Lord de Worde

De Worde is the surname of one of the older noble families in Ankh-Morpork, the most powerful city-state on the Sto Plains. Like the other Ankh-Morpork nobles, the de Wordes are arrogant and patriotic. They consider that the best prize in battle is to achieve glory by killing and defeating the enemy, but that dying themselves is the second best prize and just as glorious. They have a town house on Nonesuch Street, but seldom use it since the city opened its gates to ethnic minorities. The current holder of the title is Lord de Worde. He is an arrogant bully and a speciesist (he looks down on what he considers to be the lesser races like trolls and dwarfs. He believes that he is always right and that there iis no possibility that anybody could make a sensible argument against him; attempting to argue against his position a sign of insanity, a slipping of the good old ways and risking the very fiber of the nation. He is estranged from his second son and heir William because of his nature. Lord de Worde is always the leader of his circle of friends and the ringleader in whatever enterprise that he may be attempting. His plot in The Truth, an attempt to depose the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vetinari, is discovered by his son William de Worde, who confronts him and forces him to go into exile in the country - something he is probably not opposed to anyway given the 'degenerate state' of Ankh-Morpork since it allowed dwarfs and trolls to live in the city.