Concerned about Pseudopolis

[Anonymous]

Sorry to open this thread, but I do need to get it off my head and found no other thread where it would have fitted in.

I'm a bit worried about the developement of Pseudopolis in UA.
Before UA the city was always the counter to Ankh-Morpork. A city that managed to achieve similar if not equal successes, status, maybe riches etc WITHOUT Vetinari and his politics. Reading a bit into the sub-text I think one could easily say that Pseudopolis did right what AM is 'renown' for before AM even thought about doing it. P has no guilds yet it worked. P's watch also seemed to work just as well as the AM watch does only now etc.
But then UA came and P got reduced to a walking joke about democracy, amongst other things.
All the while AM is becoming more and more of the standard Big City Of Adventures to which all other cities have to bow down.

Why?
I really wish I'd know why Mr Pratchett did that, knowingly or unknowingly.
It is a bit disappointing, as, IMHO it takes another bit out of the living world the Disc is.

 

[Tonyblack]

I'm not sure that Pseudopolis was ever that well developed in previous books. I certainly don't see it as anywhere near a match to A-M. Apart from anything, P doesn't appear to be on the coast and therefore would find trade difficult. A lot, if not most great civilisations tend to be coastal based.

The only other DW book that I can think of offhand that has any time spent in P is Eric and that doesn't last very long. Pseudopolis doesn't even have an entry in the New Discworld Companion - which kind of surprised me.

 

[Dotsie]

A tyrant is bound to be scornful of democracy. It doesn't mean that we the reader should be as well.

Also, we are supposed to be very fond of AM, and allow a bit of ribbing about another city on the Disc because we don't live there. If I took the piss out of Liverpool, doesn't mean that it's rubbish. Where's your sense of civic pride?

 

[Tonyblack]

Good point Dotsie! Considering the theme of UA and the tribalism that sport seems to engender, it's only natural that it should scale up to 'our city is better than yours' - or 'our country is better than yours'.

I've never understood the rivalry of football fans. I know a guy from Cardiff who supports Liverpool and because of that, he hates everything to do with Manchester, even though he's never been to Manchester and was born and raised In Cardiff with no connection to Liverpool.

 

[Dotsie]

My brother-in-law is from Liverpool - depsite the fact that he & Mr Dotsie both love football, when they get together they don't talk about it much