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The Other
The mysterious force of mysteriousness that almost conquered Europa before vanishing mysteriously. May be Agatha's mother.
Tropes associated with The Other:
- Ambiguously Human:
- Various flashbacks involving her show her inhabiting a large number of cyborg bodies, with some of her forms being mostly human-like while others are overtly mechanical in nature.
- In the novels' version of Lucrezia's first encounter with Zola, the copy in Agatha is incredibly blasé at the idea of killing herself to get rid of Agatha as so long as other copies of herself exist to continue her plan. The author notes that this behavior suggests that the original Lucrezia had either gone completely mad or was no longer human, or more likely both.
- Ambiguous Situation: It is left extremely ambiguous as to what, precisely, the Other is, what its relation is to Lucrezia Mongfish, and what its goals are.
- There are hints that the Other might actually be a time displaced version of clank-form Lucrezia, who would become known as the Muse of Time/Enigma, and it was that version of her that attacked Castle Heterodyne and most of what has happened is due to a stable time loop in action. The very first hint of Time Muse Lucrezia being the Other was during the flashback of the Geisterdamen before they did the brain uploading of Lucrezia on Agatha. The Geisterdamen claim that they got direct orders from their goddess, and one of them is shown being choked by the Muse of Time's black clawed hand.
- As to the Lucrezia situation, the Other identifies herself as Lucrezia, acts like her, talks like her, uses her inventions albeit massively improved upon... but that still leaves the fact that someone broke into her secret lab when the Castle was attacked, and something murdered all her guards and burned all her notes.
- Not helping is a line in the novels from the Other's P.O.V. suggesting whatever it is, it's not even human, since it remarks on the nature of the Girl Genius world like an outsider, rather than someone who lived there all her life.
- Eventually, it's revealed
beyond a doubt that Lucrezia is the Other, and almost certainly is the Muse of Time to boot. However, even then, there are many many questions left unanswered: what happened to Lucrezia, who Albia was actually rather fond of, to turn her into the "shattered" soul that tried to kill Albia and the other Queens? When exactly did Lucrezia become the Other, and most importantly was it before or after her marriage to Bill and alleged Heel–Face Turn? Why was she hunting the Queens in the first place? Why and how did Lucrezia become a cyborg, and eventually the Muse of Time? And how do the Geisters fit into place, seeing as they seemed to know her when she was still fully human, and after becoming the fully-robotic Muse of Time, but perhaps not in any of her many, many "techno-zombie" forms?
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Clank-Lucrezia uses the power of a second breakthrough to, among other things, make her body giant sized, and increasingly bigger as the fight goes on.
- Berserk Button:
- Calling it a fraud, as Zola discovers. When it happens, the Other threatens to turn her into an Empty Shell.
- Questioning her motivation makes her explode. When the Klaus overlay does it, she goes on a rant, and when Albia does it she rants at how the queen has no idea what she's been through.
- Big Bad: The most dangerous entity in the entire series. Even Klaus didn't beat it—it stopped fighting before he came back.
- Body Horror: The version of Lucrezia we see in Albia's flashback has clearly been through the proverbial wringer. She's got a lot of cybernetic enhancements, possibly including her legs. And that's just the stuff we get to see. A later glimpse shows it got mangled even further after that.
- Brain Uploading: The novels clarify that this is in a sense what the Summoning Engines do. They don't "summon" anything, they just create an identical copy of the Other inside the mind of whoever they're used on.
- Captured Super-Entity: One version of her was trapped and tamed by Zola, allowing her to become "the Queen of the Dawn" using Lucrezia's slaver wasps.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Seems to be completely incapable of working with anyone without turning on them. Her response to a genuine offer of assistance is to plan to vivisect the girl who offers (though the girl in question manages to outwit her quite thoroughly).
- Civilization Destroyer: The Other came very close to destroying all of Europa, and successfully destroyed the civilizations of most of the ancient immortal god queens with only two queens and their lands and people known to have survived, though Zeetha is from a people whose civilization survived the destruction of their immortal queen.
- Classic Villain: Lucrezia/The Other is practically selfish Pride given flesh, is constantly trying to decieve people, lacks any remorse, and seeks to dominate everyone. In terms of personality she's practically the opposite of Agatha — in fact when possessing our heroine, the reason people can tell is because "Agatha" is acting unlike herself in every way.
- Colony Drop: During the first go around, the Other's tactics went thus: Drop a lot of giant fiery rocks from orbit on the target and utterly destroy them, send Hive Engines in similar shells built to withstand the impact, then let them activate, leaving no chance to resist the Slaver Wasps. The tactic proved so devastating it took Barry Heterodyne three whole years to figure out what was going on, because the attacks were so violent they left no evidence to examine.
- Compelling Voice: Most of the Other's creations (such as the Geisterdamen and revenants) are built to be unable to disobey a command if it's made in Lucrezia's voice.
- Creative Sterility: Gil notes that the Other hasn't rolled out any new technology in its war with him. Later revelations outright state that harnessing the spark requires an organic body. It is very likely that the Lucrezia copy stuck in Anevka's clank body is the one at war with Gil, therefore limited in what it can do. In addition, the copy in Zola could be impacted by the fact that Zola isn't a Spark herself.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Apparently, the reason why she could never achieve the second breakthrough despite knowing how it worked: you need a fully organic mind and it didn't have that until it possessed Agatha.
- Demonic Possession: Through the power of Brain Uploading, the Other is able to possess people with a copy of her personality.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: The Other just appeared out of nowhere one day, blew up Castle Heterodyne, and ran off into the night. Over the next three years, it wiped out damn near all the Great Houses with ruthless efficiency, with no warning, offer, threats or attempt at parley.
- Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Lu/Agatha had managed to break past Agatha's locket and take over her body in England, using this as a chance to sabatoge the exorcism machine. The only reason this plan didn't work is because she decided to brag about it to Agatha's friends while she was doing it. Had Lucrezia not been such a tremendous show-off, she might have actually won.
- Dirty Old Woman: She flirted with Tarvek, Lars and Martellus in Agatha's body despite being technically old enough to be their mother and potentially old enough to be their ancestor if one factors the time travel aspects she allegedly has. In the novels, which show off her P.O.V., she's definitely planning on going a little further than just flirting.
- Driving Question: The Other's identity, motivations and objectives are arguably the biggest mysteries in the story.
- Enemy Within: To Agatha herself after the incident at Sturmhalten.
- Enlightened Antagonist: When the copy of her possessing Agatha achieves second breakthrough and possibly more, Tarvek desperately hopes that achieving enlightenment will cause her to realize that her evil schemes will not make her happy. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
- Enlightenment Superpowers:
- The copy of her possessing Agatha manages to grow her spark into a flame, achieving second breakthrough and more. Unlike the previous people to achieve it, she manages to do so without even requiring an external dimensional energy source.
- The copy of her in the Anevka clank also manages to achieve second breakthrough, despite using a non-sparky mechanical brain, somehow mentally controlling the surrounding dimensional energy.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Even when she was trying to be "good", she showed a lack of comprehension, simply assuming there must be something to that strategy, because the heroic Heterodyne Brothers always won. The notion that parents must care for and look after their children is completely alien to Lucrezia. Lucrezia-In-Agatha proposes Klaus-In-Gil to sacrifice their children for the sake of getting back together, and is legitimately shocked by his explosion of fury. Much later, another Lucrezia's copy mocks Albia for putting herself in danger to save her daughter Neena.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Inverted. The Sealed Evil in a Can finds out that its unsealer is not a toy.
- The Evils of Free Will: She appears to have this mindset as the motivation for enslavement.
- Familial Body Snatcher: The only successful instances of Brain Uploading (bar the Anevka Clank) have been in Lucrezia's blood relatives, with it hinted there were many, many failures before the Geisterdamen found Agatha. The novels confirm the one in Aaronev's possession was both broken and designed only to work on Agatha.
- Fatal Flaw: Ego. Lucrezia's got an inflated sense of self even by spark standards that make it far easier to manipulate someone as intelligent as her than it really should be. She was willing to risk outing herself in her disguise as the princess when her improvements to the healing engine hooked up to Klaus were being attributed to Doctor Sun, and her ego wouldn't let anyone else claim credit for her work even when it was a bad idea to do so.
- Feet of Clay: There seems to be a faction of Geisterdamen (allied with a faction of the Knights of Jove) led by a "Loremistress Milvistle" who see The Other as a fraud.
- Fighting from the Inside: Even sealed away by Agatha's locket, the Other still pushes away at her mind. Toward the end, she started getting so strong even the locket was no longer effectual.
- The Fog of Ages: Several thousand years means the Other has forgotten some of the simple joys of life, like music or chocolate.
- Freak Out: A momentary response to realizing she forgot how much she loved chocolate as a human.
- Godhood Seeker: Her ultimate end goal is to ascend to godhood and make everyone worship her (also, presumably, "show them all". And have all the chocolate.)
- Grand Theft Me: Does this at least to Agatha. Might have done this to Lucrezia. Or she did it to it. Really unclear.
- The Heavy: Of Volumes 2-7 (20) through 2-10 (23). Despite being the Non-Action Big Bad of much of the comic, the England and Rat Island arcs have her — specifically her Clank/Anevka form — play a more direct antagonistic role as the heroes try to take back Prendee's Lantern from her.
- Hey, You!: Instances of her referring to Agatha by her name can be counted on one hand. Even when pleading for her to spare her, Lucrezia only calls her "daughter".
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Offers to "ride along" in Zola's head so she can leave Agatha to die, especially since Agatha's brooch supresses her. Turns out, Zola can control and supress her even without external mechanisms which means that unless Zola is unconscious, Lucretia can't do anything with that body while Zola gains all her knowledge.
- Horrifying the Horror: Lucrezia / the Other regards the possibility of Barry Heterodyne's return with trepidation (meaning fear). Never mind that he hasn't been seen in over a decade. The very idea of Tempting Fate and summoning him causes the Other to momentarily panic.
- I Gave My Word: The novels reveal the reason Slaver Wasps didn't affect Sparks the first time around was deliberate. The Other made an agreement with the Knights of Jove. Of course, in the Other's absence, other Sparks decided to tinker with the schematics...
- I Shall Taunt You: She tries to provoke Queen Albia into killing her current host before she can question her by taunting the queen about what she did to her sister queens. Queen Albia admits that it almost worked.
- It's All About Me: As might be expected of a narcisstic sociopath. Several millennia has done nothing to blunt this. In fact, it's exacerbated it, with the Other now convinced she's been chosen by destiny to rule the world.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: On meeting Zeetha, the Other declares she knows better than to fight her.
- Meaningful Name: After a while, all the usual suspects for who could be destroying Europe were dead by its hand, meaning that all the devastation was caused by some other party.
- Me's a Crowd: So far the Other has wound up in Agatha, a Clank designed to look like Anevka Sturmovarus, and Zola, with varying degrees of control over each. In the novels, Vrin mentions she had other bodies she visited the Geisterdamen in.
- Mood Whiplash: When the Other first makes an appearance she's all smiles and motherly comfort for her faithful Geisterdamen, who are weeping with joy at her return — her mood changes swiftly once the Other realises things have gone to hell in her absence.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Most Sparks in this series are dangerous fighters. Lucrezia isn't, and when she's forced into combat, she's quickly overpowered (especially given that her opponents usually are master fighters, such as Tarvek and Zola). Although we've now seen an older time-traveling(?) cyborg version of her gleefully blasting Albia's fellow god-queens and the version of her in Agatha is a master swordswoman.
- Outside-Context Problem: Was this even to the God-Queens. The Other was somehow able to subvert their network of magic mirrors, wielded weapons utterly beyond even their comprehension, and effortlessly countered their own attacks.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: When it even bothers trying to be Agatha, the Other doesn't really put a lot of effort into it. Her nadir in this department comes when trying to convince Tarvek to assist her during a three-way fight with Zola. Which is a bit odd, since the Lucrezia who Klaus knew was an excellent actress.The Other: I AM THE AGATHA GIRL!
Tarvek: Yes, and I'M the Queen of Skral! - Psychopathic Manchild: Lucrezia was a barely-restrained one. The Other has had hundreds, if not thousands of years and has not gone through a single moment of emotional growth, still acting like a spoiled teenager on a rampage.
- Religion of Evil: Is the goddess of one.
- Satanic Archetype: She's pretty much a demon in all but name at this point (as Albia points out), much with all her manipulating people and possessing bodies. She's even the force behind false idolatry (as Christians traditionally beleived demons were); Loremistress Milvistle too considered her "some kind of Devil". Besides, the role of the Other itself is more or less the role of an ultimate yet unseen enemy (much like the Devil).
- Science-Related Memetic Disorder: As with all Sparks.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Beacon Engine, Van Rijin's Hermitorium.
- Showing Off the New Body: Close to a nanosecond after seeing a mirror, Lucrezia-in-Agatha takes off her dress and checks herself out. It even provides the page pic. The novelizations take it a step further and have Lucrezia nude in this scene.
- Smug Super: The Other, or Lucrezia, is very confident in itself / herself and its abilities. Klaus manages to figure out who they are when they're impersonating Agatha because only Lucrezia gloats like that.
- Spikes of Villainy: On her return, the Clank Lucrezia has modified her body so it can suddenly be covered in lots of spikes, should anyone get too close.
- Taking You with Me: Her clank body is designed with a self-destruct system. Albia figures this is just another expression of Lucrezia's need to get the last word in. If she can't win, then she'll make damn sure whoever takes her down doesn't get to either.
- Terms of Endangerment: Likes to refer to people as "dear" or "darling" even as she's trying to kill them. It helps to show when she's in the driver's seat and not Agatha, who never uses either word.
- Transformation of the Possessed: One of the first things she does with her clank body on attaining second breakthrough? Turn it into a mechanical version of her flesh-and-blood body.
- Trapped in the Host: Happened to her twice. First time, with Agatha, she got trapped by Agatha's locket and remained trapped for most of the comic. Second time, she tried uploading herself to Zola, who had her family prepare for this and Zola was able to get all Lucrezia's memories uploaded to her instead.
- The Virus: Uses Slaver Wasps for mind control. As of the Rat Island arc, she's developed the ability to copy herself into others by touch.
- Time Abyss: As of 2021 we finally get firsthand confirmation that the entity brain-downloaded by the summoning engines into various bodies is really Lucrezia who has gone through hundreds if not thousand years. She speaks of five hundred years as if it was nothing, but she hints at other entities who would further scoff at that.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Klaus notes that the Other's work superficially resembles Lucrezia's designs, but improved beyond anything he ever saw.
- The first time Lucrezia fights Zeetha and Violetta, she has no skill in combat and is only able to keep up with them due to the post revival rush making her Unskilled, but Strong. By next time they fight, her combat skill has surpassed Violetta's.
- Villains Want Mercy: When the version of her in Agatha's head is finally being driven out, she begs Agatha to let her stay, saying there's still stuff she can teach her, and even calling her 'daughter' in an extremely rare moment. Agatha, naturally, is having none of it.
- Virtual Ghost: An explanation of her possessing is that what is overlayed over the victim is an artificial copy of her personality.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Clank Lucrezia wasn't seen from Sturmhalten until the Londinium arc: She escaped the town and was keeping low key, amassing forces. Now she's back, trying to strike Albia, and more recently she has been attempting reactivating one of the mirrors the Queens used, with some success.
- Wicked Wasps: The Slaver Wasps are its most ubiquitous servants, make up the bulk of its armies, and are the main threat associated with it in-universe.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- The Other is (apparently) responsible for the attack on Castle Heterodyne that killed Lucrezia's first child. And then there are all those missing Spark girls...
- It's very strongly implied that The Other deliberately conceived Agatha as an escape clause in case anything happened to Lucrezia, and that Agatha was only saved by some effort on the part of Barry.
Lucrezia Mongfish
Lucrezia Mongfish
Lucrezia Mongfish is from a long line of cheerily sociopathic Sparks, known specifically for their skill in biology, and is Agatha's mother. She was a long-time antagonist of the Heterodyne Boys before giving up her father's work and marrying Bill. She was apparently kidnapped when the Other attacked Castle Heterodyne and killed her infant son (signaling the start of the attacks), but returned twenty years later when her mind was downloaded into Agatha's brain. She seems to be the Other (an interpretation Klaus agrees with), but the situation remains unclear.
Lucrezia Mongfish specific:
- Abusive Parents: She seemingly conceived Agatha specifically to use her as a spare body, as the Summoning Engine was specifically designed to place a copy of Lucrezia's mind within Agatha. Likewise, none of the Lucrezia copies have ever acknowledged Agatha as their daughter and see her as nothing more than a pawn or a hindrance.
- And I Must Scream: If she really was the Muse of Time like Albia claims, then she was captured and trapped alone in Van Rijn's secret lab for over 200 years. This would explain her various rants about suffering alone for a long time without anyone rescuing her and the Other's apparent hatred of Sparks.
- Ax-Crazy: The version of her we see in a Albia-centered flashback is in the process of a gleeful murderous rampage.
- Bad Boss:
- She regularly treated the Geisterdamen, who viewed her as a goddess, poorly when they failed her. After Barry rescued Agatha from them, she went on a murder spree where she killed off a sizable portion of the Geisterdamen population and forced thousands of them into exile into Europa to carry out her plans. Similarly, when Lady Vrin, her most staunch supporter, became a potential hindrance to her schemes, she ordered her to die without hesitation, causing her to asphyxiate.
- While as during her marriage with Bill, she regularly abused the Jägers and treated them like they were pets. The Jägers were forced to put up with it for the sake of their love stricken master.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Mongfishes really didn't get along. So far Lucrezia (or the Other) has met her niece and her nephew, and tried to kill both of them simply for being the children of her sisters. Though, that was because one of them, Serpentia (Theo's mother), left her for dead in an exploding lab... so Lucrezia says, several decades after the fact.
- Body Snatcher: Her area of expertise. She mastered the art of swapping people's minds and her greatest accomplishment was discovering how to switch organic minds with the artificial programming of clanks. After becoming the Other, she put these skills to use for herself, making a machine that forces her mind into others earning her the moniker "thief of souls" from Madame Von Pinn/Otilia.
- Control Freak:
- Multiple people have stated that she loved to control people and manipulate them into doing her bidding. Her Slaver Wasps were created specifically so that no one infected by them could disobey orders given by her voice.
- After marrying Bill, she couldn't stand the idea of being constantly watched by Castle Heterodyne, so she moved her lab to the Castle's lowest levels and successfully transplanted the area's subsystem into the Muse of Protection, imprisoning it in her lab. This meant the Castle couldn't observe her actions in her lab and she could feel like she had obtained some measure of control over the construct.
- Chronic Villainy: Another theory about how/why she became the Other. She claimed to be pulling a Heel–Face Turn in marrying Bill, but just a few years later, well... the Castle was destroyed, she disappeared, and the Other started ravaging Europa.
- Damsel in Distress: Claims to have been this when "all went wrong" and that no one, not her husband or father or Klaus, came to save her, and indicates this has something to do with why she's gone so far off the deep end. However, her words also imply that whatever happened to her was the result of her own actions and, depending on how you interpret them, started with her trying to Take Over the World.
- Dating Catwoman: Why someone as incorruptibly good as Bill Heterodyne would be compelled to marry someone as insidious as Lucrezia Mongfish can only be attributed to this trope. She also had a former attraction to Klaus that she tries to play on in the present day.
- Demonic Possession: Yet another theory regarding her relationship with the Other. Getting the feeling there are a lot of theories?
- Dirty Coward: According to Von Pinn, Lucrezia always was a "coward at heart."
- Draco in Leather Pants: In-universe, with the Heterodyne Boys plays and their depiction of Lucrezia. She's a vain, petty, melodramatic cowardly, maniacal villain... and utterly adored by the audiences. Right up until the third act when she invariably falls in love with Bill, at which point they lose interest in her. Funnily enough, her outfit in the notoriously saucy "Socket Wench of Prague" is noted to be leather...
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The novels imply that, as evil as she is, she still loves Bill. When she mentions Bill to Zola, she actually starts to cry.
- Even Bad Women Love Their Mamas: Strangely, even after turning good, Lucrezia still seems to be fond of her father. Or least thinks more favourably about him than she does her sisters.
- Evil Matriarch: Safe to say, planning to have your daughter Raised as a Host is pretty horrible parenting, as is repeatedly trying to kill said daughter for not wanting to host your mind.
- Face–Heel Turn: Lucrezia eventually claims to 'Klaus' that hers was a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal (or at least she perceives it as one). Note the wording of her ranting. There's two distinct ways it can be interpreted — the first being the obvious one that her evil plan as the Other went horribly wrong, leaving her 'stranded' somehow, or her definition of "winning" was finally living a happy family life with Bill, only to get kidnapped, her son murdered, and forced into being the Other. Which is the case is left unclear.
- First-Name Basis: Almost everyone refers to her as "the Lady Lucrezia" when they're being formal. Justified as she dropped her maiden name "Mongfish," and calling her by her married name as "Lady Heterodyne" might cause confusion with her daughter.
- Giggling Villain: Befitting someone with her childish personality, she's mentioned as giggling a lot.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: And that's her nephew.
- Hate Sink: Lucrezia has yet to be presented with any kind of positive or endearing traits. So far, she's just a cruel, abusive, manipulative monster.
- Heel–Face Turn: Before the series started, she tried to turn good when she agreed to marry Bill Heterodyne, and even drugged Klaus and sent him away so he wouldn't be a distraction. This is one of the most confusing parts of her character, since if she really never had any interest in redemption, she would have just killed Klaus.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: The Heterodyne stories portray her as the cranky but kind daughter of a comically evil villain. Even before becoming the Other, there's no hint that Lucrezia was anything other than a nasty piece of work, even after marrying Bill and supposedly turning over a new leaf.
- Informed Ability:
- In-universe. Klaus often described Lucrezia as incredibly strong and brilliant as a Spark, which confuses Gil since during his new war against her he's seen her try nothing new of her own. All of the Other-tech is the same as what the Heterodynes fought or made by one of her followers. This turns out to be because he's actually fighting Zola, who has access to all of Lucrezia's old knowledge thanks to hijacking one of her copies but is not herself a Spark.
- Similarly, Klaus believes her to be devious, cunning, and an excellent faker. Based on what we've seen of her/the Other in the comic, the former two are not debatable, the latter most certainly is.
- It's All About Me: She's trapped in this mindset. Decades after she drugged Klaus and exiled him, damaged Castle Heterodyne and possibly murdered her own son, killed countless Sparks and others across Europa, not to mention mind-controlling any survivors, she returns to steal her daughter's body... and then has the gall to claim she's the injured party, since she didn't win and no one came to rescue her from her own mistakes.
- Jerkass: The Jägers didn't like her because she treated them, and everyone else, like property. Given some of the characters they served through the centuries, that's saying a lot.
- Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: When Agatha and Carson discuss the death of Lucrezia's first son when the Other attacked Castle Heterodyne, Agatha initially disbelieves that Lucrezia would cause her own son's death.Agatha: But that makes no sense! Not if the Other was—
No. - Last Girl Wins: Technically. She was definitely the woman Bill married, after several other romances. It just didn't last too long.
- Love Redeems: She tried to invoke this by marrying Bill Heterodyne. It apparently didn't work so well, since she (maybe) became the Other and started one of the most destructive wars in recent history.
- Mad Scientist: Well, duh, she's a Spark, but Lucrezia is more of a "classic" Mad Scientist in contrast with the heroic Sparks, who are more Reluctant Mad Scientists. The prologue to Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg has her work with Brain Uploading much to the chargin of her test subjects, Otilia and Castle Heterodyne.Otilia/Von Pinn: "That which you have done here is blasphemy!"
Lucrezia: "Oh, I know! It's so exiting! I'm positively giddy!" - Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Who is herself a Mad Scientist. Who has a beautiful daughter. Who is a Mad Scientist. Oy.
- Master Actress:
- Klaus says she is, but this comes off as an Informed Ability since she likes to gloat and is so different from the person she's impersonating. Although maybe if she knew anything at all about the girl she is pretending to be, she'd do better. And, as already noted, it's not at all certain that the Lucrezia that Klaus knew is the same one now attempting the impersonation.
- The version of her possessing the former body of Anevka, on the other hand, is much more successful at pretending to be a sad, worried princess and conning people into underestimating her in her few scenes, allowing her to scene with the version inside of Zola while Zola is unconscious and sneak in to knock out Klaus.
- Missing Mom: And Agatha would have been much better off if she had stayed missing.Lucrezia: Daughter! Wait! Let me STAY! I can TEACH YOU!
Agatha: You've taught me PLENTY, mother — AND I'M NOT VERY HAPPY ABOUT THAT! - Mysterious Past: Even without the mystery of what happened that night in the lab, she clearly knew about Skifander, since it's where she dumped Klaus, and was interacting with the Geisterdamen for years before she married Bill, via the same sort of gate found in the Red Cathedral...
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Replace her last name with Borgia, and you very much have a real-world counterpart. Yikes.
- Never Found the Body: Lucrezia went missing before the Other attacked the Heterodynes. While her mind might have come back, her body sure hasn't.
- Noblewoman's Laugh: One of her somewhat-hammy moments.
- Offing the Offspring:
- Her first child with Bill, Klaus Barry, was killed in the attack on Castle Heterodyne, and it's strongly implied that this was deliberate on her part. Even Agatha, having already seen how evil she can be, had some trouble with that idea. It is also of note that in all the time she's been around, never once has Lucrezia or the Other even mentioned her son in any capacity.
- Later, when she discusses plans with Zola, she openly states that she considers Agatha, her own daughter, a liability, as her ability to control her own brain is gradually winning out over Lucrezia's, to the point where Agatha is even pulling things out of Lucrezia's mind. Lucrezia originally planned to kill Agatha and ride along with Zola instead, but that turned out not to be practical.
- Paper Tiger: Lucrezia is a sadist who loves to torment and dominate everyone around her, but she's also a coward at heart with a low tolerance for pain.
- Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: To Klaus. A ZigZagged case in that Lucrezia was the one who dumped Klaus and not vice versa. Though she does seem to want to get back together with him, on the condition that the Baron is infected with one of her slaver wasps.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: Even by the already low standards of most Sparks, a lot of Lucrezia's actions suggest an amazingly childish personality, even though she's a grown woman.EEEEEEE! We're going to win! (Vol. 6 p. 80)
- Really Gets Around: If the way everyone talks about her (when not in the context of the Other) is anything to go by. We know she had a fling with Klaus before marrying William, and according to Violetta she was "hot stuff" with the Knights of Jove.
- Terms of Endangerment: She does this to a lot of people, but does it to Klaus especially often.
- Tsundere: Kind of.
- Underestimating Badassery: She's only really worried about the Heterodynes, the Wulfenbachs, and Albia, since they're the only ones strong enough to oppose her. Everyone else is just a distraction. She really should have been paying more attention to Tarvek, who put a Kill Switch in the clank that a copy of her was hiding in, and Martellus, who engineered a biological Restraining Bolt in Agatha's body that Lucrezia forgot about. Failing to notice these ultimately gets her exorcised after her second breakthrough in Albia.
- The Vamp: She flirts more than fights, as Zola says.
- Villainesses Want Heroes: Certainly one of the reasons she married Bill.Lucrezia: Besides, they always win. There must be something to their philosophy.
- Villainous Breakdown: According to Queen Albia, she is used to believing that she cannot be stopped, so a big enough setback is liable to shake her up.
- Voices Are Not Mental: Implied (as comics and novels can't fully show sound). Lucrezia made a point of having a daughter to pull Grand Theft Me on so that her new body would have her Compelling Voice to use on her servants.
- Weak, but Skilled: Lucrezia is a master swordswoman, but the copies in Agatha and Anevka's robot body are unable to use those skills to the fullest as Agatha is barely trained as a fighter and Anevka's body is still subject to Tarvek's commands.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It hasn't been revealed what happened to Lucrezia, the real Lucrezia, after she disappeared during the Other War. All three versions we have tabs on in the present, posessing Zola, Agatha, and Anevka's robotic body, are copies of her.
Geisterdamen
Geisters on march under Sturmhalten.
Mysterious pale ladies from Places Unknown, who ride giant spiders and serve the Other.
- Accidental Murder: On one hand, they didn't intend for all those girls they plugged into the Summoning Engine to die. On the other hand, they didn't seem all too sad about it.
- All There in the Manual: In the second novel, Vrin's monologue gives a few more details as to how they operate. More details are also given about them in Othar's Twitter-based adventures.
- Amazon Brigade: So far, there's no indication that male Geisters exist, and they are rightfully feared as Lucrezia's elite troops, with a single Geister able to give Zeetha a run for her money.
- Ambiguously Human: It's unclear if they are humans, aliens, constructs, or whatever.
- Ditto Aliens: All Geisterdamen tend to look entirely alike. It's hinted they may be clones, though Othar at least claims they aren't literally identical.
- Evil Counterpart: Seem to serve as these to the Jaegermonsters, being an elite fighting force sworn to serve a single figure for the duration, which they do so with (mostly) undying devotion. Just the Geisterdamen serve the Other, who's far worse than any Heterodyne's ever managed. And they're not quite as goofy or lovable. Also, unlike the Jaegers, at least some of them are Wasped.
- Fantastic Caste System: They have one. Most of the warriors, or the ones the Other left alive after it was through venting on them, were sent to Europa to find Agatha.
- Foreign Cuisine: They hate the local food in Europe, and have got by largely on cheese they made themselves. From spider-milk (because using cow-milk would just be stupid.)
- Giant Spiders: We're talking flippin' enormous here. Their spiders tower over trees and buildings, and the Geisterdamen ride them to get about.
- Gratuitous German: "Geisterdamen" in German translates to "ghost ladies".
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Not always "babies", but still young children. They frequently kidnapped young Sparky girls in search of their "Holy Child", hooking them up to their machine to see if they were the one they were looking for. Usually they weren't and the process would kill the girls.
- Lady Land: As the name might suggest, no Geistermen (Geisterherren?) have been sighted to date.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal:
- After the Other carried out a massacre upon them over their failure to thwart Barry Heterodyne's One-Man Army assault to liberate baby Agatha, a few of her priestesses chose to interpret her as a devil, impersonating their goddess to steal the Holy Child's power. They set up their own faction within the Geisterdamen and rebelled, destroying the portal used to send their forces to Europa.
- The Queen of Dawn forms her own faction within the Other's forces. Since the Geisterdamen are technically loyal to the Other rather than directly herself, she enacts The Purge with an Uriah Gambit. The confused, betrayed, and leaderless survivors end up turning on both the Queen of Dawn and the Other, using their Holy Child as a loophole around the Other's control.
- Not Always Evil: Although the majority of Geisters are slavishly loyal to the Other, a few were able to break her spell. Loremistress Milvistle for one saw the Other as some kind of demon and rebelled against her to protect the infant Agatha. Later on, a group following Eotain, with the help of Othar Trygavassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) are able to rebel and defect to the good side.
- Religion of Evil: They worship the Other, in many aspects. Exactly what the tenets of that religion are isn't clear, but again, they worship the Other. They also lead worship as they have a weaker command voice that works on revenants. Additionally, they had a chapel devoted to her in Sturmhalten where they'd strap young girls into the Summoning Engine, usually killing them in the process.
- Stealth Expert: Part of how they got their name. Their giant spiders are alarmingly quiet, most people don't ever hear them coming. They're good enough to get the drop on Smoke Knights.
- Undying Loyalty: Supposedly, to the Other, who they are programmed to obey, but it's clear that loyalty is not 100% concrete all the time. Being wasped probably helps, though. In Othar's Twitter adventures, Oslaka willingly goes off to live with Othar, and Eotain claims that after the massacre of many of her sisters in Paris, she's done following the Other.
- Villainous Valour: Lady Vrin watched Anevka shut down her fellow Geisters with her voice, and her first response it to jump right at her."I am not some first-rank priestess to be manipulated by voice alone. I know my Lady and I know my duty! DIE, MONSTER!"
- Would Hurt a Child: There's a reason girl Sparks in Europa tend to go missing, and that reason is these gals, grabbing them to try and use the Summoning Engine to bring the Other back, not knowing it was broken (and only meant to work on Agatha).
- You Can't Go Home Again: Not native to Europa. Exactly where they come from is amazingly unclear, just that it's somewhere very far away. After the Other came back from... wherever it was, it sent a lot of them to Europa to find Agatha, with the condition they couldn't go home until they'd found her (and it's entirely possible this was just BS on the Other's part to begin with).
- Uniformity Exception: Lady Vrin dresses in a purple gown, instead of the light blue bodice and loincloth that most Geisters wear.
Eotain
Eotain, Geisterdamen Warrior
A Geisterdamen encountered early on by Agatha in her misadventures, later an acolyte of Othar Tryggvassen (GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!); much of her adventures with the latter fellow have only appeared on Twitter, and not in the main comic.- All There in the Manual: Since most Geisterdamen look nigh-identical anyway, it's hard to tell, but the novel confirms that Eotain along with Shurdlu are the first two Agatha meets, and they are also the pair in the cells in Sturmhalten.
- The Bus Came Back: She and the other Geisters flee Sturmhalten before the Baron's forces show up. They don't reappear until Agatha's time in Paris, with Eotain and Shurdlu chasing the heroes across the rooftops. Eotain reappears with Othar when Gil and Tarvek return to Paris following the mess in England.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She really loves her giant spider, Bwoosee, and gets in some angry raging at the heavens when Dimo crushes it.
- Missed Him by That Much: In her first appearance, she and Shurdlu stumble upon Agatha, mistakenly taking her for Lucrezia (because she and Lars were reciting some Lucrezia and Bill dialogue from a Heterodyne play, and Agatha's voice sounds almost, but not quite, like her mom's) only to stomp off in annoyance on realizing Agatha's just an actor. The story of Girl Genius would have gone very differently otherwise.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Queen of Dawn sending her and the other Geisterdamen to Paris to (almost certainly) deliberately get killed proves to be enough for Eotain to defect, using Agatha's existence as a loophole to get around the total obedience they're supposed to have.
- Mook Promotion: Eotain starts off as just one Geisterdamen warrior, but with the Other's mass purge and Vrin's death, she (and Shurdlu) are shown leading some sort of operation in Paris.
- Running Gag: Identifying Agatha as an actor.
- Those Two Guys: As noted, Eotain often appears alongside a cohort, Shurdlu. Shurdlu dies at some point in Paris.
The Muse of Time
The Muse of Time, the Mysterious Entity
- Body Horror: When Agatha finds her in Van Rijn's lab, she looks like a hideous combination of a robotic skeleton and a Devil Dog from Castle Heterodyne.
- Foreshadowing:
- She first appeared in a time window pointing at Agatha and proclaiming "... Like that?!" to someone offscreen.
- In her first appearance, she has hands that look very similar to the dragon from Theo's Heterodyne Boys story. They also look similar to the hands of the Geisterdamen's mistress from Lady Vrin's flashback.
- In Van Rijn's notebook, we're shown that one of the Muse of Time's forms looks very similar to Agatha and wears what looks like a Heterodyne symbol on her eye. A later flashback of Albia's confirms that this is a version of Lucrezia, albeit one that's taken a severe beating.
- Mysterious Stranger: Almost nothing is known about her and she has only shown up twice in the series.
- Robot Hair: In her first appearance she has long wires coming from her head that have been styled into braids. In her second appearance, she has disheveled human-like hair.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: While not enough is known of her to call her "evil", Van Rijn was able to trap her in his lab below Paris where she stayed for over 200 years before the Lucrezia-copy in Agatha's head influenced/instructed her host into restoring the Muse's power, allowing her to escape.
- Small Role, Big Impact: In her first appearance she spooked Agatha, causing her to run into the alley where her locket was stolen, kicking off the plot.
- Time Master: She has the ability to travel through time seemingly at will.
- Trickster Mentor: When she appeared in front of Van Rijn and stayed long enough to talk, she would sometimes teach him new things.
