Sam Vimes was born in Cockbill Street, in the Rimwards part of the Shades, the poorest area of Ankh-Morpork. It was so poor that there was little crime, though Sam was part of a street gang (The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads) with Lupine Wonse (who later became secretary to Lord Vetinari).

Vimes was educated at a dame school. At school he was once blackboard monitor for a whole term.

Sam's grandfather's name was Gwilliam and his father's name was Thomas (Feet of Clay). His mother told the young Sam that Thomas was run down by a cart, but this was apparently untrue. Whatever happened to him, she raised the young Sam on her own.

The City Watch apparently runs in the Vimes family. It has been suggested that Sam's father was a Watchman, and he is the descendant of Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes, the Watch Commander who, much like Oliver Cromwell, instigated the rebellion against, and subsequent beheading of, Lorenzo the Kind, the appalling last king of the city, a sadistic torturer described as 'very fond of children'. (Vimes's followers were called Ironheads, a combined reference to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) for who Cromwell fought, and Cromwell's cavalry regiment the Ironsides). For centuries after, the memory of Suffer-Not-Injustice has lived on in infamy and, as his descendant, Sam has frequently endured suspicious mutterings from the aristocracy. He also seems to have inherited an almost phobic reaction to monarchs. Vimes and his famous ancestor share a nickname: Old Stoneface. Vimes is also implied to heavily resemble his ancestor--the ancient vampire Dragon King of Arms, discussing the circumstances of the regicide, says "Except you...that is, your ancestor...".

Sam Vimes was in his late teens when he joined the Watch (about 25 years prior to Guards! Guards!; 30 years prior to the beginning of Night Watch). He was part of that section of the Watch which played a large role in the rebellion against Homicidal Lord Winder. It was around this time he was taught all he knows by Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, which is where his cynical outlook on life (and, paradoxically, his firm belief in justice) comes from.

However, in current history, Keel was in fact Sam himself flung back in time thirty years. As Lu-Tze explains it to Vimes in Night Watch, both pasts are true and there was a real John Keel as well as himself teaching his young self, this being the reason why he has to do so.


[edit] The Watch
During the first 25 years of his term in the Watch Sam rose to Captain of the Night Watch as it dwindled to a tiny stub – while the power of the Thieves' Guild grew. This insult to Sam's sense of justice, together with his being naturally knurd and other events led to heavy drinking which probably came near to killing him.

All that changed when Carrot Ironfoundersson came to the city. This man (raised by dwarves) joined the Watch and set out to help the city. Around the same time a dragon assaulted the city (not a swamp dragon, a real, big dragon - draco nobilis or 'Noble Dragon') and the Watch was instrumental in its defeat. The Watch also gained a new headquarters, Pseudopolis Yard (the childhood home of Vimes's soon-to-be wife, Lady Sybil Ramkin; it may be analogous to Scotland Yard) after the dragon destroyed their original base at Treacle Mine Road.

Later on, the Night Watch under Vimes took on extra staff in the form of a werewolf, a dwarf and a troll. (And even later on, a Zombie, a Gargoyle, and even a Golem.) They were instrumental in foiling an attempt on the Patrician's life, and were rewarded. The Watch was rapidly revived and became very important in the city.

Vimes, who was on the point of retiring following his marriage to Lady Sybil, was given the resurrected rank of Commander, putting him in charge of the Night Watch and the Day Watch. He also (to his disgust) received a Knighthood.

Sir Samuel took a great interest in the restructuring of the Watch, placing new Watch Houses where they were needed and supervising the creation of both a Watch Academy and a forensic alchemy section. So successful has been his reform of the City Watch, that by Night Watch, Vimes-trained policemen are in high demand in cities across the Disc. They are now so common across the Sto Plains that they are known as 'Sammies' (parallel to the real life Sir Robert Peel's Bobbies or Peelers), even to people who've never even heard of Samuel Vimes. In his expanding international and diplomatic role, Vimes appreciates the fact that police officers from Sto Lat to Genua have been trained to salute him, and, night and day, remain in "unofficial" contact across the Disc.

In the most recent and surprising innovation of the Watch seen so far, in Thud! Vimes finally saw fit to hire a secretary to deal with the mountains of much-detested paperwork that his job entails, allowing him to only focus on those items that he would consider important. He did, however, insist that his secretary would also have to walk the streets on a part-time basis, so that they would have a clearer understanding of which items should be treated as important in the first place.


[edit] Character
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If one could sum Sam Vimes up in a single word, it would be "conflicted." An incorruptible idealist with deep beliefs in justice and an abiding love of his city, he is also a committed cynic whose knowledge of human nature constantly reminds him how far off those ideals are. A cushioned member of the upper classes, he still has an innate dislike of hereditary wealth and a horror of social inequality (ironic, as he may have inherited this trait from his pugnacious ancestor). The Patrician observes that Vimes is anti-authoritarian even though he is an authority figure, which is "practically Zen." A self-described speciesist (the Disc's equivalent of a racist), Vimes has nonetheless allowed the Watch to become one of the most species-blind employers in the city, and recognises better than most the value of its non-human members, such as dwarfs, trolls, and even vampires, for whom he still admits an innate dislike, probably due to their attraction to power. He has however said he didn't like humans either, so he isn't actually speciest. But by far the deepest and most profound conflict within Sam Vimes is that between his virtuous nature (which at one point identifies itself as "the Watchman") and what he calls "the beast"; the dark upwelling of fury in his soul that, if let loose, would drive him to destroy those he hates. In this regard Vimes can be considered similar to the stereotype of a cop on the edge, though he never lets his idea of right become his own personal form of justice. He protects himself with the symbol of his own badge, which prevents him from becoming the criminal he despises, at least in his own mind. From an apparently simple start as a take off of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry persona, Vimes has become a moral anti-hero of Philip Marlowean complexity.

Despite being viewed by many of the Discworld's more Machiavellian power brokers as easy to fool, Vimes is in fact much more cunning than he appears. Set apart from the general populace of Ankh-Morpork by actually having an IQ, his almost invincible stubbornness, physical strength (he once hoisted a 300 pound woman onto his shoulders and sprinted halfway across the Plaza of Broken Moons) and experience give him a foundation of hard-headed realism on which he bases much of his more idealistic beliefs. A running gag in the series is his thwarting of several attempts on his life by the Assassins' Guild, due to his encyclopedic knowledge of their rigid code of conduct. Thanks to the virtually unlimited funds now afforded him, he has rigged his wife's mansion with numerous sliding roof tiles, carefully concealed cesspits, beartraps and innumerable tripwires, so that the Assassins, who must always offer a sporting chance, cannot get within fifty yards of him without suffering an ignoble fate, usually involving the aforementioned cesspit. In every book in the series, the fee for his Assassination has risen until, by Night Watch, he has been officially delisted from the Guild register, meaning that contracts on his life are no longer accepted. Possibly this is because the Assassins' Guild feels Vimes has become vital to the stability of the city or perhaps he is simply too difficult to assassinate. Vimes is considering appealing the decision.

Vimes has also beaten a pack of werewolves in "The Game"; a chase through the snow that humans are not actually meant to win. Usefully, he can tell exactly where he is anywhere in Ankh-Morpork just by the feel of the cobbles beneath his feet - although the expensive, good quality (and thick-soled) boots his wife persists in buying for him restrict his abilities in this area.

Vimes's unfortunately firm grasp of basic human nature, and of the Ankh-Morpork psyche in particular, led to him spending some years as a drunk (he wasn't rich enough to be an alcoholic), and Sergeant Colon speculated that this was because his body didn't produce any "natural" alcohol. He estimated that Vimes was about two drinks below par. This meant that when he hadn't been drinking, he was beyond sober - he was knurd. Thus he saw reality as it really was, stripped of the fuzziness and mental illusions that most people construct in their minds to get to sleep at night. This horrifying state of mind would cause Vimes to try to balance it out through drinking, but he would get the dosage wrong and end up drunk. Vimes gave up alcohol after his marriage to Sybil (largely at her behest, though also in concern for his own health), and now smokes foul-smelling cigars - Pantweed's Slim Panatellas - instead.

Terry Pratchett noted the following about Vimes on the Usenet: "Vimes is fundamentally a person. He fears he may be a bad person because he knows what he thinks rather than just what he says and does. He chokes off those little reactions and impulses, but he knows what they are. So he tries to act like a good person, often in situations where the map is unclear."

The many narrative possibilities of this complex character are perhaps the reason why Terry Pratchett has returned to his story more often than any other in the Discworld canon.


[edit] Lady Sybil
Sam married Lady Sybil Ramkin at the end of Men at Arms; however, the pattern of his married life was set the moment he turned away from his wedding to chase an assassin that had just made an attempt on the Patrician's life. Lady Sybil is a remarkably patient woman; she spent nearly the entirety of The Fifth Elephant attempting to inform her increasingly distracted husband that she was pregnant with their first child. It is clear that Vimes loves his wife dearly, indeed when he was trapped in the past during the events of Night Watch, alone in a world he no longer recognised, the History Monks gave him a silver cigar case his wife had bought him to inspire him to continue with his mission. However, it is not entirely clear whether his hatred of crime and the evil of humanity is greater than his love for his wife. Sybil bears this divided loyalty with some grace; however, nearly every Watch novel concludes with Sam making some form of amends to his neglected wife, either a delayed honeymoon, or simply time alone with their new baby.


[edit] Vimes as Duke of Ankh
Vimes's involvement in preventing a pointless war with Klatch in the novel Jingo led to his being once more "rewarded" with an unwanted title, in this case "Duke of Ankh". He now finds himself in the awkward position of continuing to despise the ruling classes of the city, while actually being a member of them. He sees the title primarily as a job description.

In the course of his mission to Überwald as Ambassador, he was disgusted to learn that he was also entitled to be addressed as "His Excellency". While this may have impressed the ruling cliques in Überwald, it did not impress him.

His role as Duke of Ankh largely involves diplomacy (as in, for example, his visit to Überwald in The Fifth Elephant), although he occasionally finds the opportunity to do some police work. His role as Commander largely involves (to the dismay of his wife) the chasing of criminals on important dates in his social life, including his wedding. Despite having extremely competent subordinates, including Captain Carrot and Sergeants Angua and Detritus, Vimes finds it difficult to delegate watch tasks, and is frustrated by the fact that the growth of the watch has left him with less and less time for actual street coppering. In some ways he found it a relief when, in Night Watch, he was transported back to the Ankh-Morpork of his youth, and became a sergeant-at-arms in the inefficient, paperwork-free and moderately corrupt Watch of that time.


[edit] Young Sam
Young Sam is Sam Vimes's son and about fourteen months old by the time of Thud!. His birth was intensely traumatic, and Sam paid Doctor "Mossy" Lawn, perhaps the only decent doctor in Ankh-Morpork, an enormous honorarium in gratitude for saving Sybil's and the baby's lives. Lawn has since founded the Lady Sybil Free Hospital.

Since his son's birth, Vimes has discovered a new cause in life; arriving at home every day at six o' clock sharp to read him Where's My Cow?, an obligation that supersedes crime, conspiracy or international negotiations — his thinking being that if he ever missed it for a good reason, he might miss it for a bad reason, and that this might apply to everything he did, such as employing less-than-ethical methods in the pursuit of crime.


[edit] Recent developments
Sam Vimes is, much to his own horror, becoming a politician. However, he remains a copper in his soul. Being a significant figure on the (Disc)world stage just means he finds bigger crimes.

Recently, Commander Vimes has seen involvement with:

William de Worde, Otto Chriek and The Ankh-Morpork Times in The Truth
The war between Borogravia and Zlobenia (and everyone else in the region) in Monstrous Regiment
Moist von Lipwig, the Post Office and the Grand Trunk Company's monopoly on the "clacks" system in Going Postal
Ethnic tensions between dwarfs and trolls in Thud!
Terry Pratchett has commented that Sam Vimes has made setting a story in Ankh-Morpork very difficult as it is almost impossible to create a story involving any sort of crime or politics without it rapidly becoming a Watch Book.