The Patrician’s playbook¶

The Patrician of Ankh Morpork, seated at a grand wooden desk cluttered with brass gears, cog-driven calculators, and arcane mechanical devices.

Lord Vetinari, The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, represents technocratic manager of controlled chaos, in which power is not maintained by people through change or ideology, but through the careful orchestration of competing interests into a sustainable equilibrium.

Eight ways to keep everything exactly as it is:

Equilibrium seeking
Co-option as strategy
Intelligence without vision
The exhaustion factor
Managed opposition
Guild politics
The pragmatist’s trap
Controlled failure
Essential reading for aspiring patricians and those trying to spot them

Disclaimer¶

There is no opting out of the game, only playing it well or playing it badly, and Lord Havelock Vetinari does not explain the rules twice. Nothing here is a plot you can join. It is a description of the one you are already in, set down by a man who has spent decades ensuring that the description and the city agree.

Master The Game