Gillian Lansbury

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In Canon

Gillian does not exist as a canonical character.

In the Pessimal Discworld

Gillian Lansbury is an alumna of the Quirm Academy For Young Ladies and a  graduate of the Royal Art College of Ankh-Morpork.  Unlike her friend and contemporary Daniellerina Pouter, she was wildly unsuccesful as a commercial art proposition - hardly anybody wants a Lansbury watercolour portrait or landscape. therefore she took a position in Kompletkunst, Überwald , at the G. Gefalligheit Chalet School For Young Ladies of Breeding. 

She found her time here to be deathly dull and boring, as well as badly paid. However, an incident where one of her more hard-to-love pupils poisoned herself (due to sucking the bristles of her brush back to a point) acted as an epiphany to miss Lansbury, who was getting tired of being poor, underpaid and overworked. 

Gillian applied creative thought to the fact that Agatean White depends for its vivid hue on lead salts. Similarly, Ubu Yellow is based on arsenic salts. And the girl had sucked her brush....

Gillian now had a hobby. She read up on how the Old Masters had created their paints, about the often lethal pigments they had had to grind, and about the oils and solvents used to bind those pigments. Research into alchemical texts gave her a broad and deep understanding of paints and pigments, and her special paintbox expanded to encompass Cadmium Yellow, Cinnabar Red, Klatchian Inframarine, DEATH Black, Leprous Green, Cobalt Blue, and other interesting hues. 

Leaving the Chalet school, she set up as a private tutor, letting it be discreetly known she could do other things. The Watches of various countries began to note that the death rate in Miss Lansbury's classes was unuually high, for the sedate pursuit of not-very-good hobby art. So did the Guild of Assassins. 

On a visit to the city to see her old freind Danni Pouter, Gillian was courtesly escorted to Filigree Street, where her special paintbox was taken away vfor examination. Mr Mericet reported, excitedly, that every colour, even those hitherto considered harmless, had been reformulated as a deadly poison. 

"Such skill! Such....art!"  he enthused. "And if all else fails, you can even paint with them!"

Lord Downey smiled. And offered her the contract of Guild School Art Mistress. Consequent, of course, on her passing the Mature Students Course . 

Young and in her early twenties, Gillian passed with ease, learning a portfolio of useful Assassin skills on the way.  Guild students will see a Bohemian looking young woman with loose-tied blonde hair, unfeasibly large-lensed glasses, and a tendency to wear ankle chains. But as a group of Howondalandian were-leopards discovered, a hippie chick who is deadly in a fight. She had to ward off vampires at the Chalet School, after all. Were-creatures....

She teaches Art, Art Appreciation, and Art History, and is tipped to take over Raven House, after Miss Smith-Rhodes leaves the residential position to get married. 

She appears in these stories:

• The Discworld Tarot: Judgement
• Why And Were