Quirm

The Duchy of Quirm
The Floral Clock
Established	{{{established}}}
Motto
Neighbours	Ankh-Morpork, Pseudopolis
Geographical Features
Population	fairly large for its
Size	small but undefined
Capital	{{{capital}}}
Type of government	independent Duchy
Notable Citizens	the Da Quirms, the Rodleys, Leonard of Quirm, Lady Roberta, Madame Deux-Epées
Imports	retirees from Ankh
Exports	fancy foods, wine, art, education
National Anthem
Books	many set in Ankh-Morpork

The Duchy of Quirm lies along the coast of the Rim Ocean, about twenty leagues turnwise from Ankh-Morpork. Its current ruler is Lord Rodley, His Grace, the Duke of Quirm, the son of Brenda Rodley, Her Grace the Dowager Duchess. Quirm is famous for its explorers and inventors, the da Quirms, including Ponce da Quirm and Leonard da Quirm, infamous for Norris, the Eyeball-Eating Maniac of Quirm and B.S. Johnson's typically unfortunate Collapsed Tower of Quirm. It is known as the place with a floral clock, and no excitement. It is also known in The Big Wahoonie that Quirm has better food, wine, weather, air and water and the burghers of Ankh hope to retire there, but really! the place is full of foreigners! While it is regarded as a sleepy, slightly boring place, Quirm supplies Ankh-Morpork with a great many artists, artisans, chefs, and cultural movers and shakers; something must be going on there. The primary defining feature of the disc-famous Quirmian cooking is by the inclusion of the mystical and near mythical 'avec', which is known the multiverse over as the sure sign of the best food.

Quirm has an army: its so far only named unit is the Duke of Quirm's Middleweight Infantry Regiment. This has the added distinction of having been the young Fred Colon's first taste of Army service, presumably in the days where Fred was a middleweight and working up to his next posting. Quirm probably had more military and political power at some point in history, as influence of the Quirmian language is found far across the continent in Genua.

Quirm is also the location of the Quirm College for Young Ladies, and as such one of the minor settings in Soul Music. The college has been popular with the upper class for many years; many of Lady Sybil's friends are Old Girls there, as is Miss Perspicacia Tick, and Susan Sto Helit.

C.V. Cheesewaller is a well-known local Wizard and the original proprietor of the talking raven known as Quoth. The city had a mayor though it is unclear if he retained his job after the events of Soul Music.

It is unclear as to whether La Sorbumme is a district of Quirm the city or a smaller town within Quirm the duchy. Whichever it is, this is the seat of the Quirmian tradition of foolery and clowning, which while it has a longer history than in Ankh-Morpork was subsumed into the Fools' Guild several hundred years ago. Today, the Ankh-Morpork guild uses its extensive holdings at La Sorbumme as a summer school. The good folk of Quirm must be delighted at the wealth of entertainment talent available to them every summer.

Due to a miscommunication in the twilight years of the Ankh-Morpork monarchy, Quirm's branch of the Royal Post Office once employed trained ostriches as delivery staff. It is unclear if this practice has resumed as part of the Post's current revival.

In the book Snuff, a minor sub-plot deals with a policing exchange between Ankh-Morpork and Quirm, in which we learn of La Gendarmerie de Quirm for the first time as an extremely Sûreté- like police force with a suspiciously French take on policing. but will it have its Clouseau? A central character in the Quirmian police is Captain Emile.

From Snuff, we can infer that the border region between Ankh-Morpork and Quirm proper is a largely Morporkian-speaking area, known colloquially as The Shires. This region may overlap Quirmian territory for quite some way.

We also learn in Snuff that Quirm has a fully-fledged City Zoo, which makes it one step ahead of Ankh-Morpork in this respect. Sam Vimes takes Young Sam there to see the elephants and gain raw material for his new, engrossing, albeit inexpensive, hobby.

The City of Quirm also hosts a thriving branch of the Alchemists' Guild where the Alchemists have the rare common sense to employ at least one golem as a lab assistant to deal with all the toxic and dangerous stuff. It apparently has arsenic plated to its fingers due to stirring vats of molten material with its arms.

Annotation

" It is also known in The Big Wahoonie that Quirm has better food, wine, weather, air and water and the burghers of Ankh hope to retire there, but really! the place is full of foreigners!"

This mirrors the way lots and lots of affluent Brits have semi-retired to nice parts of France, like Provence, and love everything about France except the natives and the language. Think of the classic work "A Year in Provence" by a typical rather smug Brit who did this, extolling the cheapness of land and housing, the more affordable standard of living, while deploring the surliness of the natives, and you have the character type off pat.

Quirm may be the "France" of the Discworld, but it would not have had much of the same sort of history of our France: squeezed out of Imperial contention and pretention at a much earlier stage by mighty neighbour Ankh-Morpork, the Quirmian language might well be that of diplomacy and catering, but not as important a world language as its counterpart on Roundworld.

But it can be seen as generating equally proud and culturally aware people, who play their country up for all they possibly can.