Mustrum Ridcully
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| Characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series |
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| Character details | |
| Full name: | Mustrum Ridcully |
| Description: | A country-loving Wizard |
| Associations: | Unseen University |
| Location: | Ankh-Morpork |
| Story appearances | |
| First seen: | Equal Rites |
| Also in: | Moving Pictures Reaper Man Lords and Ladies Soul Music Interesting Times Hogfather Jingo The Last Continent The Last Hero Night Watch Going Postal Thud! |
| Other details | |
| Notes: | |
Mustrum Ridcully is a fictional character in the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett. He was introduced in Moving Pictures as the latest Archchancellor of the Unseen University.
He is also known as Ridcully the Brown, possibly as a parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's Radagast the Brown. His personality seems deliberately designed to be as opposite to Radagast's as possible.
At the time he became Archchancellor, he had not been seen at the University for forty years, having become a Seventh Level Wizard (there are, naturally, eight levels of wizardry on the Discworld) at the exceptionally young age of twenty-seven. The wizards, knowing he lived in the country, assumed he would be a "roams the forests with every beast his brother" type, very similar to Radagast, and easy to deal with. In fact, Ridcully turned out to be more like a typical country squire, fond of huntin', shootin' and fishin'.
He is not stupid, and in fact has a mind like a freight train, but finds it very difficult to deal with unexpected information, and generally ignores it until it goes away or becomes someone else's problem. He holds the view that if someone is still trying to explain something to him after about 2 minutes, it must be worth listening to, and if they give up earlier, it was not worth bothering him with in the first place. Usually, the person doing the explaining is Ponder Stibbons.
Ridcully is generally portrayed as being stubborn, and he only rarely listens to someone else. However, he has shown the occasional flash of magical skill. For example, in Moving Pictures, the Bursar is surprised to discover Ridcully's adeptness at using a magic mirror (which, like most Discworld scrying devices, is hard to steer) to find something (as Ridcully put it, he didn't have time to be crawling around the woods hoping something he could shoot would come by). It's also implied that he has some degree of practical magic knowledge--instead of using a 'thaumometer' (a device that gives a numerical measurement of a magic field's strength), he licks a finger and notes the color and size of the small spark it gives off in the air (The Last Continent). He also became a seventh level wizard at an incredibly young age before leaving the university to look after his family's land. He also tends to be more practical then most of his fellow wizards such as when he revives Teatime by hitting him on the chest before any of his fellow wizards could whip up a spell.
He tends to move with little or no thought of the future or the consequences that might be involved, as in Hogfather where upon discovering a door, (hidden behind a bookcase, boarded up, with a sign saying 'Do not open under any circumstances') promptly has it opened, where he finds a bathroom designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Upon his first attempt at showering and trying a curious knob labeled 'Old Faithful', which causes the shower to send a jet of water out that rivals its namesake, his screams convince Modo to turn off the water. Undeterred by this, he returns to the shower only to try the 'Musical Pipes' enhancement, interlocked with the university's organ upon which the Librarian was playing Bubbla's Catastrophe suite. Following this second, seemingly disastrous, incident, Ridcully had Modo permanently seal the bathroom up again.
He has stabilised the structure of Unseen University (which used to be based on killing wizards more powerful than you) by being impossible to kill. It is interesting to note that not only is he the first Archchancellor to last more than one book, but the rest of the faculty have been given more development as well, suggesting an increased survival rate amongst all senior wizards. They do not seem to appreciate this, however, due to Ridcully's exhausting personality. In particular, the Bursar has become a nervous wreck since Ridcully's arrival.
He has a curious understanding of sanitation, and frequently refers to things as 'unhygienic'. There is a reference concerning this in which he mentions his father suggesting the existence of a Verruca Gnome, who would afflict whoever went around barefoot.
Oddly, the faculty member he gets on best with seems to be Ponder Stibbons. He never understands what Ponder is saying, and Ponder never expects him to, but at least the young man is doing something, which is more than can be said for the rest of them.
His brother is Hughnon Ridcully, High Priest of Blind Io, and Ankh-Morpork's religious spokesman. While priests and wizards are traditionally at odds due to philosophical differences, neither Ridcully is of a particularly philosophical frame of mind, and they tend to ignore this.
In Lords and Ladies we learn he had a relationship with a young Esme Weatherwax, some fifty years before becoming Archchancellor.
In the Cosgrove Hall animation of Soul Music he was voiced by Graham Crowden. I
In the upcoming film version of Hogfather he is to be played by Joss Ackland.
↑ Very strong, very powerful, and very hard to divert once it gets going.
