Vetinari is drunk all book long
In Unseen Academicals, we see that when Vetinari is drunk, he gets chattier in a rambling sort of way ("I am as drunk as a skunk, Drumknott, which of course means skunks are just as drunk as I. I must say the term is unfamiliar to me, and I had not thought hitherto of skunks in this context...") and less good at crossword puzzles. In Raising Steam, he's noted to be struggling with a crossword puzzle, and he's about that level of talkative throughout the book:‘My dear Mister Lipwig, you are clever and certainly smart but you have yet to find the virtue of wisdom, and wisdom tells a powerful prince that firstly he shouldn’t put just anyone he likes in prison, because that is where he puts the people he doesn’t like, and secondly that mere unthinking dislike of something, someone, or some situation is no mandate for drastic action. Therefore, while I have given you permission to continue, the train does not have my wholehearted approval. Neither does it have my curse.’
Which is really a lot of words to say something he could say more concisely, and also note the bit where he gets sidetracked by the Ambiguous Syntax of "anyone he likes". Throughout the book he tends to out-talk anyone he's having a conversation with, which is fairly unusual (especially considering his usual habit of listening quietly so people will blurt out self-incriminating information just to fill the silence).this is practically putting his arm around Moist's shoulders and saying, in a drunken sort of a way, "You're my best friend, you are!", except that this is Vetinari speaking.Maybe he's become a bit of a functional alcoholic, and it's only just developed because he's usually teetotal. In Unseen Academicals, he went on a bit of a drinking binge because of important football-related reasons (right after being specifically noted to be a nondrinker), and it could have awoken his dormant alcoholic tendencies. (This could be because he and Charlie were actually Separated at Birth, and he shares Charlie's predisposition toward alcoholism, or maybe it's just a coincidence that they share that trait as well.)
- Granted... it's valid on the face of it, but if you look only at the face of it you have to 'face' the fact that everybody else in this book (and in fact the previous five or so books) suffer from the same thing. From 'Making Money' onward (ie, as of 'the Embuggerance') Pratchett's characters increasingly have a tendency to monologue - to quickly hit all the dialogue points in a scene in one lengthy speech, rather than developing ideas and mood organically - where in his previous books he would have had sharp back-and-forth dialogue, or one or two shorter explanatory paragraphs followed by a whamline. Every character is suffering from a failure of self-editing... and so is the narrator. Pardon me, I have to go and cry now.
The terrorist grags had already doomed their own cause, long before the good guys do.
Their agenda was to eradicate all dwarfs considered "impure" by their own insanely-stringent standards, leaving only themselves and their elite delver minions - the "Only True Dwarfs" - to carry on their race. All others, being imperfect examples of dwarfishness, were to be killed or sacrificed as expendable suicide troops, to achieve that end. But thanks to their own demands as to gender-concealment, the fundamentalist dwarfs never even realized that, in pursuing "purity" at all costs, they'd eliminated more than half their own side's numbers - scared off, purged, expended or silenced - including all of their faction's female dwarfs. (Females would, after all, be the ones most likely to be executed for slipping up in their "male" facades, to flee before such exposure could occur to them, or to get themselves killed in reckless attempts to prove their "macho maleness" to the rest.) Had the grags achieved their aim and wiped out all the "impure" dwarfs, their species would have shortly gone extinct for lack of another generation, and the instigators wouldn't have even suspected they'd just committed racial self-genocide until they noticed the birth rate had bottomed out. Iron Girder is the anti-Gonne.
Both inventions took on life and sentience, but their conduct was opposite in every way. Whereas Leonard of Quirm's creation from Men At Arms was a murderous thing, driving its bearers to mayhem and power-hunger, Iron Girder exists to help others, stirring them to admiration of her design and the urge to travel and embrace the new. The Gonne was also insanely jealous, killing the dwarf who'd restored it to functional condition so he'd make no more; Iron Girder is delighted to be a mother, and cares for Simnel's well-being (and even love life) as the crafter of her "children". And the Gonne's baser ambition brought it to its doom, unlike Iron Girder, whose righteous purpose led her to godhood.