a lot of the elements of like the warfare and stuff in this, there's a lot of inspiration from the Crimean War, I think. And that one's the one that's very much known for eventually some good nursing, but also a lot of fucked up doctoring. Oh yeah. Yeah. Also a little doctor that he bit the sore bones.

I quite liked that one specific details always stayed with me. Yeah. There's something really specific about fighting as opposed to like hitting away. Speaking of biting, let's be bitingly critical of Strafi. Good. Well, then I was going to go with speaking of maggots. So you're much better. All right.

Sorry. Say that. Speaking of maggots, Strafi. What a twat. Um, what a twat. I absolutely, Kudos to Pratchett for being able to make a character this unlikable in a handful of pages. Yeah.

Yet again, we have a villain with a not laugh laugh. Yeah. At this point. How many are we up to now? At least four, I'm going to say. We have a collection. A sort of gargling spit at the back of the throat. Lovely.

Do you know what really underlined this for me? Like how much of a twat he is was the moment that he pissed himself weirdly, because that to me, this time reading it, I kind of went, you are this scared of it. You, that means you know exactly how scared of it you should be and how scared of it all of these people will be and exactly what you're sending them into. And yet you were joyously doing it. Do you know what I mean?

And trying to. This is how scared you are of it and you were sending people into it. It's not some kind of misplaced toughness of, oh, I've never had to test myself in it, but I reckon I could do it, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, you know exactly how fucking bad it is. You awful little man. Not only sending people into it, a sending quite young boys into it, but also he's giving these big intense lessons on patriotism,

but also knows how bad it is, which means there is absolutely, like incredibly sincere patriotism is one really gross thing. But this is incredibly insincere, but intense patriotism to try and indoctrinate people into going into something so horrific that he pisses himself at the thought of it. Yeah. The idea of a political, we've used that term by the end of this section, and we, yes, is rooted in round world.

The Soviet Union was the biggest example of this, of just officers or men. I think they were usually officers. But anyway, a sprinkled across various units and just there to, yeah, sow that seed of patriotism and dump other people in. Nazi Germany had their equivalent, and I think Mao's army did as well. I thought that was an interesting round world parallel, not one I went too far into, because it's not nearly as interesting as all the cool thing women have done over the centuries.

That's fair. There was one other strappy moment that gave me a really specific, passive rage, which is when he says to the group, best foot forward ladies, and probably this Tonka gasp. And obviously the joke in there is that strappy doesn't know that they're all actually women. But I just have such a visceral hatred of the term ladies, like as a collective term, because it always feels like a little bit

patronizing or derogatory. And some of that is obviously the fact that it gets used for me a lot, and I'm not, you know, really. That's not something you want. Exactly. I love how I get incredibly euphemistic about my own gender identity, not a lady or a woman or a girl. Not a lady, no.

Let's not call her, not called a woman or a lady. We call her a mammal avoid, occasionally. That. But yeah. Yeah, it wasn't something I'd ever picked up on until you pointed it out to me a couple of years ago, actually. I think I used to use, well, actually, I used to use just guys when I was a very bad waitress, I then moved on to ladies and gents,

and eventually just folks, I think, I settled on at one point. You know, you can get away with sounding awfully corny when you're a teenager. But yeah, because like we, like as the podcast, we quite often get things like the girls from the true show Mickey Frat or the ladies from the true show Mickey Frat. And I know it's never meant in like a malicious way, but it is always one that does a specific cringe for me. So I don't think that was even written to be a particularly strappy as a decade

moment. I mean, it kind of is because the point strappy is doing here is I'm going to piss you off by calling you ladies because ladies are weak. Yeah, but that's like typical of the time we're in and the culture we're in, rather than a specific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

God, he's written. Yeah, you're absolutely right. He's written so fucking annoyingly in the small amount. And he's in it is beautifully done. Just like the little insights from the others as well. Like Polly said, he is exactly the kind of prick who would like be listening at the open tent and things like that. You get to absorb all the little mentions like that.

And yeah. Anyway, nice people. We've got the squad. We've got the squad. The squad, the gang, the Mary band, rag tag bunch of misfit cheese mungers. All of that. The fact that we get, I mean, if you don't mind,

start at the end reveal just briefly. Oh, absolutely. To shoehorn in the fact that I found a really cool book about the phenomenon of women dressing as men to go off to war. And I say that quite awkwardly because there's definitely some people who were just transgender men, but they didn't have the terminology for that. But anyway, I was very deep into reading practice comments on all of this in the news groups and the alt dot fan dot practice, et cetera, which took me a lot longer than usual

because unsurprising, there's quite a lot of fucking discussion about this book. But one of his comments, practice said, a good start for anyone interested is the tradition of female transvestism. Transvestism in Early Modern Europe by Rolf and Dekker and Lottie C. Van Dipol. And I've rented the ebook and I've started reading it. And it is very interesting. It was published in 1989. So, you know, typical warnings about some language not being as good as it could,

but honestly, nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Impressive. Very sympathetic. Acknowledges the existence of, as they were saying, transsexual people as we now say, transgender people. But yeah, I would say worth reading for anyone who is really interested in this, and I will link it in the show notes. Nice.

But yeah, and it does go into detail of some of the various reasons people have changed their outward appearance to go to war, such as the squad did. Such as the squad did. So, we don't really get a lot of motivation from, well, we get the motivation from some of them, but we've got like a lot more to come as we go through the rest of the book. But we have Igor. I love how bitchy and snarky a lot of the squad are written, like after the corporals getting fussy about Igor joining.

And Igor says, I promise you, your brain is entirely they from me, corporal. They're fun. They're a really fun group. Like it's nice to hang out with them. Yeah, like I actually literally want to hang out with this group of people. Like when it said they're gig leg and stuff and just like, yeah. There's a great moment, I noticed, actually, with maladite specifically. And I'm sure it said, is it maladite or maladict?

Because I've always read it as maladite and now I'm doubting myself. Well, I've always read it maladict. But now you said maladite, I really like it. So I think we should go with that. Cool, we're going with maladict. Because like maladict is the, it's a play on the word that's spelt differently and means like malicious. It's maladict, isn't it?

Yeah. But I think it's spelt like maladite. I should have it. Maladict under a curse, yeah. Oh, yeah, so something I think, and I tasted Pratchett pointed out is that in Carpe Jugulum, one of the like vampire friends of the teenagers was called maladite and got pushed off a bridge. So like, I don't think it's meant to be the same vampire, but it's just a fun found theory that this could be a reformed version of that vampire.

Absolutely. And actually now I've said it, I'm not sure I've already ever heard anyone say this aloud, so it could be for outside as well. But yeah, let's say maladicts, I like that. Yeah. But yeah, there's a moment where, and I've forgotten to note down the page number, but it's towards the end and Jackram say something about like, I don't think the school can do something to surprise me and maladict like quietly a size to poly dropping your drawers and do it.

And it's really rare in a Pratchett get we get this kind of comedy between people, like so much like seeing someone say something and someone else in the room within the book, like laughing and doing the shoving the fist in the mouth, because so much of the comedy in Pratchett comes from like someone not getting the joke. Yeah, absolutely. But this is like really important place to do it, isn't it? Because so much of this is going to revolve around the camaraderie and the fact that they are teenage girls and like it's that kind of camaraderie.

I love it. Yeah. And we're using girls for a different value of girl because I think there is some more complicated gender identities in there. They're teenagers. That's the best way of putting it. Yeah, they're a bunch of fucking teenagers. I will go into a lot more gender feelings, but I'm going to save a lot of that towards

the end of the book. Yeah, I think we've got the thesis that I've forgotten the name of now around somewhere, haven't we? No, no, not your overarching thesis. The actual thesis we had bookmarks since fucking day one. Oh, what's it called? We've got supplementals anyway, listeners say. At some point, I'll find it. But yeah, I love Melodyte as a character.

I like the kind of decibel vampire confidence. And yes, definitely. When they're all having their horrible horse bread breakfast and drinking coffee in the air of a young man at a pavement cafe with little care in the world. And when the girls sort of all reveal that they're girls when they're having this quiet aside conversation, everyone looks to Melodyte and just goes, is this the time? And then immediately gets promoted to corporal. Which you would?

Yeah, absolutely. There's a very corporally, corporally sort of character. And then we have carbrandom slash jade, which I think is probably one of the biggest misleads as an entrance. Because when she comes in to sign up, it's very, this very slow, dumb, gonna join the army, gonna be a soldier, gonna do my bit and then has the electric floorbanger and passes out. It's like the really exaggerated version of what Polly's done there, isn't it? It's the angle acting like a swaggering boy, except when you're a troll, you're really

fucking swagger. Exactly. And I really enjoy it. It's fun to see a troll play dumb. Yeah, yeah. And clearly have quite a lot of depth underneath when they get that big reveal. And she's kind of explaining a bit more about why she's doing this and how shit it is for like a female troll back home.

Send Jade to make more pork. Let her hang out with detritus and Ruby and all that. I don't know. Gender politics might be a bit better there, but it's still not a place to get good influencers, unless you're... I mean, specifically, I feel like Ruby could be a good influence. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And then we have lofty and Tonka, which I like that sort of Polly is quite naive in some ways.

So when it's just lofty that she's found out is a girl, she's like, oh, she's following her boy. Obviously, she's so close to Tonka. She must be following her boy to war. And then Melodyte points out that Tonka is also female. And the world's certainly unfolding itself for you, eh? Yeah. There's no prejudice or real... There's a bit of confusion because it takes her a second to realise what Melodyte's saying,

but there's no like... I didn't know that that was a thing that women could do. Yeah, I've got to say, it reminds me a little bit of, I imagine I was quite a bit younger, but of my own kind of realisation that gay relationships existed of me going, oh, but they're both... Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yes, it was very different for me.

My realisation was much more, I can do that. Yeah, yours is going to be a bit more memorable. And then Shufty, who I think is a very sweet character. I do like that Pratchett is playing with the gender stereotypes here, and occasionally gets very like, this is what women are like. And for Shufty is that she can't swear, and she's cooking enthusiastically with marinades. Yeah, absolutely. That was the other Jack from Observation thing I meant to do.

Polly accidentally did a not quite swear in front of him, like not long before. Not long after this. Well, we rarely get swear words in Pratchett books. This is something we talked about before. And when Polly goes and has that conversation with Shufty, she does say like, you did shit or get off the pass or something like that. So she can swear. She just can't swear in front of Jack from.

Yeah, that was actually mentioned in the book I was just talking about, that some of the women on sailing sailors, especially the disguise themselves as male sailors, felt particularly uncomfortable when they realised how men talked just amongst men and took a little while to get used to not being shocked, because obviously there's so much more shelter time. It's not just the whole, you know, even now at work, certainly I get a lot of guys trade, you know, they're working trades, who will swear or say something vulgar in front of me and go, oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm like, it's fine. Honestly, it's fine. It's amazing how long it's stuck that you don't talk like that in front of a lady. I get a loss of it, which is really funny because like I'm doing this covering kitchen stuff at the moment and the head chef I'm working with, although I'm not actually working with because I'm covering his holiday. It's a lot more pearl clutching about swearing than I am. He's quite proper, isn't he?

So I find myself apologising for swearing and as well as because this is an open kitchen, the customers can hear me, so I'm really having to watch my dialogue. And yeah, then Waza. Waza. Sorry, I'm going to stop that immediately. Very intense, a big old swerve with this personality type. We haven't had like someone who's quite so intensely religious, like not in a kind of nasty negative light, I don't think.

Brother, yes, actually. But very differently. Yes, well, with brother. Different type of intensity. We're in brother's head, I think is another big difference. We're not in Waza's head, so we don't know like how much is real and how much is like a formed delusion. Yeah, and it's too very different.

In fact, I'm not even sure I can put brother into a trope in my head. Whereas with Waza, I can, even though I'm not sure I could name the trope, but just the wayfish, big-eyed, intense chant. What do I mean, conduit? Yes. Of some great power, yeah. But I do love the moment where as much as Waza housed this very intense thing, especially this very intense worship of the Duchess, hence that great, the moment that was my quote,

which is when someone said something horrific about the Duchess and Waza goes like a Jack Russell off the leash. And I do think if her is a little bit Jack Russell-y, actually. That's good, yeah. Yeah, we can reject that, Hunter. I was thinking more like a whip-it, just with the massive eyes, you know what I mean? But yeah, a bit Jack Russell. Or like one of those Italian Greyhounds.

Yeah, that's it. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. I'm glad we've decided what dog Waza is. That was a really important part of this. Like, if we get a short nonsense, let's get it right. Anyway, yeah, I really enjoy Waza as a character because, yeah, you've got that very intense thing.

You've got that very quickly off the leash, but she also gets some of these very quiet, very sweet moments, like when she says, I've got the quote marked further down, but something like, though the best people in this country are in this, all of the good bits of the country are in this tent. Yeah. And that's such an intense thing to say. Like before we've really solidified the kind of friendship we're going to see in the rest of the book as well.

And especially from the one that is such a firm believer in the Duchess to not automatically think that therefore Borogravia is the best. Well, she thinks she's, you know, she, the Duchess is everywhere. So I guess that bit's there, but yeah, she realises the rest of the country is not tipped fucking top right now. Not now. Sorry, tipped, flipping top. That's quite a nice way of saying it.

Let's go with that. Tipped tipped flipping not top. Watto. Uh, speak Watto, blouse. Oh, blouse. Left-handed blouse. Left-handed blouse. Yes.

So we've joked before that occasionally we're both in the episode plan at the same time. So you've seen me attempt to spell Sergeant. I planned this episode the day before you put your notes in the plan. So you didn't have to see me spell Lieutenant. Left-handed. Left-handed. That's not argue. It looks like it says Lieutenant.

I know, I know. It's one of those words that I constantly correct myself in my head. I read it Lieutenant and then go left-handed. And therefore it's second nature to me to say it. I promise I won't correct you again on it. No, you are fine. But it is definitely is one of those words that you learn from reading before you hear aloud for like a lot of people.

Yeah. So I get second-hand military brat in it. So yeah, I got corrected on that a lot. I'm just going to call him blouse. Yeah, blouse. That's Rupert, a tired skinny man. He gets a nice little character with flash. He's genuinely one of my favorite Pratchett characters because,

well, because the way he's written, like he's so, he's described as so skinny and tired when he first comes in. And you sort of get the vibe that like, oh, he's going to be a bit of a rust. And he's going to be an antagonist like strappy is going to fuck off. And then there's going to be the squad like trying to work around blouse because he's a bit rust. But I think that is immediately dissolved, isn't it? Because there are a few comments like in the first scene he's in

that show him to be far more observant and sympathetic. And he goes, well, thank goodness you don't have younger brothers, that kind of thing. Yeah. And when Polly's doing Batman duty and he's sort of stumbling around trying to get out a sentence and eventually does this, but it's not up to us to question orders. And yeah, that character whiplash when they've chained up the soldiers and he does what in the world possessed you to stop at once. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, he finally gets to let out some of the anger that's been building off, I think. Yeah, because I think he's just as furious. He's more furious because he knows a lot more of what's going on. Like Jackram has a lot of blind patriotism. And then Polly and the rest of the squad all have their other reasons for being there. But the lieutenant is someone who is doing a job very well and has now got to go and obey what he disagrees with because that's how he's been raised.

The school he's gone to, it implies a very... What's the school that William DeWyrd went to? I don't remember. Stones. Huggles stones. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to assume he's been to the Borough Gravian equivalent. Yeah. And I know he's got some hints of character and doesn't he, just in there. He does seem to see the good in people genuinely.

Like he's got that optimism in him. But he doesn't have some of the inner characteristics of character. He's not quite as shiny breastplate. No, he's not as charismatic. He's not a shiny breastplate. But he doesn't have the reasons to be. He's also got the... And I can't remember how much of it we're getting in this section,

how much of it is in the next. But the encyclopedic rules and regulations knowledge. Yeah. Which is a very carrot thing. I love the little character detail of putting inverted commas around anything. He's... He's racy. I felt so attacked because I know I talk like that sometimes. I sometimes write like that and have to take them out.

I managed to mostly train myself out of using it and writing, although I've used it in the theatre a fair bit. But just brushing up on my soldier. You've got to accompany it with a little upwards wiggling and eyebrow raise. Brushing up. But yes, absolutely. Sorry for purely audio listeners who can't see. Oh, you got the idea.

He was pressing his suit. I think he had a lot more than ironing in mind, sir. Sorry. That's one of my favourite jokes in the book. Oh, no. Anyway. God, we're going to run over so far on this. We've got to press on.

Three-part scallop. It's about six o'clock in the morning. Three-part scallop. The moment when Jay's not very happy with him and has picked him up to threaten him and Polly has to very quietly put him down. Why? He's got no legs. And then we get the horrifying cannibalism story.

No, it's not cannibalism, unless you eat a whole person. Military regulations. You ate each other's leg. Well, it's better than eating your own leg. You probably go blind. He's at least so horrible, and it's genuinely one of the laugh out loud moments.

It's like the backwards thud moment, isn't it? It's start with the horrible bit that make you laugh. Yeah, there's also something not like Yoderish, but you know, like early in the story, in like a very tropey story, you meet kind of a wise old man that tells you all the little things you need to know to get by. Yeah, and often in this kind of position, yeah.

Yeah, and it's very that. This is the wise quartermaster who tells you to fill your boots with soup. Which honestly sounds unpleasant. Filling your fucking boots with soup. That didn't make me laugh as well. And there's a bit of knobby-ish about him, isn't he? Oh, yeah. And with Jackron when they find a horse face.

Oh, yeah. The child on Christmas morning glee. Yeah. Yeah, just very practical about the battlefield. Like, yeah, I would absolutely be skimming something off the top. Have you fucking seen this? I wouldn't save you out to die if I could avoid it somehow, but I'm going home after this.

We've got nothing. This is what we can manage. And, you know, like, you see nothing's like you've got an eagle. That's lucky for you guys and all of that. Yeah, he's a lot more honest than any other character has been willing to be with the squad so far. Absolutely, yeah. Like, Jackron's got his job to do and kind of barrels through it

while not being as openly deceitful as Strafi. But yeah, this quartermaster's like, I'm fucking going home after this. Yeah, good luck, lads. Bye. And the kind of complicated maths of the pay system, which he sums up with much backwards and your pockets all overflow. I was about to, like, go back and try and make sense of it. I was like, do you know what, no, carry on.

We've already got some corkboard and string action happening behind me, although the strings fallen down from where I put it. Oh, no. Speaking of things hanging on walls. The duchess. Yeah, that's what it is. The woodcut of a plain middle-aged woman who's sagging chin and bulging eyes gave the cynical the feeling

that someone had put a large fish in a dress. Yeah, I don't say that to Wazza. I like that there's, so this book does have like an illustration in it. There's a political cartoon that happens later in the book and we get like a version of it here from Kid B. But I do like that there's no attempt to depict the duchess because how would you do justice to that description? Absolutely.

I mean, it's just, insert your aristocrat of choice, isn't it? Yeah. I do like the duchess as a character, obviously. We'll talk about her a lot more later. But just as this, because she's not a character, she's a vague idea and it's any port in a storm. Yeah, and we know what the duchess is. And we know what happens when there's a random slosh of belief floating

about in Discworld. Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, there are vague, you know, ideas of Queen Victoria attached to her with going into a long period of morning, that kind of thing. But from what I could tell from what Pratchett was writing on all the fan groups and stuff, you know, obviously, there was some Queen Victoria inspiration, but largely it was just, yeah, this idea of like a possibly completely imaginary figurehead

that attracts attention, just pleasing, comes up in corporations and organizations and all sorts. Yeah. I thought it was a more intentional Victoria sort of parallel because there's lots of these little Chromian war stuff. Yeah, no, I think that was definitely a large slosh of that. And then Nuggin, what a weirdo. Right. So we, this is why I got so excited about there being a grumpy little god called Nuggin

in The Last Hero for our first time readers. And I had to bite my tongue and not be more excited. But it's because you just look like a fucking weirdo, I'm guessing. Yeah. As opposed to the rest of the time on this Discworld podcast, where I seem so normal, rational and calm about things. Yes. See, Nuggin's a rather techie god.

Yeah, he's outlawed garlic, which is not ideal for any nation. The colour blue, babies. Difficult. Difficult to stand by. Crop rotation. I do like the fact, because we're on Discworld, we don't need to spend a lot of time making people accept the fact that if you leave a book of religion around in Boregravia,

it will just fill itself in at the end, like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Even if you're not religious, you know, the gods exist. So, but it is very fascinating to see like what this has done to the country and why people worship the Duchess instead and how it also creates things like mothers of Boregravia with a capital M and the gossiping widows that enforce lots of the Nugginatic things. Well, it's quite Catholic, if you look at it that way, because it's the odd difficult to follow doctrine

projected onto the easier, more homely image of a saint, generally. Yeah. And, you know, there's lots of interesting academic study about how some of the household gods might become saints, this and the other. But in this case, not so much, but he's, it's great. It's like, when Vines has it explained to him, it's just like, so the gods just like failing, he's gone mad. He's got his underpants on his head.

Yeah, that kind of thing, definitely. Which I don't know if it was intentional, but the depiction of insanity to get out of the war in Black Alice series four is put your underpants on your head, stick two pencils up your nose and say, Wibble. So that's how I'm picturing Nuggin. Wibble. Wibble. Yes.

And then we have Prince Heinrich, the man in line to the Boregravian throne. And I like how he's very quickly established as not very nice. When he's explained as educated, very interested in the clerks, got great plans for his country and he admires Ankh Morpuk very much. You know, like, oh, that guy's probably going to be a dick then, isn't he? And then he's charismatic and doesn't like it when someone says no. Yeah. Angua says an arrogant son of a bitch, the kind of man who thinks he knows what a woman likes

and it's himself. Yeah. Those couple of lines actually, because it was that and then she said something like, and it was very nice until you say no, something like that, wasn't it? Those couple of lines, I think I made a note next to saying, a man wrote this paragraph and you can tell he listens to women. Yes. And it's essential that it is also a woman that delivers that line and not just a woman,

but a woman like we know that, like we as readers know and trust. Like we know if Angua thinks someone's an arrogant prick and doesn't like when women says no, we can absolutely trust that coming from her. Yeah. And then it's immediately proven. Oh, yeah. But yeah, he's got the monocle and the scar and the mustache and he's very dashing. And.

Oh, and he makes the cringy joke about making a spectacle of himself. Yes. Beautiful laughter from his soldiers. Never trust anybody with a waxed pointed mustache. Absolutely not. Lesson I should have learned a long time ago. Unless it's me because I look really hot with a false mustache. Oh, yeah.

You can see him very clearly again. He's a trope, dragoon, aristocrat type. Yes. Who's and I think the fact that he's playing captain of a squad is a particular flavor of arrogance. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely not. It's funny, isn't it?

It's funny because I'm pretending to be an air officer. The prince and the pauper and the poor boys pull the card as soon as I'm in trouble. And yeah. He doesn't pull the card. He keeps lying about his name to Jackram. Even though omitting he's the prince. Pardon? Oh, no, he does, doesn't he?

Yes, you're quite right. I'm sorry. Yes. Even though if he'd omitted the prince, he probably got some slightly more preferential treatment maybe. Well, as far as he knew, yes. Anyway, so then Vimes is here. Vimes is here.

Which is a nice anchor to the disc world we already know. It is, and he's baffled as he usually is when he's playing diplomat. He treats war like a particularly complicated sort of murder. Yes, or a street fight where he wants to bang the country's heads together. He needs Carrot to come and tell both countries that they're jolly good chaps. Yeah, where is he? Well, apparently. Carrot could definitely get these countries to join a youth basketball team.

That's all I'm saying. Yes, but from other disc world novels, I think we actually know Vimes and Carrot can leave Angkor Pork at the same time because all that happens is that Fred goes a bit weird about sugar and everyone avoids doing anything criminal because Vimes a ghost bear. That is true. You don't want to test it again and again though, do you? That's fair. Sidebar with Vimes as well, the poor console who's trying to explain things to Vimes,

Clarence Chiney. Unfortunate. Clearly also a bit of a dick, but it doesn't mean he deserves the name Chiney. Yeah, not on the grand scheme of things, not compared to the real dicks in this book. Oh, yeah. This is just sort of a mild, it's very easy to establish what flavour of posh this character is by the fact that he's probably weirdly a little bit racist because he's not been in Angkor Pork for a while.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've always seen things have changed. And you know, in fairness, the five years his past and Vimes has gone from being much worse than that to what he is now. Yes, very true. I saw someone, I think we both follow on Twitter, was talking about Discworld the other day, and it was like a summary of every watchbook. Vimes, I hate these minorities, end of the book.

Vimes, if anyone has these minorities, then I will cut them. Exactly. Anyway, and yeah, so Chiney's very derisive of the zombies in the cellar, so Vimes calls him Reg, because Reg is here. Oh, yeah, little lurching, are they, sir? Little lurching. Oh, yeah. Give us a bad name, I'll have a word, sir.

It's just an entrance, what an entrance. So your entrances, actually, I'm going to barrel us through the last couple of garages. Yeah, it's nine o'clock. Otto enters with a flash. And a crumble. Flash and a crumble. And a re-incarnation. Which is educational for Maladay, I like that, you know, our teenage vampire

kind of has a slightly older mature one to interact with briefly, and they've got there. Yeah, it's not like a teenager, or like a vampire teenager. Do we find out? I think like top end of teenage, like I think still young for the dynamic to work with the rest of the squad, but I feel like it's more like 17, 18, rather than like 15, 16. Because if you think about a carpet jugular, and the teenagers there are like 40, 50, aren't they? Like that's the joke. Oh, yeah, so Maladay could have been around for quite a while, actually.

But even so, not compared to Otto, that's the point, yeah. Yes. Definitely younger than Otto. Otto is definitely the more mature one. And William DeWords here as well. Yeah, they're on their international assignment, which is, I'm guessing they wouldn't dare if Vimes wasn't there, even though obviously they're pissing him off. But at the same time, the fact that I'm more books involved means they've got this kind of

protection side of things. And William DeWords gets this like excited moment of, all right, maybe there's a different flavour of truth here. He's excited about the squad. He's excited about the people of Ankh-Morpok sitting up and taking notice. And I think he's very caught up in his idealism before he's figured out how that helps. Yes, yeah, definitely. But it's exciting to see William DeWord on the pursuit of the truth again,

because obviously we haven't seen him for a bit. Yeah. And just being the annoying little journalist that we know and love. Very much so. We support it. And it's fun to have our little bit of de-familiarisation within the book of seeing these characters we're familiar with through completely fresh eyes. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. And really completely fresh eyes, like out of Ankh-Morpok eyes. Yes, like Polly does not know about William DeWord's daddy issues. Doesn't know what a fucking newspaper is. And in fairness, not at Ankh-Morpok a few books ago, but you know. Only a scant six books ago. They knew what a newsletter were. It's completely new to them that you'd even be able to write things that the government didn't approve.

Yes, very much so. Well, that was the thing. They let you do they? Well, they don't like it, but yeah. But that was the thing in the truth. You know, they sat around the table and said, oh, they would have special people for this. Yes, yeah, exactly.

And William eventually going, no, I'm the special people for this. People shot at me. Ah, good old William. Yeah, William actually takes me quite neatly to talking about Borogravia and Slovenia because and I didn't point this out at the time because I want to say this here, but I remembered a little bit in Nightwatch. Oh, I did. Early in Nightwatch, before everything, when Vymes is getting his sort of little briefing

from Kara and Kara says, the time says Borogravia has invaded Moldavia. Who side are we on? The time said we should be supporting little Moldavia against the oppressor. I like Borogravia already. So obviously that has become instead this ongoing war between Borogravia and Slovenia. Well, no, Borogravia fights everybody. That's that is pointed out. So I imagine that Moldavia was much smaller country that did get crushed.

Not according to the map. Well, fuck your map. No, actually, where's that? So sorry for listeners who are just listening. So Slovenia is here. Borogravia is just above it. There was also so that this string was marking. Oh, it's come off now.

Between these two post-its is the Klax line that they were trying to run from Antmorpog to Genua, which does cross through Borogravia. Hence the why Antmorpog are involved. And then Moldavia is down here south of Slovenia. It's this large area. OK, cool. Good. Cool.

Yeah, I hope that. Please cut that for the listeners. No, no, I will. Yeah, yeah. Patrons finally we use the fucking map. Well done, Joanna. Yes, but the string fell off. I really need to use something on the post-its.

I posted a picture of it in the subreddit. Oh, well done. And then there was one specific location I also wanted to mention. And I feel like we'll talk about this place a couple more times throughout the book, but the Girls Working School, which it hung over one end of the town like a threat, is what a line. And Polly, you know, has learned that it's this place that bad girls went and Polly doesn't know what badness is.

She thinks it's got something to do with, you know, not going to bed. Yeah. And it's a very early set up of the paint box thing that was your quote. At the age of eight, she learned it was where you were lucky not to go for buying your brother a paint box. Yeah. Which is the thing that kind of you forget when you read the paint box bit in isolation is that she's eight years old.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, she's only little. She's got a little bit of money. Yeah, oh. But yeah, because she's very young when her mother dies, of course. And that was, as she said, tractoriously, her memory of her. Yeah. She keeps slipping back in.

The Girls Working, what's it called again? Sorry, the Girls Working School. The idea of this extra level of threat for women who have different lives to Polly, because Polly is still very repressed in Boregravia, but she has a lot of privilege compared to the girls who were sent to the working school. Yeah. I mean, it also draws another line to the kind of Catholicism thing here, because I think it's pretty clearly based on like the Magdalene Asylums,

even to the point where we get Magda. Yeah, very much. But yeah, the kind of places where girls' women were sent if they got pregnant, or did anything that men didn't like. And as well as some of the sinister stuff we learn about it, it's also just this kind of coercive motivation for someone like Shafdie, who's pregnant and going to find a husband, because what else is left for her, apart from a place like this?

Yeah, absolutely. It's a horrible topic, those Asylums. Yeah, maybe we'll talk about them a bit more. In the future, but generally, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to go too deep into that, because it's depressing as fuck. It is. Yeah, so Coffee Break? Yes.

On that note. Little bits we like. Little bits we liked. The folk songs, the war songs, the old songs. Don't worry listeners, I'm not going to sing. I was kind of hoping you would. But we get this list of songs that are sung in the inn. The world turned upside down, the devil should be my sergeant,

Johnny's gone for a soldier, the girl I left behind me. And of course, Sweet Polly Oliver. One of the ones that interested me was The World Turned Upside Down. So there is a song in Hamilton, The World Turned Upside Down, at the end of The Battle of Yorktown. And I remembered reading in the book I've Got About the Musical, that Le Manoir Miranda did that because there was this English ballad, The World Turned Upside Down, that it was reportedly,

and it seems very according to legend, the British played the song while surrendering at Yorktown. Okay. That doesn't seem to be much actual historical evidence for it. Like the first written account of this happening was about 100 years after. Okay, is it normal to play a song while you're surrendering? Yes, but normally it would be a song of the country you're surrendering to. So it would have been, they would have played something French maybe.

Oh no, yes, I regretted. Anyway, so Le Manoir Miranda was going to use this Well Turned Upside Down song and then listen to it and was like, well, this doesn't fucking work at all. Totally the wrong time. Vibes are all off, so I made up a completely different song with the same words. Not the first person to do so because when I was looking for a recording of the original Well Turned Upside Down, I saw a Billy Bragg song and I thought, oh cool, maybe he covered it.

Totally different. Banger though. Look up Billy Bragg, The Well Turned Upside Down. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's a good song. But the original. It's got hard to find recordings from early 1800s. So it was first published in the 1640s

and it was sung to the tune of another ballad that had been popular amongst the Cavaliers. It was a protest against Cromwell specifically, the banning of Christmas. Everyone always forgets that Cromwell banned Christmas. So I forgot to put the actual lyrics in my notes and I don't want to waste much time googling, but it's actually quite like a festive song is about remembering all the Christmasy things we can't do anymore.

So it's quite a cool little song. I get why it wasn't in Hamilton because like the vibes were definitely off. Yeah, for sure. As much as that story about it being played at the surrender at Yorktown probably is apocryphal. I kind of like imagining it because it's like quite a festive little song. Yeah. And in the book, there is an in the in that they're staying at

by the barracks is called The Well Turned Upside Down as well, which I thought is a good detail. Yes. And then obviously the song that inspired Polly, Sweet Polly Oliver, is a real very old ballad. Really difficult to find a source for exactly when it was first published, which again is one of those like all shared things a lot. And also just in the cursory amount of googling time I had,

I found a lot of conflicting sources. Some contributed it to 18th century, some 17th, some 16th. One interesting note I found it was used in and I will, if I can find the link again, I will link in the show notes to a large sort of directory someone put together of folk ballads about folk ballads and war ballads about heroic women. Cool. Yeah, I want that.

I want that for my little esoteric bookmark folder, please. Yes. In the reference to Sweet Polly Oliver, it mentions at the in the references bit afterwards, Ebsworth, and I couldn't find out exactly who Ebsworth was, notes that a parody entitled the Pretender's Army was published in 1717, sunk to the same tune and with the opening line as Perkin one morning lame using in bed. So we can theoretically attribute Sweet Polly Oliver to pre 1717,

if that's when a parody of it came out. And Perkins, Perks. Yes. So the actual as Sweet Polly Oliver lame using in bed, a sudden strange fancy came into her head, no father nor mother shall make me false prove, I'll list as a soldier and follow my love. So early next morning,

she softly arose and dressed herself up in her dead brother's clothes. She cut her hair close. She stained her face brown and went for a soldier to Fairland and town. And she ends up being a nurse. Fair. Happy days, I guess. But yeah, it's considered the archetypal woman dressing as a man to go to war song. Sure.

Troll mini law. Oh, it's me. We like it when our disquelters fleshed out just to turn a little bit. Or cracked out. So here we have a repeated or extended joke about Billy Goats. Yep. It cost one penny to cross or 100 gold pieces if you had a Billy Goat. Trolls have long memories.

They do. And I think we've we've seen that joke before and I can't remember exactly where. But we don't like Billy Goats. And then this is where just the idea of trolls in the area is mentioned. And we go on a little bit about how trolls ignore humans to humans ignore trolls. Like it's quite a possibly uneasy but peaceful relationship in Boregravia. And I just really liked the passage occasionally farmer would hire want to do some heavy work. Sometimes they turned up.

Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they'd turn up lumber around a field pulling up tree stumps as if they were carrots. And then wander off without waiting to be paid. A lot of things humans did mystified trolls and vice versa. I like that. Yeah, just a little reminder that trying to project one's own motivations onto a completely different species. Absolutely doesn't work.

Yeah, even even if it's a sentient species that lives quite happily alongside you when given the chance. What's next? Well, you've redacted it front scene. So I have this is just a very silly little bit, which is the letter from Paul that Polly keeps with her. Dear all, we are in redacted, which is redacted with a redacted big thing with knobs on redacted. We will redacted, which is just as well because redacted out of.

I'm keeping well. The food is redacted. We'll redacted at the redacted, but my mate redacted says not to worry. It'll all be over by redacted. And we shall all have medals. Chin's up. Full. I just thought that would be a great fun to play ad libs with if we feel like it.

Oh, I love that. There was something about redacted letters that is infinitely hilarious. It absolutely is. I love it very much. And then more songs from you, Joanna. We put musical little bits we like to section today. It is. But I didn't intend to be quite so musical with it.

No, there's just a couple of jokes about national anthems that I really like. Vimes is pure horror at the fact that the Borough Grave and national anthem starts with the word awake. Yeah, definitely. I get that. Any national anthem that starts with awake is going to lead to trouble. Absolutely, it is. And we have the new day is a great big fish.

Quite. Just a way to look at the world. Quite so. And then we get the secondary joke later on when Strapi starts singing the national anthem. And it's quite nice because we've had it set up with the Vimes interaction early on. So when Strapi starts singing it, we know what awake he sons of Motherland is. We could have guessed anyway, but it's nice to have had that little setup. And then he sings the second verse with a smug, I'm more patriotic than you smile.

And the second verse. You've got to be a particular kind of patriotic prick to know the second verse of a national anthem. You might just know it because you like it, but then to see it when no one else is makes you the patriotic prick. Yes. Yes, performatively knowing. I might know more of the American one than I do the English on. Let's catch you.

The only reason I know the American one is because of TV shows I watch that have a sports event and someone sings the national anthem at the sports event. Oh, sure. But that's usually just the first verse, isn't it? Yes, sometimes you get like the end of the national anthem because it's been cut. They've cut away to a conversation during the national anthem. Makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah, the English one. Does the English one have a second verse? Oh, yeah. We've got a few, I think. Oh, okay. Should we actually talk about the Book of Monstrous Regiment for us? Yeah, it is getting to that point in the night. So the Books of Monstrous Regiment had some interesting reception.

Not only because it's as one irritating commenter in the forums I read said, politically correct. Is it? Is it? It seems very politically incorrect to me in the best ways. But also because it's another one in this little series of books that I think people... It's not, I think, that Pratchett changed all of a sudden. I think perhaps it was a straw that broke the camel back or he passed a certain line

where people started to recognize. They had kind of changed a little as a writer. He devolved a bit as a writer. And there's just a lot of discourse around this time, 2003-ish, about, oh, as Pratchett got too serious, because he lost the kind of light-hearted hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, type of humor that we knew and loved from the first few books, basically. And I mean, it's a bit fucking late, if you ask me.

It's the 30th first book, but whatever. I mean, also, if you think about where this is coming, like, in the line, we've just had Night Watch and then The We Free Men, which are about as tonally different as two Pratchett books could get. Absolutely. But I think we're generally going Night Watch to Monstrous Regiment in most people's minds. Yeah, a lot of people skip The We Free Men because younger readers. It's a good book, yeah.

But I mean, even We Free Men, it's comparable to Monstrous Regiment in the way that we take ourselves completely out of Ang Moorpork, give ourselves a whole new set of characters. Yeah. And explore. And where The We Free Men uses Granny Weatherwax and any kind of anchor at the end. Here we've got like Vime's Anchory. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. We reminded that we're still in Disqueld, but it's not that heavily still in Disqueld. Yeah, yeah. It's not as heavily anchored in the parts of Disqueld. We've been in already, sort of that way. But so I thought, right, we must have been asked about this in actual interviews because obviously there are a few techy group comments and things like that. And he was, and I found a really cool interview he did with an American interview

who was obviously a big fan and had done all this research. And it's just a really nice interview to watch. It's about 20 minutes, I'll link it. It's lovely when you watch an interview. It's always a bit tense the first couple of minutes of watching a Pratchett interview or you work out whether the interviewer is going to annoy him or not. And it's not like Pratchett's going to go off the fucking rails and be anything but delightful and polite.

But it's more fun to watch one. Yeah. Sometimes it is fun to watch the ones where you can see the interviewer is really annoying him. Yeah, yeah. True also, but I wanted to learn some things. But yeah, so interviewer says, increasingly people have been commenting on what they perceive as a change in the tone and the way in which you are writing and the things which you are writing.

Talking about a deepening of you as a writer and becoming more of a pure satirist rather than a humorist. Paraphrasing how do you view yourselves in those kind of terms. Pratchett said, well, the reason the Discworld books have evolved over the years is, I think, that I have as well. If I'm still writing the same kind of book 21 years later, then there would be something wrong with me. And now I'll hark back to a comment I saw in making one of the fan groups,

which was, look, if Douglas Adams had kept writing for 30 years, the Hitchhiker's Guide books, if he'd continued those, would be extremely different. He couldn't have kept writing the same book. No, 21 years, sorry, of 30 books. I mean, what do you think that would look like? And we don't know. It would be completely different. It is unreasonable to ask me to keep up the same style of writing in the same series for 21 years.

Don't be ridiculous. It's impossible not to grow as a writer. I've been working on one book for like a year, but even that going back and referencing earlier chapters compared to what I've grown a ton as a writer doing that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then he continued, and also I found early on that there was something called the Joy of Plot that you should write a book that would stand by itself, even if there was no humour.

And I found also that the humour would evolve from a situation. You didn't really have to work hard at it. It would turn up if you got the initial conditions right. And I like that a lot. I mean, Discworld started out as kind of this anti-fantasy thing, like just pure parody almost, and he couldn't help but work in a few themes he wanted to because he's just a very intelligent and thoughtful man. But it's very much gone the other way here.

And he said elsewhere in the interview that he did the usual, having to explain what Discworld was, and it was something like... Now, right. So Discworld is the flying turtle, the elephants on top of the turtle, the disc one. And the important thing is you now have to forget all of that. He famously said when talking about later books, like I wish I'd never bothered with the whole turtle thing. Yeah, absolutely.

And actually along those lines, he mentioned that he'd been fairly careful about each Discworld book being a standalone, a monstrous regiment is a very obvious example of that. But there is what he called the Star Trek phenomenon. And so that's... I think he said, let's assume you're tuning in halfway through a Star Trek series. And you see this dude with pointy ears, and he's like, huh, I never mentioned he's got pointy ears.

You know, it's not explained every episode or whatever. But you're like, yeah, fine. I like the atmosphere, the sets are kind of groovy. I'll keep watching it. And then eventually someone makes a comment and you work out why he's got the pointy ears. And he's an alien. He's called Spock and this, that and the other. And with Discworld, there's an element of that.

Every story stands by itself, but it will include quite often characters which have their own history. And if you know that history, that may broaden your enjoyment of the story. Like a really clear example of that is we kept track of how often the librarian gets explained. Yeah. And actually, I've gone on so many research standards today. I promise they will be relevant to practice in all to this book. But so I saw a thread that I meant to send you where somebody said, why haven't you drawn, have you written a story about the librarian?

Like just about the librarian. And practice was like, because he doesn't have an internal monologue. Yeah. Like his internal monologue is ooke. Yeah. He thought about it. Like he'd written some plots in his head and everything is like, I can't make it work without the insight. But yeah, he said the continuation of the characters was a point that the interviewer wanted to bring up and kind of the evolution of the characters.

And the characters as the interviewer put it, said you've had a number of characters in these novels acting as a thread as they puff in and out, tying these stories together, even though they may not be the main characters. And practice said, well, I'm glad you said that because you explain that much better than I could. And I haven't seen it quite like that before. And here and there are characters that really step out of the book. And it's a great shame to wave goodbye to them. But sooner or later, you realize that you're not running the superheroes league of America.

And here he's talking about why you have some really cool characters, some really fleshed out characters in some of these more standalone books. Monsters Regiment, Pyramid, Small Gods. And he said, you can have too many major characters. The characters who are so big, they span books. You know, you've got death, you've got Granny Weatherwax, you've got Commander Vimes, and they're useful. But if they're going to go on living and continuing to be a main character,

you end up with one of these cramped situations where Superman has to go on vacation so that Batman has got something to do. And then he mentions like Monsters Regiment is one of those, all of these fleshed out great characters you don't see again. Well, actually, no, it does contain one major character for another book. But it's fun to take a character I've discovered who the readers really love, who they've seen in a lot of books, and they've seen their internal monologue. And then you introduce them to someone else's story.

And they don't act in a different way, but they appear to be different people because they're being seen through another character's eyes. And the interviewer said, and I love this comparison. Oh, so it's like hearing your own voice when it's recorded and having it played back to. And he was like, yes, exactly. That's it. And it kind of throws people a bit and they rather enjoy that. And I know that kind of the change of perspectives and that is something you're quite into, Joanna.

Yeah, this is something really exciting about having Vymes here. As like I said, when we were talking about him, that he's our anchor to normal in this new part of Discworld. Anchor to Anchor Book. Let's go into like quickly a broader bit of how the Discworld starts to like shift a bit. Something I think I mentioned, but you've caught me talking about the podcast because it's kind of spoilery is that we had a series of books. So like Carpe Juggulum, like the Fifth Elephant.

And it was it was Mark Barry who pointed this out to me originally that there's this sense of like victory lap around a certain set of books. And then Discworld starts being broader and going out into different directions. Like Thief of Time is kind of Susan's part of that victory lap. And obviously we still have watchbooks after that. But like the Night Watch is much more focused on Vymes. Whereas Carrot's been a much bigger main character in a lot of the watchbooks. We still have Witches, but obviously we're spending it.

It's Tiffany and Granny with the Wax and Nanny Ogre is still there. That's our anchor. And what we get in this is we have, we still have Vymes, but this isn't a watchbook. So we're seeing Vymes through this fresh pair of eyes. Totally lost my point of view notes. And we have seen that in the truth, but I think Vymes was a bigger part of the truth even so. Yeah, because there was still like it was in Ankh Morpork and there was a criminal investigation. Like we talked a lot about how the there was sort of echoes of story across,

especially the first few watchbooks. Like someone is trying to bring down veterinary because they're racist usually. Even though they don't want like the veterinary books, dwarfs and trolls in. And that was kind of the story, the plot storyline in the truth as well. So although it wasn't a watchbook, it was watchbook shaped. Yes, yes. But yeah, in this we get to see Vymes through these Borogravi eyes. And okay, so it's Strapi who is not the most trustworthy.

But when he's doing his lecture of why the war is different now and Ankh Morporks joined in on Slovenia side. And in addition to soldiers, Ankh Morpork has sent Vymes the Butcher, the most evil man in that evil city. Yes. Which is definitely taken to the extreme. Like they're part of saying it because Strapi's such a prick. I think, yeah, like. And it's all very propaganda-y as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think one of the things he said was like, you kind of see him from the point of view of another character, you know, he's a bit of a bully. He doesn't care much about human rights as such sometimes, even though he stands up for them. And you know, because we know he's a good person, we excuse that, but you've got to, but yeah, this is obviously the real extreme of that. Yeah, well, the thing with Vymes is that he cares about people, but he doesn't like them. Yeah. And the extension of that from people from Borogravia who see him as this foreign oppressor

coming in to help the country that they're at war against, and that they've been very propagandised against, they don't know that he actually kind of cares about people. Yeah, of course. And what that gives us is this really interesting shift of different perspectives in the war. So Vymes is like our, Vymes provides like the reader's big picture perspective. Yeah, yeah. We get much more of a rundown of the actual political situation, his kind of fury at the wanting to bang the heads together, treating this like really

an un-really street fight. You get to take a step back and see how insane it is. Exactly. You get to actually be able to see the forest for the trees. Yes. Which you very much can't do in some parts of this book. No. You can't see the army for the poor tree disguises.

Yes. Jesus fucking crisis, dunce name. Not again. Anyway, sorry. So you get the political context, the fact that the river changes and so does the border, and that's where a lot of the problem is. And then the wider political context of the Klax Towers being torn down. And Warfork is trying to build a Klax Line to Genua.

It goes straight through Borogravia. Klax Towers aren't our abominations onto Nuggan. Of course. Sidebar, I'm so happy that now we can start referring to things as abominations onto Nuggan on the podcast. Me too, although I feel like it's misused in fandom groups. People seem to see it. People say it when it's something they don't like.

It should be something ridiculously petty and stupid. So I guess it should be stupid petty things we don't like, shouldn't it? Yeah. Our equivalent of garlic or the sky. Okay. Again, that thing where I suddenly hear the things we're saying, and I know they work in context, but it's ridiculous. If we were described from someone else's perspective,

I don't think we'd like it. I do not want to see myself from Vime's perspective. I disappoint him. Anyway, and with his bigger picture, he makes this clear distinction between the country and the people of the country. He says, Borogravia looks off his head to me from what I've read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids. Yeah. That's kind of the stuff he learned during all the revolution he stuffed in there.

Very much so. And you get a similar distinction with this pamphlet, The Mothers of Borogravia. Oh, yeah. Which is this, again, it's a propaganda pamphlet. It's what sends Paul off to wall, but war, off to wall. Paul to the wall. Paul to the wall. Oh, no.

Carry on. But then we see the actual ordinary mothers who don't want to lose any more sons. Of course, yeah. And you start, in fact, yeah, you get this when Polly's going off to war, but the recruiting party had been through her town of Munz and not recruited anyone. Munz was running out of sons just as fast as it was accumulating widows. And for all of these recruits, it's the first time they really have seen much of the world. And I'd say Polly's, I mean, Maladite, obviously, we don't know the full history,

but it gives the air of being very worldly because vampire. Has coffee. Pavement Cafe. Polly is a bit more worldly and less naive than some because of her work in the inn. She's just had the opportunity. Yeah, as large as the second hand info, but she's talked to people. Yeah. But the recruits haven't seen the war. All they know is what they've been told.

And like, I know the Discworld map is not like the ultimate reference because it was all designed very after the fact, but it is designed so Munz is further away than plots. And as they get closer and closer to the front. So these are the further away places that know the least about the war. They get the least news and they just aren't seeing it up close apart from recruiting parties coming through and taking more sons away. So as they're traveling towards the front, even just traveling towards plots, they're seeing the war that they hadn't seen before.

The people taking the crops out of the fields. And it's that moment where they see that the refugees gathering things that Polly gets hit with the Times excerpt. Oh, yes. Which is another quite good, you know, talking about your redacted. Yes. Except in this point, it's a tall and half piece of paper. And again, she doesn't really know what a newspaper is.

We have another time to learn. So we just get light infantry to connect, keep this moe. After fierce, hard and hand fig, I write its armaments, which surrender has been redged view the enemy Conrad and it gets more and more ominous as the page is clearly further and further stall. A load of stick stiff necked fools don't in the paper. It is understood desperate situ spread famine across to no alternative in vage. Like it's it's it's really funny, but really ominous.

It's really hard to get across. Very Jen said, but after a little into it, in fact, should we do a little image? Yes, a little image. Cheeky image. But no, yeah, very, very bad. It sounds like when you read it out like that, it sounds like like a radio going in and out from a war film, you know? Yeah, or like a telegraph message, like blah, blah, blah, stop.

It's got that stuttering. And then so you start getting the perspective of this very specific perspective of the squad who, you know, are coming into this with varying levels of naivety. So you have Polly, who's probably lived with the war more than most because her father went to war and he came back and he's quiet and he doesn't talk about it. And sometimes they have the soldiers that pass through the inn, the soldier that gives her the letters to Paul.

And you have that very sad story about she gets the mug. He pushed it across the table to Polly as she served them stew. And then with very little fuss he died. And it's just a really quiet, calm moment in, because we get these, another comparison with We Free Men. We get these kind of sidebar, flashback, Polly's internal moment. Yeah, I think it's very well done here as well. It's a lot, it's perhaps a bit less prominent that it is in We Free Men.

Yeah, it's not as obvious and it's not as we are setting this up for the next thing that happens in the plot, because obviously this is just a slightly more complex book. Yeah, it's nicely subtly woven in. And I think if we weren't looking out for it, it wouldn't be like something massively noteworthy afterwards that they did the flashback way of doing the explanation. It's just the story is now in your head. And it's a believable mental tangent, like as part of someone's internal monologue. Polly would remember the paint box while she's walking and hearing the bed song.

And of course, when Strapi is confronting her about the mug and yelling at her, of course, she's going to remember the soldier who gave her the letter from Paul. The little details like the men walking along with their coats done up, you can tell that's from some like deep research, practically, I think, in reading accounts of older wars. Yeah. It's horrible detail to the point where it's definitely happened. And when Igor goes to help the injured and takes, I think it's Tonka with him as an assistant,

and Tonka is the one who comes back and says, like, they all feel sorry for us. And it's this really slow burning like realization of just how in the shit they are, that I think even Strapi pissing himself doesn't quite hammer home. After the... Sorry. Sorry. After the Strapi lecture, when they're all in the paint tent together and Jade sums up the patriotism thing with if people are grew far stupid, then we'll fight for grew far stupidity

because it's our stupidity. Yeah. It's when the barracks is abandoned the next day, I think, that you'll really get it. It's like, wow, even these like mainstays that like the Molly Roundheels and the everyone, they've gone, they've all gone, right? Yeah. It's Molly Roundheels running away as one of the really scary ones because like, where would she go?

Yeah. And I like to think she's run off to somewhere like months. Like it's not that far away. She could get there and that seems to have not been abandoned yet. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, generally, I mean, the whole place is like, it's like an infection spreading out from a wound, isn't it? Yeah.

And these guys had been living somewhere where the infection hadn't touched yet, but they're walking now into it. And Polly's, because we're in her monologue, we see her realizing it and we can kind of assume a lot of the squad are realizing it at the same time. She confronts three parts. She says, aren't we winning? And he says, so they say, he said in a blank kind of way. And they were losing the war and this squad untrained and untried,

fighting in dead men's boots could only help them lose it faster. It's a really hopeless moment. Yeah. But it comes alongside the camaraderie that the squad have developed. And of course, you have the actual anger from this Libyanian sergeant. He says the horrible things about the Duchess that sets Waza off. But he's actually, he's anger is kind of justified. He's, he's trying to kind of defend the squad.

He's saying they're all going to die because of your stupid lies. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And he, I think because you get the immediate moment with Waza, it doesn't maybe sink in as much as it will actually. But yeah, you take a step back and you think, yeah, maybe I would fucking go off on a rant like that as well. Maybe not quite those terms, but you're like, for fuck's sake, guys.

This is nothing. You're dying for nothing. How many of you have died for nothing? Your kids, for fuck's sake, come on. And it's so weird because obviously reading this and you're so on, you're so in the perspective of this one, little Borogorovian squad, that you're still going to root for the plucky bunch of misfits. Yeah, Raktag, as they maybe haven't had that all the while.

Raktag cheese mungas. That's my Raktag bunch. I literally made a joke with that in earlier this episode. Oh, you did. Okay, good. Sorry. I've been trying to Google things today. That's fair.

I respect it. So yeah, I think it's something this book handles incredibly well, is not just establishing this huge wall, but giving us these wildly different perspectives on it from different spaces. Also, there's some gender shit. We'll get onto that. Anyway. Another day.

Francine, have you got an obscure reference for Neil for me? So yeah, the cheese mungas thing. And I know in universe, as explained later, as to why they've got the cheese stuff, because you need the cheese to run away, whatever. But I decided to look into, because there's a very fun that list of nicknames of British Army regiments, a Wikipedia list, which I'll link to. And I thought I'd have a look if cheese mungas were something. And they were, of course.

There were the, there were a household cavalry regiment, first lifeguards. The nickname, the cheese mungas, dates from 1788, when the regiment was being reorganized. The regiment itself dated back to 1660, it was formed by Charles II. But when they were being remodeled, a lot of commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants, and therefore not gentlemen. The quote going, it was no longer composed of gentlemen, but of cheese mungas. And I thought, well, a, cool, cool nickname, cheese mungas, whatever. And also, maybe, maybe a little new annotation that Fractured thought, not gentlemen.

They sure ain't. Upon their oath, they are not honest men. So, I think that's everything that we are going to say on part one of Monstrous Regiment. Oh yes, we've already overrun and we didn't even touch on the dumb stuff really. We will be back for part two. I'm just double checking. I expect we will be. Yeah, you sounded a bit uncertain there.

We will be back for part two. I marked two potential different places, but part two could end and apparently never decided between them. So, I'm just making that decision on the fly now. You got live, live decision. I just went for the later one because I figured we're going to end up with a lot more to talk about in the last third. Yeah, fair.

Cool. So, yeah, we will be back next week with part two of our discussion, which starts right after where this one ended. We're not going to skip any sentences. And ends on page 331 in the Corgi paperback. Where a book would usually end. With, I told you lads, you don't know nothing about war. That is the words of Sergeant Jack Rum.

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And I feel like all these episodes are going to be a bit long, so whatever. Yeah, and also it was fun.