The current Low King of the dwarfs, Rhys Rhysson is from a small coal-mining clan in Llamedos, who won his election because his clan was too unimportant for the others to hate, see. The more obvious candidates ruled each other out as so many would have voted against them.

Described as short even for a dwarf, he commands the respect of Sam Vimes (whose respect is legendarily in short supply) for being a hard-working king who cares deeply enough about his people to avoid wars even though he thought the cost would be that of his own kingship.

Softly spoken, he nevertheless acts out immense shifts in dwarven thinking. With two handshakes (in The Fifth Elephant) he declared dwarven femininity to have the royal seal of approval, and trolls to be possible friends. Both of these things should naturally have destroyed the unity of all dwarfs as gender is unspeakable - and certainly unshowable! - and trolls are enemies immemorial. "Troll" bloody well EQUALS "enemy", irrefutably Q E bleeding D! But not now.