Guards! Guards! characters

Appears from the start

Captain of the Night Watch of Ankh-Morpork, a cynical, hard-drinking man who has watched his once-proud force dwindle into a joke that patrols only when it is safe to do so. Beneath the bitterness he keeps a stubborn, unfashionable belief in the law.

Appears from the start

A young man well over six feet tall, raised from infancy by dwarfs in the mountains and sent to Ankh-Morpork to make his way in the world. Honest to the point of embarrassment and utterly literal about the law, he joins the Night Watch and sets about enforcing the city's long-ignored ordinances exactly as written.

Appears from the start

The Night Watch's stout, middle-aged sergeant, a cautious man of comfortable habits who has survived a long career mainly by avoiding trouble wherever possible.

Appears from the start

The Watch's disreputable corporal, a small, grubby, light-fingered man of uncertain ancestry who treats his position chiefly as an opportunity for minor larceny.

Also known as The Patrician, Havelock Vetinari

Appears from the start

The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the cold, precise, and formidably intelligent man who rules the city. He governs by understanding exactly how everyone's self-interest can be balanced against everyone else's.

Also known as Lady Sybil

Appears from the start

A large, hearty, and immensely wealthy noblewoman, the last of an old Ankh-Morpork family and the city's foremost breeder of swamp dragons. Brisk and kind, she keeps a yard full of the temperamental, frequently exploding little creatures.

Appears from the start

The hooded, unnamed leader of a secret brotherhood of small, resentful men. Manipulative and coldly ambitious, he flatters and goads his gullible followers into working a stolen magic that will summon a dragon, meaning to use the ensuing terror to place a puppet king on the throne and rule through him.

Appears from the start

A great fire-breathing dragon called into Ankh-Morpork by the brotherhood's stolen magic. Far more than its summoners bargained for, it is proud, intelligent, and soon begins terrorizing the city on its own terms.

Appears from the start

The librarian of Unseen University, a wizard long ago transformed into an orangutan and perfectly content to remain one. Fiercely protective of his books, he takes a keen interest when a dangerous volume is stolen from his library.

Appears from the start

The runt of one of Lady Sybil's swamp dragon litters, a small, sickly creature with a feeble flame and an indiscriminate appetite for anything it can swallow. She entrusts him to the Watch, and Vimes reluctantly takes him in.