Havelock Vetinari

Lord Vetinari
Discworld character
Lord Vetinari, as depicted by Paul Kidby in The Pratchett Portfolio
First appearance	The Colour of Magic
Created by	Terry Pratchett
Information
Description	A tall, pale, thoughtful man who dresses in dusty black, primarily due to having better things to think about than what to wear. In his youth he favoured grey or dark greens instead of the traditional black of the Assassins Guild because he claims they blend better with the shadows
Location	Ankh-Morpork
Also in	Mort, Sourcery, Guards! Guards!, Moving Pictures, Reaper Man, Men at Arms, Soul Music, Interesting Times, Maskerade, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, The Truth, The Last Hero, Night Watch, Going Postal, Thud!, Making Money Unseen Academicals Snuff, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook Raising Steam
Notes	Former student of the Assassins' Guild

Lord Havelock Vetinari, Lord Patrician (Primus inter pares) of the city state of Ankh-Morpork, is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, a series of forty books describing a parallel universe whose main world has reflections of our Earth. He is depicted as the ruler of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork. Vetinari 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 administration.

Lord Vetinari was born into the extremely powerful Vetinari family (a pun, or play on words, 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 academia. Lord Vetinari was particularly interested in the classical arts and, in flagrant defiance of the Guild's conventions of style, camouflage, though he failed his stealth examination (due to the examiner's belief that he had never attended any of his classes). However, Lord Vetinari claimed that he religiously attended his classes, pointing out that in a class on an inherently discreet occupation, he was the only student that wasn't visibly present. Because of the similarity his name bore to "veterinary", he endured the nickname of Dog-botherer (cf. god-botherer). Vetinari graduated from the Guild with exceptional marks, scoring disconcertingly high in attention to detail. It is also mentioned that he studied languages; in Jingo he translates Klatchian for Sergeant Colon, although he flatly denies being able to speak it.