History Literature / Maskerade

** The troll name for Granny Weatherwax ("She Who Must Be Avoided") is a reference to the [=~H. Rider Haggard~=] novel ''She'' and the eponymous character "She Who Must Be Obeyed".

* PerditaXDream: The former TropeNamer.

* XtremeKoolLetterz: Apparently the X in PerditaXDream stands for "Someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial".

* RetCon: There's a one-shot one of Granny and Salzella both saying that iron cannot be magicked. This contradicts several earlier books and is never mentioned again. (''Oct''iron is magic-resistant, but not regular iron).
** Not really, since it was mentioned in few previous books (at least in ''Wyrd Sisters'') that witch magic does not work on iron.
** [[TheFairFolk Fae/Fairy]] magic too.

Thanks to the events of ''Discworld/LordsAndLadies'', Magrat has left the coven to become Queen of Lancre, with the result that it's unbalanced and Nanny Ogg fears that Granny Weatherwax, deprived of challenges, will eventually turn to the dark out of sheer boredom. She decides they need a third member, but of the local girls only Agnes Nitt shows any promise and she's gone off to make her fortune at the Opera House in Ankh-Morpork. Fortunately, events provide a reason for Granny and Nanny to follow her - Nanny's suggestive cookery book ''The Joye of Snackes'' has proved a smash hit, but the publishers have failed to send her any royalties, and Granny is concerned that her vague nom de plume "A Lancre Witch" might give people the wrong idea. They travel to Ankh-Morpork, enroute meeting Brindisian tenor Enrico Basilica - who turns out to be [[{{Fauxreigner}} a Morporkian named Henry Slugg]] who took an exotic foreign name to be taken seriously, but is now sick of being treated with his hated "native" cuisine wherever he goes.

Agnes, meanwhile, has become a member of the opera's choir under the name [[PerditaXDream Perdita]], and meets her neighbour Christine - blonde and pretty (while Agnes is on the large side) but dim, frivolous and incapable of singing. They exchange rooms when Christine's mirror starts whispering to her - Agnes leads the mysterious voice along, pretending to be her, and it tutors her in singing. They both suspect the voice to be the Opera Ghost, a mystical protector of the Opera House for whom Box Eight is always left free on an opening night. However, recently the Ghost has turned malevolent and begun murdering people in the Opera House, while new owner Mr Bucket gets repeated notes from him, some of which are perfectly lucid and wishing him well and others proclaiming his imminent death with five exclamation marks. His lieutenant Salzella explains how bizarrely opera tends to work, as the Lancrastian visitors also learn.

Granny squeezes three thousand dollars' worth of royalties out of Nanny's publisher. They try and fail to recruit Agnes, only to become involved in the Ghost-related murder mysteries. Granny poses as an aristocrat, spending Nanny's money (to be fair, they did it that way because Granny can pass for it, while Nanny admits to being 'common as muck'), in order to buy Box Eight and force the Ghost to appear. Agnes suspects drippy, pathetic handyman Walter Plinge of being the Ghost's alter ego, but then sees him on stage at the same time as the Ghost is spotted and is back to square one. At the same time organist André turns out to be a secret policeman and thinks he has identified Salzella as the Ghost, but again saw him on stage at the same time as the Ghost. It takes Granny to point out the absurdity of their reasoning - if the only way they recognise the Ghost is by the fact that he's dressed in black and wearing a mask, how do they know there's only one Ghost?

Indeed it transpires that Walter was the original benevolent Ghost and Salzella stole the identity to redirect attention from him killing people who trespassed upon the stash of money he skimmed from the Opera House. However, Salzella is also insane, and while claiming to hate the opera is also incapable of leaving it. Walter kills him in an epic sword duel, despite only poking his sword under his arm, and Salzella has an appropriately overly long death soliloquy.

At the end, Agnes still refuses to come with Granny and Nanny out of principle, but soon turns up not long afterwards, and the coven is reformed.

** Although there is also the implication that he was simply scared of her. [[spoiler: She admits that, if she had lost, the first thing she would have done would be to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulu break his arm]].]]

* ShoutOut: "Walter Plinge" is a real-life pseudonym used by actors who don't want to be associated with early minor parts (similar to "A.N. Other") and the character's description clearly evokes Frank Spencer from ''Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'' (Michael Crawford, the first actor who played the musical version's Phantom, was once best known for that role).

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* MamasBoy: Walter Plinge.

* BilingualBonus: The swan's line from ''Lohenshaak'''s "Pedlar's Song" translates as "I'm cutting my own throat", which is both a ContinuityNod and an accurate description of what the swan does by singing it.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Nanny Ogg, "a mind like a buzzsaw behind a face like an eldery apple".
** Also, sharp remarks from her are described like 'being bitten by a friendly dog'.

* StealthPun: When Agnes finishes one last yell, going from one side of the audible spectrum to the other, Nanny Ogg remarks "''Now'' it's over". [[DOntExplainTHeJoke Agnes is very large, and they're in an opera.]]

** Or to an incident from ''Mort'' that involved a similar witch-brewed aphrodesiac, a wizard, and a half-frozen horse trough.

* Flynning: Shown and mentioned between the two ghosts, until it becomes deadly real.