Boronymous Jubbly

Tooth Faerys The Drs Downer

Boronymous Jubbly

Name: Boronymous de Piffle Jubbly

Species: Mugwump

Age: 56

Job: Prime minister / philanderer / living example of everything that's wrong with Pundlian politics

Appears In: Game of Plagues

Boronymous Jubbly endeavouring to look prime ministerial

Boronymous Jubbly belongs to a species of jellyfish people known as 'mugwumps'. Mugwumps lack backbone - something I say quite literally as they have bladders in lieu of spines. Despite this lack of backbone, many mugwumps have excelled in leadership positions. Boronymous, notably, isn't one of them.

As a politician, Boronymous presented himself as a punchline and the media kept telling the joke. This embedded him in the public consciousness - something which aided in his efforts to become the Mayor of Leaden. In that position he instigated a series of mega-blunders, including:

The Jubbly-Deckers: In his first year he awarded a contract to one of his mates to update the city's octuple-decker coaches. The new vehicles had several problems. Most notably, the 'octuple-deckers' only had seven levels (allegedly to keep costs down but really because the designer couldn't count). On top of that, they forgot to add opening windows. This led to more peaceful journeys, if only because the passengers got sweltered to death.The Battle Bridge: Across the Tumultiverse, the most popular leisure activity is questing. Adventurers engage in the hobby by travelling out to the wild-realms or visiting public dungeons. Boronymous decided to combine the two by building a terrain-covered bridge and filling it with monsters. Things quickly devolved into chaos when the monsters escaped over the edge and swam off to cause mayhem.The Boronymous Bikes: Having publicly available penny farthings around the city was a good idea - a very good idea - it just wasn't his. They'd already begun implementing the plan when he took charge - Boronymous simply changed the name and replaced each farthing's bell with novelty horns shaped like bosoms.

Boronymous in patriotic red, blue, and white colours

While Boronymous's spell as Mayor certainly raised his profile, it also shone an unflattering light on his competence, work ethic, and brain girth. This resulted in a few years of floundering before he eventually latched on to the campaign to leave the Tumultian Union. While this should have made for a dull question about trade arrangements, the campaign turned it into a full-on culture war. Swine that he is, Boronymous fell on the side that wanted culture stopping at all costs.

You could consider Boronymous as something of an experiment - the result of what happens when you take a half-baked potato, baste it in a marinade of privilege and elitism, and then leave it to cook under the tepid heat of a banal media.

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Creation Notes

Obviously, I based this character on the (inexplicably) current prime minister of the UK - Boris Johnson. In a vacuum Johnson is quite a funny character, and he's profited enormously from that view of him. To avoid churning out another 'bumbling-Boris' caricature with little in the way of actual satire, I endeavoured to focus on the cost of having someone like him in power. I also gave the character some markedly nasty edges.

You can't talk about Boris without bringing up the old debate:

"Is Boris actually thick or just pretending?"

While he quite obviously plays the fool, my guess is he's a moderately intelligent man of privilege who just doesn't see the point in thinking things through - largely because he's never experienced any genuine repercussions from the long string of calamities he's inflicted.

If he'd grown up in less fortunate circumstances, I'm sure he'd still have made for a grubby human being - just one who needed to engage his brain a little more often. Probably he'd have started off as a conman who went on to run his own cut-and-shut car garage with a sideline in hoodwinking widows.

The word 'mugwump' comes from Johnson himself - an insult he leveraged against then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. As no one knows what a 'mugwump' is, this book seemed like a perfect opportunity to answer that question. It also makes sense that Johnson would call it someone else, as 90% of right-wing debate can be boiled down to:

"I know you are, but what am I?"