While this definitely wasn't how it was written, I always interpreted it as "there are a certain proportion of dwarves who love babies (since babies are cute) and Vimes, being a bit of an upjumped Georgian street urchin with the requisite weird gender norms, assumes that all the dwarves who get really into babies must be ladies". It probably doesn't help that Cheery, the most openly female dwarf in the watch, has a very baby-friendly personality.

Is anyone going to mention Princess Alice of the Clacks? She's a gift and I love how Pratchett hints at the idea that she goes on to become an important figure in her own right (I've always thought her vague future career to be something like Grace Hopper's' work- rudimentary computing but from a semaphore perspective). It's one of those cases where you can really see that he incorporated the Girls Need Cool Role Models revelations of the Equal Rites days so thoroughly over the years that now he throws in a thirteen year old STEM prodigy into a tertiary plotline absentmindedly. You know what that is? Growth.

Pratchett definitely has shares a lot of the opinions of those sorts of organizations- general anti-authoritarianism, a real mistrust of inefficient bureaucracy, occasional distaste for large organisations, and a belief in exceptional individuals being able to do exceptional things. He's a bit of a monarchist in that weird "One Good Tyrant" way, and he has a lot of frustration with the incompetency of elected officials and the general uninformed nature of the average citizen.

He was also raised poor and worked as a journalist. He experienced the Thatcher years and the Cold War. So he comes at everything from an entirely different perspective, strongly rooted in the needs of the people at the lowest level of society. I'd go so far as to say it's a perspective that's not compatible with, at the very least, British libertarianism, which would completely destabilize the healthcare and housing systems that protect many of the most vulnerable people in British society. At the very least you can't say that Terry Pratchett, with his distaste for Lord Rust, would support abolishing the income tax.

It's also really interesting how Steven seems to lead. Like he says, he's not quite a leader in the traditional sense, he's more of an emotional anchor who keeps everyone going. His leadership style is based in honesty and trying to do what's best, and when it comes down to big battles or complicated gem stuff he's less decisive.

Rose led like a tank, in spite of her healing powers. Steven leads like a support.

So proud of Amethyst

Yeah, I have to agree with everyone else here. Pearl and Rose definitely had some sort of relationship, especially in the early days. It might have been explicitly romantic, it might not have been. It was definitely Messed Up. But given their fusion (fusion being a direct metaphor for relationships and all) their closeness and touches, their smiles to each other, it's obvious that they shared a deep bond that everyone around them understood.

While Rose ended up falling for Greg, she also fell for Pearl. It's pointed out in the episode that Pearl quite literally shows her a whole new world, is the first person to be honest with her, is the first person to try to communicate with her outside of Homeworld's hierarchy. Garnet and Pearl are the ones that show Rose that gems can change and she dotes on them for that. They're her first exposure to real evolution outside of the strictures of the Diamonds, to illegal fusion and rulebreaking.

And her relationship with Pearl, in all of its uncommunicative, unhealthy, sometimes one-sided (And for good reason too, Rose is basically a teenager running away with her maid- she could go home whenever and get a scolding but it would go much worse for the person running with her. Pearl is putting her gem on the line here. Rose's affection for her is her safety net, her last tether to home.) glory was kind of good for them, for a while. Sometimes you need an unhealthy relationship to get you out of an even more unhealthy place in life. Being the rebel Rose Quartz and her Pearl taught them both how to think for themselves, to some extent.

It just never evolved. They never communicated, never managed to move past that initial stage of dangerous, scandalous, codependent affection. And while Pearl was still working on voicing her desire for something more, Rose moved on and realized that an actual healthy relationship looked much different. Even then, the affection never stopped (Because Rose Quartz is not a good person and doesn't know how to talk to people) and neither did her and Pearl's relationship. It was just very different from what she chose to have with Greg, much to Pearl's dismay.

Okay, I also have a lot of feelings about PEARL and I a recent interview Rebecca Sugar gave backed a lot of them up. I'll tag anything that seems spoiler-y, but a lot of this is just word of god. Here's the link to a summary of the interview, for the record.
https://love-takes-work.tumblr.com/post/176311881...

To sum it up, Pearl didn't fall in love with Pink Diamond. She fell in love with Rose Quartz. Sugar describes her as "Alfred if he were in love with Batman"- but not Bruce Wayne. I think this is coherent with a lot of what we saw in the episode. Pearl talked about fantasizing about another world where Rose really WAS a quartz who could whisk her away. A world where she wasn't owned, where the lie they had built about their rebellion was real.

(Edit: I do still feel like that relationship was messed up as well, but it was messed up in different and slightly less concerning ways than straight Pink Diamond/Pearl would have been. The layer of a secret identity allowed Pearl to speak up and act in ways she otherwise wouldn't have. It gave her room to be more of herself.)

In some way Pink Diamond was also in love with the idea of Rose Quartz. Ebfr jnf nccneragyl irel vairfgrq va gur vqrn bs urefrys nf n tbbq crefba, na vqrny fur pbhyq arire shyyl chyy bss. Nzrgulfg vf rkcyvpvgyl pnyyrq bhg nf jung Ebfr jvfurq fur pbhyq or, fbzrbar serr sebz Ubzrjbeyq'f cebtenzzvat.

Together the two of them built the idea of this wonderful person and then they both ended up dependent on her. Pearl more explicitly (because why wouldn't she prefer Rose Quartz who let her explore her talents, who laughed with her, and made fiery speeches, over the Diamond she could never make happy?) and PD/Rose more subtly.

In a way, that was the great strength and downfall of Rose Quartz. Everyone was so fixated on the idea of her that they never realized she was only barely real.

One thing I like about the reveal is that it helps us better understand how Borogravia was able to support so many years of constant, unending warfare. Usually extended conflicts, especially in an early modern model with more high tech weapons and nationalistic sentiments bringing in large masses of recruits, tends to drain a nation of young men quickly. When I lived in Italy there were quite a few towns with stories about the generations after World War II when there were essentially no adult men- thanks to two back to back large scale wars and extended bombing campaigns they lost entire decades.

But Borogravia is still kicking, and while there is a gender imbalance it's not quite as extreme as all the wartime casualties would logically lead to. If women (or at least AFAB people) have been a core component of the army for years, that would help explain how they were able to maintain a facade of functionality for so long. The participation of a traditionally underutilized group allowed them to survive longer than they probably would have otherwise (which might not be a good thing since it enabled their warlike mentality and exacerbated an unsustainable level of aggression). Despite that, the second some women dare to speak openly about their vital contributions, they're shut down.

Oh, yeah, and even characters like Jackrum act very British at times. The Jolly Sailor tobacco, for instance, is apparently identical to the stuff down on the plains.

In fairness, upper class society in Germany and Central Europe could get pretty British by the end of the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria's kids weren't the only Brits who were marrying abroad back then and the ubiquity of the British empire meant that even though local kingdoms tried to keep some amount of cultural "purity" by forcing new spouses to convert religion and what have you... a lot of people still drank tea and spoke German if not English at the end of the day. Even Ferdinand the First of Bulgaria was only a few short skips away from the British royal family on a family tree and was a member of the British Ornithologists Union.

I suppose the Discworld equivalent would be the Ankh-Morpork Empire, which we know is still a fairly devastating economic force, spreading cultural hegemony through trade routes and diplomatic ties. As a previous book puts it, all rich people go to school with each other at a certain point.