Ankh-Morpork - History

History

According to legend, the first city of Ankh-Morpork was founded thousands of years ago by twin brothers who were raised by a hippopotamus (an allusion to the myth of Romulus and Remus, with a hippo replacing the original wolf). It is in memory of this that the hippo is the royal animal of Ankh. One legend has it that if danger ever threatens the city, the eight stone hippopotami guarding the Brass Bridge will come to life and run away. Another legend claims that many centuries ago, the Disc flooded. An ark was constructed, containing two of every animal. When the accumulated dung of forty days and nights was dropped over the side, they called it Ankh-Morpork.

The original city was little more than a walled keep, surrounding the Tower of Art, a building of mysterious origin which may even predate the Disc itself.

At one point it had an empire, similar to the Roman Empire, that covered half the continent including the neighbouring country of Klatch. These were the days of the "Pax Morporkia," another reference to Rome and their Pax Romana.

The empire was largely the creation of General Tacticus (a pun on both "tactics" and the name of the real-world historian Tacitus), the greatest military mind in history. Tacticus refused to accept that the Empire was growing too big to control, and was finally shipped off to be king of Genua. As king he decided that the greatest threat to Genua was the Empire, and declared war on it (a probable reference to Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, who served under the Emperor Napoleon but later, as King of Sweden, allied with France's enemies and also a possible allusion to the American War of Independence, as Genua is to Ankh-Morpork what the United States are to Great Britain).

This was a Golden Age, ruled by the Kings of Ankh, who are recalled in legend as wise, noble and fair. The line died out approximately 2000 years before the present, giving way to real kings who were realistically corrupt and perverse and ultimately leading to the collapse of the empire. (This could be seen as a parody of the fictional city of Minas Tirith, which also had a "Golden Age" many years before, with Kings who were remembered as being noble and wise.)

Shortly before this, however, the mage Alberto Malich had founded Unseen University (UU) in the Tower of Art, and Ankh-Morpork continued as a service town for the wizards.

Royalty became extremely debased and the later kings of Ankh-Morpork are recalled in history as power-mad and corrupt, or just mad; some are mentioned by name in Men at Arms:

• Queen Alguinna IV
• King Artorollo (a contemporary of Alberto Malich)
• King Cirone IV
• Queen Coanna
• King Loyala the Aaargh (Had a 1.13 second rule from coronation to assassination) - The Discworld Companion
• King Ludwig the Tree (Known to issue royal proclamations on the need to develop a new type of frog and similar important matters, and also responsible for the city motto Quanti Canicula Ille In Fenestra) - The Discworld Companion
• King Paragore
• King Tyrril (ruled circa AM 907)
• King Veltrick III
• Webblethorpe the Unconscious

The last and worst - the euphemistically-remembered Lorenzo the Kind (the full extent of whose infamy is not explicitly revealed, save that he was said to be "very fond of children," possessed "secret rooms" from which "bits" had to be cleaned, and had in his dungeons "machines for . . .") - was overthrown in the Ankh-Morpork Civil War of 1688 (dating from the founding of UU). The question of what to do with the deposed king (no judge would try him) was settled when he was executed by the then Commander of the City Watch, Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes. Known as "Old Stoneface," his regicide resulted in his being banned from bearing arms (These events parallel the English Civil War of the 1640s, and the execution of Charles I by Oliver Cromwell). Afterwards "Old Stoneface" (an ancestor of the current City Watch Commander Samuel Vimes and a play on Cromwell's nickname "Old Ironside") and his Ironheads (a play on "Ironsides" and "Roundheads") attempted to introduce democracy, but the people voted against it. After "Old Stoneface" himself was overthrown, Ankh-Morpork reverted to a non-hereditary oligarchic system, where the leaders are still ruthless tyrants, but don't have the audacity to invoke divine right. It is, however, rumoured that the royal blood line of the Kings of Ankh has not in fact died out but instead continued, and that the true king, Carrot Ironfoundersson, walks the streets of the city on a nightly basis. The Patrician rules the city, and operates a specialised form of "One Man, One Vote" democracy: the Patrician is the Man, and he has the Vote.

Past Patricians, many of them oppressive despots and fairly often mad, would include:

• Deranged Lord Harmoni
• Laughing Lord Scapula
• Frenzied Earl Hargath
• Nersh the Lunatic
• Giggling Lord Smince
• Homicidal Lord Winder
• Mad Lord Snapcase

The reign of Winder was marked by a greater-than-norm amount of oppression and political violence, as detailed in Night Watch, causing a popular revolt centred in Treacle Mine Road. The City Guilds had him assassinated and replaced with Lord Snapcase, who himself turned out to be a greater tyrant and was eventually replaced with Havelock Vetinari.

When Vetinari inherited the city, it was a corrupt, crumbling medieval city, as shown in The Colour of Magic. This was gradually turned around, first with an overhaul of the Guild system - such as legalising the Guild of Thieves and leaving them responsible for stopping 'unlicensed' thefts (e.g, any non-Guild thief is not permitted to operate in the city) - and then by opening the city to immigration. dwarfs, trolls, gnomes, humans from across the Disc, and even the undead emigrated in large numbers, making Ankh-Morpork a truly multicultural society, with both the advantages and problems that suggests. (The current Patrician's own, typically pragmatic, view on multiculturalism is "Alloys are stronger.") With the new stability and skill base, the city has become the mercantile and political capital of the Discworld, so much so that the Sto Plains operates under a new Pax Morporkia, which operates not on the principle of "If you fight, we will kill you," but on the principle of "If you fight, we will call in your mortgages."

Mime artists are strictly forbidden. Anyone caught practising the art is hung upside-down in a scorpion pit, upon the walls of which is written: "Learn the words." This is the only overt sign of tyranny under Vetinari.

Ankh-Morpork has evolved in the series. While it still has corruption (mostly organised in guilds), it is far from crumbling by Going Postal and has become a high-tech (for the Disc) city-state bordering on almost steampunk levels of technology. The city is indeed the 2nd most developed nation of the disc after the Agatean Empire. Ankh-Morpork has seen the appearance of

• Fire insurance (this may cause more harm than good as people burn down their own houses), first seen in The Colour of Magic.
• A competent police force, first seen in Guards! Guards! and developing steadily thereafter.
• The clacks, a semaphore system used to send what amount to telegrams (see Semaphore line), first seen in The Fifth Elephant.
• A real newspaper, first seen in The Truth.
• The Post Office, or rather its resurgence, along with the first stamps, first seen in Going Postal.
• Stamps and paper money as introduced by Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal and Making Money respectively.

Crime is kept in check by the Watch and the guilds, mainly the Thieves' Guild; in the novel Jingo a character casually notes the Thieves' Guild weathervane is an actual unofficial and currently deceased thief. Lord Vetinari has a firm grip on the city (or seems to). The wizards of UU no longer murder each other intentionally. The city is now a highly-advanced metropolis rather than the fading, broken-down city of The Colour of Magic. It is implied that the Axle discovered in Thud! will revolutionise both municipal transportation (with many references which parallel the London Underground including the minesign symbol for a mine) and machinery, and Moist von Lipwig's invention of the banknote in Making Money.