"The trolls thought so about the dwarfs, and the other way around," Margolotta says. "The vampires about the werewolves. And so on, in great detail and ad nauseam, down to different halves of the same bloody village. Then, bits of all of them went to Ankh-Morpork and continued the ancient enmities in bar fights. It was time for people to snap out of it already!"

The exasperation with that former state of things is still clear in her voice.