Vimes is such an interesting character. He's a class conscious cop with a conscience who ends up running the city-state's entire police force after the rest of them are purged for corruption by the city's dictator, a liberal blanquist reformer who literally fought alongside Vimes in a popular revolution, who puts Vimes in charge because he trusts him to carry out an anti-racist, anti-corruption agenda with the cynicism and tact required to stop the uneasy peace between all the institutional powers in the city from imploding.

He's also a cynical asshole cop who tolerates ludicrous corruption from his longstanding lackeys and every view we see of him that's not from his own PoV or that of the handful of people who like and respect him paints him as a short tempered, bloodthirsty monster who's obsessively cruel and completely ruthless.