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Terry Prachett said it better.
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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I think Pratchett would agree with you. We don't get too many outside perspectives on Vimes since he's the POV character for most of the books he's in, but the few we get kinda imply that all his reforms are kinda just a lateral move as far as the citizens are concerned. The old guard simply shake you down for money. The "sammies" are looking for a Crime in need of Solving, and at best that's gonna waylay your day. At worst...
Plus there's the whole book where the unstated joke is that a "good cop" is paradox that cannot occur naturally.
Yeah, everyone who isn't Vimes or someone in his direct circle think he's an absolute monster, and his reforms are mostly just professionalizing and standardizing the police, making them less overtly racist, making them less comically corrupt (although still tolerating corruption), etc. He's one of the pawns in Vetinarii's modernization plans, just like the conman he enlists to modernize the post office and banking system.
Yeah, Prachett doesn't have any particularly special love for Vimes, which comes off in his memoirs. However, he was extremely good at tapping into the "Good Cop" psyche, and the reason Guards! Guards! is one of his best books, is because it is the first one in the Discworld series that really buckled down on fleashing out Ankt-Morpork as a real breathing city, not just a fantasy foil for Rincewinds stories to begin, and Vimes is absolutely the best narrator to tell that story.
It definitely is the one that really put him on the map.