Cheery Littlebottom

Cheery
Cheery, as drawn by Matt Smith
Name	Cheery Littlebottom
Race	Dwarf
Age
Occupation	Watchman
Physical appearance	unusually feminine
Residence	Ankh-Morpork
Death
Parents	Jolly Littlebottom
Relatives	Grandfather Beaky Littlebottom, Brother Snorey (d.)
Children
Marital Status
Appearances
Books	Feet of Clay Jingo The Fifth Elephant Thud!
Cameos	The Truth Snuff

The first, and for quite some time the only, member of the forensics department in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Originally trained as an alchemist, Cheery left the Alchemists' Guild to join the watch after an incident which forced her to leave the guild (she blew up the entire leadership of the guild - people tend not to forget such trivia...). Cheery came from Überwald, found her first city friend in Angua, and as a result became the first openly female dwarf member of the Watch and, for that matter, of the whole dwarfish race. This caused a cultural revolution and a notable degree of unrest among the dwarfs. Another non-dwarfish trait is her relative indifference to gold, seeing it as just another, not especially reactive or intrinsically interesting, chemical element.

She begins her career in the City Watch working in an old privy, but rapidly earns Vimes' trust and respect (and there's not many that do that!) and is given what she needs when she needs it. Jingo credits her with the idea of using trained pigeons for in-city communication between Watch officers. By Thud! she is promoted to sergeant. Commander of the City Watch Sam Vimes thinks an awful lot of Cheery - which is more praise than you could believe. She started inauspiciously, but then with a name like Cheery... (this is a p***-take of the Roundworld tradition [started by Walt Disney] that dwarfs needed silly names such as Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy et cetera).

She causes all kinds of grief when she goes back to Überwald as an open female. Imagine shouting obscenities whilst naked in a church during the Victorian times and you have some idea of what wearing a skirt in traditional dwarf areas is like. However, she begins a cultural revolution and introduces two new pronouns - "she" and "her" - to the dwarfish language. Many detest her, calling her "Ha'ak", which is an extremely derogatory word in Dwarfish. She goes pale the first time she hears it, and both Detritus and Vimes (technically her superiors) are ready to begin war with those who utter the word in their presence: Detritus with an army of dwarfs on the way to Uberwald and Vimes with the whole of Dwarfdom when it's uttered by Albrecht Albrechtson deep in the mines of the Low King. On the other mailed fist, many dwarfs are finding that their 'sons' are dabbling in make-up and heeled boots; indeed, are beginning the journey to "coming out" (this is really not too far-fetched a comparison) as female thanks to her.

She pronounces her name "Cheri". Her true name, the one Dwarfs traditionally use only among themselves, is Sh'rt'azs.

Annotation

It is just possible that her name derives from the British nonsense phrase "Cheery Bum," a common misunderstanding of the refrain of the kitsch Italian song "Ciribiribin" (made famous by a 1934 Grace Moore recording).