Smith-Rhodes family

The Smith-Rhodes family is one of the dominant Names in White Howondaland. Its members are generally influential, rich and powerful and have wielded great power and influence in Howondaland since before independence from Ankh-Morpork.  The greatest Smith-Rhodes, Sir Cecil Smith-Rhodes, led a small private army to victory in a war with the Matabele tribes, seizing what is now the most Hubwards province of the Union, named, with superb modesty, Smith-Rhodesia. 
The family is predominantly of Morporkian descent, but Sir Cecil's eldest son married into the Boor family of van der Kaobejtje, founding a Kerrigian-speaking offshoot on which the eldest daughter is always Johanna Smith-Rhodes, in hororium of Johanna van der K.  This offshoot family, more Boor than Morporkian, is honoured as part of the family, but an undercurrent of "embarrassing relatives" applies. Certainly, no Vondalaans-speaking Smith-Rhodes could hope to end up as much more than a local town councillor, although Andreas "Barbarossa" Smith-Rhodes was mayor of the city of Piemberg for twelve years, resigning the position because politics got in the way of good honest farming.  He has three daughters, two (Johanna and Mariella) at the Assassins' Guild School in Ankh-Morpork and the third, Agnetha after her mother, married with four children and a fifth on the way. Two sons, Andreas and Danie, continue the family farm tradition.
Agnetha Maaiandje's oldest daughter, the oldest of the new generation of the family, was distinguished with the name of Johanna Smith-Rhodes-Maaiandje. Partly in honour of her older aunt, but mainly because the oldest daughter in every new generation always becomes Johanna Smith-Rhodes. She is seen in the Discworld Tarot short story The King of Swords getting ready for the start of seven long years at the Assassins' Guild School, paid for by her Uncle Charles, who has seen potential in her. 
The current undisputed clan chief is Charles Smith-Rhodes, Minister of the Interior and a very powerful politician. Although, when it comes to Piemberg and its environs, he is always keen to consult Barbarossa first for his opinion.
Category:Howondalandian characters