Tear Jerker / Girl Genius

Because sometimes even mad scientists aren't immune to heartbreak.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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The comic proper:

First Journey:

Volume 2: Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City

• These two pages, as Barry gives Agatha her locket. Made even worse by the fact that Barry Heterodyne, who freaks out even Lucrezia Mongfish, the OTHER, is crying. And that young Agatha seems to be just as intelligent as she should be, rationalizing Barry's statement of "it's science" to "Ah. You mean you'll explain when I have a sufficiently advanced background education." Necessary or not, what Barry did to Agatha was horrible.
  • Two high points? "The music's stopped..." and the colour from the background fading into a dull sepia.
• When Agatha stumbled onto Dr. Dimitri's teddy bear stash, and he's begging her not to tell... "He doesn't know! It's my last secret! He's taken all the others, but not them! I've kept them safe!" Seeing the scars on his head, and then finding out that Baron Wulfenbach has been lobotomizing Sparks to see how to deactivate them makes it particularly sad.
  • What makes it even worse is imagining what would happen if Wulfenbach found out about the stuffed bears. No matter what Klaus' reaction would be (either to let him keep them or take them away) it would be heartrending.
  • Gets worse in the novelization - when they're escaping Castle Wulfenbach, Krosp drags Agatha and Theo off to find him. When they do, Vapnoople reveals that the bears are supposed to be his new army, but though he still acts like a Spark, he isn't one anymore, and they're forced to leave without him.
    • Krosp calls Vapnoople Papa. And is clearly upset when he has to leave without him after promising to take him somewhere safe and says he'll return.

Volume 4: Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus Of Dreams

• Gil's face in panel 4 could make every Memetic Badass named on this wiki, Klaus included, cry. Even without context.
  • It gets worse if you put it in perspective. Gil spent most of his life hoping for a girl who could understand his crazy Sparky ideas. He gets his wish in form of Agatha, spends only a couple of days bonding and falling in love with her and then all of this is ripped from him when she "dies". They weren't even so close, like Gil himself admits a few times, but the possibility of what they could have been is enough to send him down the spiral of depression for next two months.

Volume 5: Agatha Heterodyne and the Clockwork Princess

• How about in "Agatha vs the Jägers"? Seeing a superhuman immortal hunter monster collapse into tears because he found the last scion of the family he loves and swore to obey, plus gets to go home? Their cause was literally hopeless...
  Oggie: Ve haff missed you! Please, please be real!
  Agatha: Shh. I... I am.
• Gil confides in Wooster on exactly why he was so attracted to Agatha.
  Gil: Wooster, do you know how boring it can be to be with someone who doesn't understand a thing you're talking about?
  Wooster: I... I believe I do, sir.
  Gil: Well, that's how I feel all the time. I always hoped I'd find — not just someone to marry — but a real partner. I've read about female Sparks all my life, but even in Paris — Paris, for pity's sake — just finding any girl that I could really talk to... About things I was working on — ideas... Well. But Miss Clay — she had the Spark. And... she liked me. She did. And I... liked her.
• After Gilgamesh terrorizes Wooster in order to make sure Albia doesn't exploit Agatha after she flees there, he takes a moment to regret that he had to turn the man who had been his best friend into a minion.
  Gil: Goodbye, Wooster. I'll miss you.

Volume 6: Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite

• The surprisingly poignant death scene of Anevka Sturmvoraus, who normally acted quite the Manipulative Bitch beforehand.
  Tarvek: I am - was, very fond of my sister. I want you to know... my father was not the only one who was comforted by your presence. But my sister is dead. I've got to accept that. I've got to move on.
  Anveka: I... I'm not your sister?
  Tarvek: ... no.
  Anveka: But then- what am I?
  Tarvek: ... a very good first try.
  • The novels manage to make it worse. In the comics, Tarvek soldiers on with what he was doing. In the novel, he openly cries for a few minutes, before getting back to work.
• And then there's that of Lars.
  • "A Heterodyne girl... Heh. An ordinary guy like me... never had a chance..."
    • And the background went all grey and misty...
    • The novels give Agatha a line after that: "you were never just ordinary".
  • It was worse when Maxim gave his hat to Abner. "So when you bury him, make sure he gots a hat." And then he gives him his. Hats are serious, serious business among the Jäger. It shows how much they admire the Heroic Sacrifice.

Volume 7: Agatha Heterodyne and the Voice of the Castle

• The reveal of why Carson's so skeptical of Agatha's claim: "Klaus Barry Heterodyne". Agatha had an older brother she never knew about.
  • The Heterodyne Boy's reaction to the attack. Bill goes insane with grief at his son's death and his wife's disappearance, so insane even the Jäger generals couldn't restrain him. And then, after several hours of private discussion, the Boys packed up what they could, left Mechanicsburg... and never came back.
  • The picture of Carson's reaction to seeing his dead son's body clinging to the corpse of Klaus Barry is... distressing especially since the way they died would make an open casket funeral impossible. In the same vein, Agatha realizing that her mother (intentionally?) murdered her own son, Agatha's older brother.

Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse

• As Higgs is cradling Zeetha's stabbed and presumably dying body, the expression on his face must be seen to be believed (second to last panel). Not to mention Agatha's in the first panel.
  • And let's remember this is Higgs, who barely ever shows any emotion.
  • And just Zeetha herself on that page. She is whimpering. Zeetha, Daughter of Chump and Boisterous Bruisette Extraordinaire is WHIMPERING with the effort to breathe. That is sad all on its own.

Volume 12: Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg

• Bangladesh Du Pree of all people breaking down and crying like a little girl over the death of Klaus Wulfenbach.
• The look on Klaus's face here. He hates what he's doing to Gil, but there's no choice...

Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne and the Sleeping City

• The little waspeater babies lost their mommy.
• Looking at Ruxala, the wasp eater wrangler on the crashed Vespiary Squad ship that Tarvek boards, bawling while clutching two dead wasp eaters and surrounded by several others.
• We could have kept him safe...

Second Journey:

Volume 3: Agatha Heterodyne and the Incorruptible Library

• Dimo revealing that the Jägers used to discreetly follow around the Heterodyne boys on their adventures. Barry eventually noticed and Bill ordered them to not follow them on their next adventure, basically because it's hard to make it as a hero when you're being protected by the minions of your notoriously evil ancestors. That adventure is the one during which they vanished.
  Dimo: Ve should have been dere. Ve should haff gone vit dem.
  • The next page dicusses the reason they were ordered to not follow, and has Dimo outright suggest Agatha she may want to let go of the Jägers at some point if she wants to be accepted as a heroic Heterodyne. Agatha's reply to this belongs both here and in Heartwarming Moments.
• Tarvek has a meltdown when the Smoke Knight currently abducting him reveals they're going to take him back to his family. His attempts to fight the Knight off are as desperate as they are unsuccessful, and he screams that he doesn't want to go back.

Volume 4: Kings and Wizards

• It's brief, but Prende looks absolutely devastated when it looks like Andronicus is going to abandon her in favor of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Thankfully, Agatha manages to convince him to take her with him.
• The Master of Paris just looks so tired when he explains that the end of the Shining Coalition was not as simple as history tells it (with the Storm King getting lost in a hedge maze) but instead the rest of the coalition having to "put down" Andronicus, whom he describes as having become a "corrupted shell" by that time. It's brutal to see that very same Andronicus, hailed as the heart and soul of their Coalition be turned into a wretched corrupted remnant of himself, forcing his friends to fight him to preserve what he helped create. We see in flashback one of the Coalition members was sobbing and another had collapsed on the ground after the Storm King's defeat. The realization that his friend was not buried but merely placed in stasis right under his nose doesn't help. The Master is also the last member of the Shining Coalition left alive (bar Albia) and thus the only one left who could put an end to the monster that was once his close friend.
  The Master of Paris: May I be strong enough to finish this.
• When Andronicus finally is killed, he dies believing that he's finally found Euphrosynia.
• The Master of Paris saves his city one last time, only to die at the hands of a (literally) backstabbing traitor.

Volume 6: Sparks and Monsters

• Gil and Trelawney's visit to the Queen's memories gets rather sad when she relates how the mirrors stopped working, as well as the fate of her "sister" Queens.
  • And then she suddenly remembers the identity of the assailant - namely Lucrezia Mongfish, Agatha's mother, aka The Other.
• The look on Tarvek's face when Krosp tells him that Violetta is probably dead. Although at this point they haven't found the body, it's a heartbreaking reminder that for all their vitriol, they're family and they really do love each other.
  • Tarvek even admits the reason they were together was he specifically asked for her to be assigned to him to keep her safe from the rest of the scheming family.
• After the outsider restores Dr. Dim's mind and megalomania, Krosp clearly realizes he may have to choose between Agatha, his subject he considers totally under his protection, and his beloved "poppa." Sure enough, a few pages later, he does. And Dim is furious he chose Agatha.
• Trelawney sobbing and crying over the death of Wooster is this and no doubt the audience was the same. In the name of Her Majesty the Queen of England and for his friends, he faced death with dignity and defiance against Lucrezia/The Other.
• Oggie tells Zeetha about his long dead wife. She was a badass wandering bard who impressed both the then-current Heterodyne and the Jägers, and she took a shine to a pre-Jäger Oggie. She left the night he took the draft, taking nothing with her. He didn't see her again for ten years, when he found out that she had his son. After that they were together until she died, sixty-four years later. This time, she left him something: a family. Crosses over with Heartwarming.

Volume 8

• When the group gets back, Albia leads a somber ceremony in which she proclaims the full names and ranks of the fallen (starting with Wooster). Why? Doing so etches their names in the memory of everyone who heard her for life, assuring they won't be forgotten.
• Though he kinda dug his own grave, Martellus starts telling Krosp that he genuinely is attracted to Agatha and admires her. Krosp points out it will never work because she hates him. Martellus' expressions shows just how much he regrets treating Agatha and how he can never make it up to her.
• Seeing the troupe again is bittersweet for Agatha. As happy as she is to see them again, she's reminded of Lars and how he should be there with them.
  • There's also the way Agatha asks Zeetha if she ever wishes that they could've just stayed with the circus, rather than having to deal with everything that's happened since then. It's clear that at least a part of Agatha misses the relatively simple life she had before the burden of responsibility from being "The Heterodyne" was put on her shoulders.

Supplementary material

Side Stories

• Othar's Twitter, of all places, has one of the sweetest and saddest relationships ever.

The novels

• Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess:
  • During her travels with the circus, Agatha, during her training with Zeetha, recognizes that the day's exercise is supposed to end with her realizing how unprepared she is for Quata'ara swords, and says she'll pass. Surprisingly, Zeetha gets uncharacteristically angry, and pushes her harder than usual - only stopping when Dimo helps Agatha when she stumbles. Later that night, Zeetha admits that she overdid it - and explains that the normal result happened pretty regularly, to the point where trainees sometimes get themselves killed.
    "Except of course, when they do manage to kill themselves. My cousin, Zoniax, she was so much faster than I'll ever be. But they gave her... they let her..." She broke down sobbing. Before she knew what she was doing, Agatha found herself cradling the crying girl in her arms.
  • This line from Lars's death:
    Agatha waited for Lars to finish, and then saw that he had.
  • One of the final chapters begins with a song called "The Heterodynes will Return". The first verse is cheerful, and hopeful, talking about how Bill and Barry will come back, bringing wonders with them, and Make Things Right Again. The second?
    But I think the Heterodynes -
    they will return.
    They will come with fire and smokes
    and machines a'blazing in the night.
    They will stare at us from bloodspattered faces
    They will pull us up and roughly exclaim
    "We bought you years, but you've done nothing
    and now the monsters are a'snapping at our heels!"
• Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle manages to make Carson's tale of the attack on Castle Heterodyne more depressing than it already was. At one point, the Jägermonsters are mentioned to be crying. Jägers. Crying. The narration notes they don't cry when their Heterodyne cries. But the death of Klaus Barry Heterodyne is enough to make them weep. After arriving at the castle, and once he calms down enough to say anything, Bill's reaction is harsh. He exiles the Jäger generals, who don't even argue. They just nod and accept the judgement of their Heterodyne.
  • The novel expands upon the scene where Gil first meets Zeetha; she talks about her father 'Chump', revealing that he disappeared from Skifander when she was barely a month old and that part of her reason for coming to Europa was to look for him. She's noticeably defensive and self-conscious, perhaps still feeling the pain of a child whose father walked out on her and her mother with no apparent explanation. To make matters worse, both the Foglios out of universe and certain comic panels in-universe have all but confirmed that 'Chump' is Klaus Wulfenbach, who — after being betrayed and shipped into exile by Lucrezia — fell in love with Queen Zantabraxus, had lots of adventures with her, helped her regain her throne, got married and even started a family...only for it all to be ruined by having to flee Skifander (possibly not even intentionally) and likely never see his wife or daughter again in order to keep his son alive.
• Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg gives a much sadder context to this scene by showing Klaus' thoughts (before revealing Lucrezia's hand in the deed):
  Unseen by Gil, Klaus closed his eyes in pain. A part of him had hoped Gil would be able to see a way out. Something he had missed. But no. He straightened his shoulders and turned back to the broken young man before him. "Very good," he said. "There is . . . hope for you yet." Knowing there was no hope at all.

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