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Ambrose Monk is the older brother of Adrian Monk.

Personality[]

Ambrose, like his brother Adrian, has severe OCD, which gives him a heightened attention to detail, deduction, and memory. Unfortunately, he suffers from a severe form of agoraphobia. As of 2003, he had not left the home he grew up in since 1971. Ambrose is highly intelligent and speaks multiple languages, using his literacy to write multi-lingual instruction manuals from the comfort of his home.

Ambrose keeps all incoming mail addressed to their father, who left them when they were young, and he also keeps copies of the daily newspaper. He expects their father to return at any time and want to see these items. Ambrose also keeps his father's study as it appeared on the day the father left the family.

Ambrose also has a very hot temper, which comes out when he gets angry with his brother Adrian. Ambrose is not angry with his father like Adrian is, possibly because Ambrose blamed himself for Jack leaving. He also blamed himself for the death of Adrian's wife, which led to Ambrose not talking to Adrian for seven years. Ambrose is shown to have a crush on Natalie, asking her out on a date when he met her.

Trivia[]

  • Ambrose Monk is apparently a homage to Mycroft Holmes, the older brother of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft was also written as being more intelligent and better at deduction than his younger brother, but lacked any ambition or energy to follow through with his theories, thus rendering him useless as a "true" detective.
  • While only speculation, it is possible that Ambrose cared for the boys' mother at home, as Adrian comments more than once she was sick for a very long time but did not pass away until 1994.
  • Ambrose seemed to not like Christmas much, as he once attempted to lock himself in the basement during the Christmas season in 1964.[1]
  • Ambrose is highly literate, and, according to Adrian, speaks seven languages. ("Mr. Monk and the Three Pies").
    • Which seven languages Ambrose speaks are never clearly specified. Obviously, he is a native speaker of English, but he is also shown to be fluent in German ("Mr. Monk and the Three Pies"), French ("Mr. Monk Goes Home Again") and possibly Sanskrit. Ambrose also claims to be learning Mandarin Chinese ("Mr. Monk and the Three Pies"), which would put it at "seven and a half". It is unclear if Ambrose is fluent in Mandarin by the end of the series. According to the non-canon novel Mr. Monk in Outer Space, Ambrose can speak Pig Latin and a fictional language called Dratch from a television show called Beyond Earth. However, it is unclear if these are included in the seven given that they are fictional languages or whether the book even applies to the show's canon at all.

References[]

  1. Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa
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