Havelock Vetinari

Lord Havelock Vetinari is the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the head of the fictional city state of Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. He is sometimes said to have been based on the Italian statesman and diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, but in fact favours a subtly different (though equally pragmatic) form of statecraft. Lord Vetinari was born into the extremely powerful Vetinari family (a word play on the real-life family of the Medi... more

Lord Havelock Vetinari is the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the head of the fictional city state of Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. He is sometimes said to have been based on the Italian statesman and diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli, but in fact favours a subtly different (though equally pragmatic) form of statecraft. Lord Vetinari was born into the extremely powerful Vetinari family (a word play on the real-life family of the Medici and on the word "veterinary") and raised by his aunt, Lady Roberta Meserole. As a youth, he enrolled in the Assassins' Guild which, apart from teaching its students how to kill other people for money, also gives them an excellent education. Lord Vetinari was particularly interested in the classical arts and (in flagrant defiance of the Guild's conventions of style) camouflage, though he was failed in his stealth examination (due to the examiner's belief that he had used trickery and his apparent absence in classes). Because of the... less