Question: Wyrd Sisters - Where's the queen?

[Jon Lemerond]

It’s been a while since I last read it, so this may well have come up before and I simply missed it… Forgive me if I’m raising something that’s already been discussed to death. But where was the queen in Wyrd Sisters?

Wyrd Sisters begins with the assassination of King Verence I and the smuggling away of his infant son. But that raises an obvious question: where is the baby’s mother? If the queen was already dead, it must have been quite recently—after all, the prince (whom the witches accidentally name Tomjon) is still an infant. Yet I can’t recall the queen being mentioned at all until the very end, when Nanny casually reveals that Tomjon is the result of the queen having an affair with the castle fool.

That also leads to another oddity: the prince’s actual name never seems to be given. The witches simply settle on “Tomjon” by accident. Why wouldn’t they know the name of the Prince of Lancre? I can forgive Granny for not knowing—she doesn’t even know who the king is when it comes up— but Magrat knows who the king is, and Nanny Ogg delivered the baby. As the midwife, she ought to know something and perhaps be a bit more forthcoming with the details.

Altogether, it feels like there’s a significant piece of backstory and an important character is missing from this narrative.

 

[Tonyblack]

It's a great question . . . but offhand I don't have an answer. It has also been a long time since I read WS. I'm sure someone here will know.

 

[=Tamar]

That is an excellent question. Wyrd Sisters is an early book, and much as I love Discworld, there are some glitches. I suspect that in-universe the queen died in childbirth and was cared for by a nursemaid. Regarding the name, the witches were planning to hide the baby, so they wouldn't use his real name anyway. It's pretty much a given that he would have been named Verence II.

 

[Jon Lemerond]

Okay... so it's not just me forgetting details, then.
The queen dying in childbirth is kind of the natural direction the brain takes, but when you later learn that Nanny Ogg was the midwife... that surmise sits very badly. It's like Nanny went through that whole story with a rather deep connection to some major exposition, and says nothing. And that would not be a secret; it would be a well-known, recent event that the whole kingdom would likely still be recovering from.

 

[RathDarkblade]

True, but then this is the first novel where both Nanny and Magrat appear. Perhaps Pterry hadn't yet settled on what role Nanny would play, other than being the Mother (i.e. the Healer, the one who mediates in disputes between Granny and Magrat).

With the kingdom in disarray and ruled by enemies of Verence I (who even imprison and threaten to torture Nanny for seemingly not-very-much-other-than-being-a-witch), perhaps Nanny thinks that it's better to keep silent about her role in the queen's pregnancy. When Lord and Lady Felmet are out of the way, it probably seems safe to reveal what she did.

Does that seem reasonable?

 

[Jon Lemerond]

Oh, I'm quite sure that this is a result of it being an early book, and the witches not quite being the characters we know later on.
Thank you... That's some good stuff there. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for... a little light fan-theory, retconning / No-Prize work.

 

[Jon Lemerond]

Another element of Wyrd Sisters that doesn’t quite land for me is the “time warp” spell Granny casts. It’s an enormous, reality-bending piece of magic, yet it carries surprisingly little weight in the story.

First, there are no real magical consequences. In Discworld, magic usually comes with a cost; it’s not something you get to use freely without paying for it in some form. But here, a spell of staggering scale seems to happen without any meaningful price.

Second, it barely affects the plot. The entire kingdom of Lancre is effectively pushed fifteen years into the future so Tomjon can come of age and take the throne… and then he doesn’t become king anyway. That makes the spell feel narratively redundant, despite its magnitude.

Finally, there’s no social fallout. Granny makes a decision that alters the lives of everyone in Lancre, yet no one seriously objects. What about people with loved ones outside the kingdom? They would suddenly find those relatives fifteen years older. Nanny Ogg’s son, Shane, is a sailor - almost certainly away at sea when the spell was cast. From Nanny’s perspective, she’s just lost fifteen years of her son’s life. That’s a massive emotional consequence, but it’s never really addressed.

It almost feels like the spell could be removed entirely, and very little would change. If anything, the story might benefit from it. Granny would come across as less reckless and less thoughtless in hindsight.

It could instead lean more into what Nanny already knows. She was there as the midwife when Tomjon was born, so she’s aware he isn’t truly the king’s son. If the story emphasized that knowledge a bit more, it could naturally lead to a different resolution: Nanny realizing that the Fool (Verence II) is the brother of the hidden prince.

From there, the witches’ choice becomes more deliberate and grounded. Rather than bending time to force Tomjon into kingship (and failing), they consciously decide that Verence II is the ruler Lancre actually needs. That shift would keep the focus on character and judgment instead of relying on a massive, consequence-free spell, and it would make the ending feel more intentional and thematically consistent.

Your thoughts, please?