Lucrezia Mongfish

This article is about a member of House Mongfish. For others in the lineage or other uses, see House Mongfish (disambiguation).

This article is about a member of House Heterodyne. For others in the lineage or other uses, see Heterodyne (disambiguation).

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Lucrezia Mongfish
That naughty flashback scene…
Name:	Lucrezia Heterodyne (née Mongfish)
Occupation:	Spark, 'Thief of Souls', Goddess, The Other
Debut:	Klaus's memories ✣ (in a flashback), "I'm back!" ✣ (in the flesh, so to speak)
Death:	It's a state of mind.
Relations
House:	Mongfish; Heterodyne.
Parents:	Lucifer Mongfish
Children:	Klaus Barry Heterodyne (deceased); Agatha Heterodyne
Relatives:	Serpentina Mongfish, Demonica (Mongfish) Malfeazium (sisters); Barry Heterodyne, unnamed DuMedd, unnamed Malfeazium (brothers in-law); Theopholous DuMedd (nephew); Zola Malfeazium (niece)
Marital Status:	married, husband missing

"No, Klaus, this isn't a game. I am determined to change. I do love him. It should be enough."

"Besides, they always win. There must be something to their philosophy."

Lucrezia during That Naughty Flashback Scene

Lucrezia Mongfish is the daughter of Lucifer Mongfish (one of the longtime adversaries of the Heterodyne boys) and is a full-fledged Spark in her own right. No mention has been made so far of who her mother might have been. After a period of creatively opposing the Heterodyne boys (and a romantic relationship with Klaus), she officially renounced her father's ways and married Bill Heterodyne.

Whether she truly intended to join the forces of Good is an open question, however, as she is also (in some form) the terrible Other who caused a great deal of destruction amongst Europa's sparks. She has attempted to justify her slavery and killing to Klaus as the only likely way to possibly attain their shared goal of true peace.

Further discussion of Lucrezia's motivations and goals is quickly complicated by lack of information. In fact, there is a lot we still don't know about this very important woman. Expect further revelations as the story unfolds, and expect them to have a major impact. The mysteries surrounding Lucrezia are some of the most central of Girl Genius.

Backstory

Lucrezia as the Geisterdamen Goddess

Lucrezia'a backstory is complicated by being partly legendary, partly revealed by (possibly) unreliable narrators, namely Klaus and Lady Vrin, and partly by her becoming a time traveller at some (yet unknown) point. Like everything else regarding Lucrezia, bear in mind the unresolved questions.

She did receive some educational training from Tarsus Beetle, and was a sorority sister at an unnamed university with Francisia Monahan; the two appear to have been as close to being friends as is possible with Sparks of their temperament and caliber.

After Bill proposed to her and she accepted, Lucrezia drugged Klaus (whom she was still seeing) and shipped him off to parts unknown. She then went on to marry Bill and live with him in Castle Heterodyne. She and Bill had a son, Klaus Barry Heterodyne, and Lucrezia was apparently pregnant with Agatha when the Castle was attacked. The attack was presumed to have been carried out by the Other, who kidnapped Lucrezia.

However, according to the Geisterdamen, who worship her as a goddess, she came to them at around the time the Castle was attacked in "high distress," and very pregnant. As far as we know, she gave birth to Agatha while with the Geisterdamen, as she entrusted the infant to them before once more disappearing from them as well. She reappeared to them sometime later, apparently in the form of a clank, and sent them into the "shadow world" (Europa) to search for Agatha (who had been taken from the Geisters by person or persons unknown (Likely Barry Heterodyne, given that he raised Agatha and matches the silouette visible in Tarvek's recounting).

According to the Girl Genius Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game, the "original Lucrezia" (as opposed to her various European vessels) is currently in the Citadel of Silver Light, and her "callings" have no contact with her.

Lucrezia Today

The next time Lucrezia is heard from, and the moment she first appears in the story proper, is when she (or a copy of her mind) is downloaded into Agatha's brain in Sturmhalten, where she plots to take over the Baron's empire by infecting him with a special slaver wasp. With help from Tarvek, she is duplicated into a clank brain as part of this plan. When the plan starts to fall apart (due to the unexpected arrival of Klaus and a great many troops, instead of a single Questor), she still manages to wasp the Baron before she is firmly repressed by Agatha's returned Locket.

This version briefly regains control of Agatha's body while in her secret lab beneath Castle Heterodyne. Scared that her daughter's mind is too strong for her to reliably control, and that Agatha seems to be learning some of her secrets through osmosis, she decides to kill Agatha once she can assure her memories can be successfully related to her other selves. To that end she attempts to transfer another copy of herself to "ride along" in the mind of her niece Zola Malfeazium. Too late, she learns the rebel Geister Milvistle anticipated this happening and constructed a neural trap in Zola's mind that (theoretically) completely controls the Lucrezia-personality and allows full access to its secrets. Zola escapes and Lucrezia is driven back into "hiding" by Von Pinn. Much later, while in the Corbettite Depot Fortress of St. Szpac, she briefly regains control of Agatha's body, where she offers cryptic comments to the effect that some process she initiated went very wrong, leaving her trapped or stranded somewhere for an extended period, awaiting rescue that evidently never came.

At other times this copy is able to influence Agatha's behavior without explicitly taking over, even with the locket in place, such as in Van Rijn's Hermitorium in the Immortal Library under Paris, where Agatha is prompted into freeing The Muse of Time from the sphere where the now long-dead Van Rijn imprisoned her.

Meanwhile, the clank version of Lucrezia turns up in Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg where she meets a post-Castle, badly-injured Zola, who at least claims to be solely Lucrezia, and reveals that Klaus has been wasped. Clank-Lucrezia then takes (partial) control of Klaus. Following the Hospital's destruction and Klaus's solo return to Castle Wulfenbach, the clank-copy drops out of sight for a very long time. A post-Timeskip Dimo says that some copy of Lucrezia/The Other is loose on the land and being actively opposed by Gilgamesh Wulfenbach. It is possible this is The Queen of the Dawn, whom Tarvek, upon seeing Her Majesty in person in Paris, correctly identifies as being Zola; it is still not made clear who is running her body.

The action shifts to England, where It is discovered/remembered by England's immortal Queen Albia that at some point (a physical copy of) Lucrezia acquires the ability to travel in time. This Lucrezia, looking more like a machine than human ✣ , has been on a rampage wiping out the society of the Ancient God-Queens 5,000 years in the past.

The copy of Lucrezia inside Agatha is finally able to completely overpower the locket and take full control of Agatha's body. Albia is temporarily channeled onto the scene ✣ (the undersea dome of her Society of Sparks) and announces ✣ that she has further dug through her centuries of memories and determined that Lucrezia is indeed The Muse of Time, among many, many others. The Lu-copy claims in response to be further along her personal timeline than the Queen killing spree, saying that she tortured some of the Queens into revealing their secrets.

The clank-copy ("Lunevka") finally reappears ✣ as well, leading a large contingent of wasped British soldiers as she seeks the Agatha-copy. She doesn't look much like she did before, with a very different face and lots of added weaponry and armor, but Tarvek again is the one who finally confirms it's her by using the physical-override voice-control ✣ he installed in the body. (And before having to withdraw, the Albia-projection is able to temporarily free the wasped troops from Lucrezia's control.)

Having previously altered the machine ✣ intended to extract her from Agatha's body enough to force a total rebuild ✣ , the Agatha copy proceeds to generally run amok, stabbing ✣ various people with Zeetha's purloined swords, gleefully monologuing, and so forth. Things go from bad to worse when she figures out how to ascend to second-stage Sparkhood ✣ a la Albia, and does so ✣ , characteristically gloating over this achievement and announcing her general superiority.

When Ardsley Wooster refuses to deviate from his loyalty to Albia, Lucrezia blasts him ✣ , with fatal results. Nevertheless, the remaining protagonists have cobbled together a new copy of the extraction machine, and subdue Lucrezia ✣ thanks to the presence of Martellus von Blitzengaard, whose chemical alterations of Agatha's body still have a debilitating effect when the two of them get in direct physical contact, even with Lucrezia mentally in charge. She is forcibly attached to the machine, the switch is flipped, and Agatha drives out the intruder, who is transferred into a small glowy storage container ✣ .

Meanwhile, the incapacitated clank-copy is hauled away by another set of troops who were sent there by (it would seem) Dr. Monahan to do precisely that. (They probably wanted the Agatha-copy as well, but evidently decide to get while the getting was good.) They activate the dome's self-destruct mechanism, and release numerous experiments as they flee, forcing Agatha and Co. to hastily depart as well, taking along the extracted Lucrezia (who evidently remains in the possession of Albia.)

Later the clank-copy is seen on Big Rat Island, along with Lady Steelgarter and Monahan activating and tuning the local Queen-Mirror. She and Monahan come into violent conflict over the island's cleansed Queen-creating spring; she eventually self-destructs ✣ after being drained of nearly all of her power and suffering heavy damage in battle.

Character Traits

A few things seem consistent between what Klaus remembers of her and what we saw in Sturmhalten. Lucrezia in all her appearances so far (minus "The Dragon from Mars" or other Heterodyne stories) has many of the qualities of a femme fatale. She's comfortable with her sexuality and uses it to her advantage. She's proud, smart, and capable of being devious, even with those closest to her. While she technically is a "Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter," she is by no means naïve or sheltered. Instead, both the Heterodyne shows and Klaus's recollections give us a picture of Lucrezia as a dangerous and crafty Spark in her own right, as at odds with the heroes as is her father, and often working independently of him. Klaus told Gil that she was "Ruthless, manipulative, and a consummate actress," which seem to be a reasonable assessment of the characteristics of both the Lucrezia that possessed Agatha and the Lucrezia he was romantically involved with twenty years ago. (There have been moments when Lucrezia's ability to act seems to have deserted her, however.)

It was revealed in St. Szpac ✣ that at some point in time, one of Lucrezia's experiments "went wrong" disastrously, leaving her waiting for a very long time in hope of being rescued. It is possible that this is related to the dramatic shift in personality between the devious, but ultimately well-intentioned (or at least trying to be) woman that the Heterodyne boys knew, and the Other that devastated Europa. In recounting Lucrezia's massacre of the other Ancient God-Queens to Gil and Trelawney Thorpe, Albia remembers the young, fully human Lucrezia as having an "exquisite" mind; by the time she had begun taking on cybernetic enhancements and making war on the God-Queens, Lucrezia had been so thoroughly traumatized by... whatever happened to her that her mind was left shattered to a degree that even Albia could scarcely believe.

Lucrezia's Secret Heterodyne Laboratory

Deep below the deep Great Movement Chamber, Lucrezia conducted her secret experiments. These experiments were extensive and included mind transfer and mind control. Her lab is equipped with a rather thorough brain washer and dryer, a captured muse, a BMFGun, a self destruct mechanism, and a tea cart.

Mind manipulations are Lucrezia's specialties. There is also a Beacon Engine in the lab, similar in appearance to the one once in Sturmhalten.

Thief of Souls

I'm back!

Lucrezia is a monster. She is on a mission to "Show them all." What she wishes to show remains to be revealed. However, her personality from seventeen years ago is available for download to suitable hosts via "calling" through the summoning engine. Such a downloaded copy is referred to as a "calling".  This allows any one calling to allow its host to die, knowing there is always the potential for another calling. The loss of the current memories and experiences in the current host seems not to faze her unless something important will be lost.

The Geisterdamen care for her slaver engines. Most of the Geisterdamen seem to be under Lucrezia's control. During the Other War the wasps turned their victims into revenants, shambling zombie-like servants of the Other. Over the last nineteen years improvements have been made, and the infected can seem to be fully functioning normals until given a order in a voice similar to Lucrezia's. The Baron has discovered many so infected. In Sturmhalten, the Baron himself was infected by a unique wasp that works on Sparks. It is the hope to transmit this knowledge to her other selves, plus the knowledge of the trick Zola pulled, that keeps Lucrezia from ending her existence in Agatha.

The lives of those infected are never theirs again. Once infected there is no known way to remove the effects, though it has been reported second-hand that Gil has found an unspecified way to make at least the revenants on Castle Wulfenbach "stop doink vot [Lucrezia] sez". Additionally, Klaus states he has effectively supplanted her wasp-based control of Gil using decision-and-behavior-modification-based mind control, even though Gil's supposed wasping never actually happened to begin with, as confirmed by the 4th novel.

Additional Bodies

As noted above, Lucrezia copies herself into many bodies.

Agatha

See #Thief of Souls above.

Agatha has her dybbuk because Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus attempted to use the mysterious Mind Transfer Machine on her. The intention was to erase Agatha's personality and mind while replacing it with a copy of Lucrezia Mongfish's mind and personality. This did not work out as planned by Lucrezia because one of her Priestesses, one Loremistress Milvistle, was disillusioned with her and sabotaged the machine causing it to malfunction during the copying process. Agatha's mind and personality were not erased, so Lucrezia's mind and personality were forced to occupy only part of Agatha's brain. Lucrezia's is the stronger personality, so she can suppress Agatha's personality until she put on Agatha's Locket. This locket was made by Barry Heterodyne to help hide Agatha's spark. Fortunately, it had an even harsher effect on Lucrezia's personality suppressing her enough for Agatha to regain control over her mind and body. Agatha has been in control of herself from that time until the present.

Klaus, on the other hand, was wasped ✣ by Lucrezia while she was in control of Agatha's body, and he remains extremely suspicious of Agatha, thinking that she is, in essence, a copy of her mother. Klaus Wulfenbach is deeply frightened of Lucrezia-in-Agatha, and is torn because his son is irretrievably in love with Agatha. He later takes the radical step of imprinting a dybbuk of his own in Gil's brain. By doing this, he is carrying the battle to Lucrezia by using her own mind transfer tricks against her.

She has Manifested twice within Castle Heterodyne, and never under her own power. However Agatha has suppressed this Dybbuk by herself.

Anevka

Main article: "Lunevka"

Zola

Lucrezia (#Agatha) attempts to transfer a copy of her mind and personality ✣ into Zola Malfeazium, so she can escape from Castle Heterodyne and the various parties pursuing her, including, in a sense, Agatha herself, who she therefore plans to kill (i.e., commit suicide). This backfires as the members of House Malfeazium are exceedingly thorough researchers, and were assisted by Loremistress Milvistle. They found tools with which to resist Lucrezia's mind transfer techniques and they used them on Zola just in case it became necessary, ensuring that any forcible transfer would result in mutual brain death. Thanks to this, Zola remains in control of her own body after the transfer, housing the copy within a prepared neural net. With this she is able to pick through the memories of Lucrezia that were downloaded into her brain during the attempt to overlay a copy of Lucrezia into her brain.

Zola finally escapes Castle Heterodyne severely injured and crashing and is placed in the Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg, where she is found by a copy stored in the mechanical body of Anevka Sturmvoraus. Zola convinces her that she is in fact ✣ Lucrezia. This clank Lucrezia then takes steps ✣ to help Zola heal faster than normal, although requiring her to experience increased pain.

With the knowledge she gains from her copy, Zola goes on to become Queen of the Dawn.

Muse

Main article: Enigma

This is actually several different bodies, but all referred to as the Muse of Time

When Agatha examines the Van Rijn notebook in Paris (having brought it there from the Corbettite Depot Fortress) she discovers that it now includes a drawing of the Enigma as she saw her at the beginning of the story. The notes refer to this as the "Muse of Time".

When Agatha and crew discover Van Rijn's Hermitorium, she releases (under the influence of Lucrezia) a being trapped there. Aldin Hoffmann discovers in another book of notes on site that Van Rijn also called this the Muse of Time. The notebook contains at least two further "guises" ✣ of the Muse.

Queen Albia of England corroborates ✣ that Lucrezia occupied "poor Van Rijn's Muse of Time" and remembers at least five guises (which do not include the Enigma), one of which overlaps with one seen in the notebook, making eight total at this point.

Crystal

Vrin told of her mistress's aspects ✣ : usually a lovely one (see #Backstory above), but in the end pregnant and in distress —these are presumably her original body. In the comic, when the Goddess returns to punish the Geisters for their failure we only see a hand reaching out to strangle Vrin (presumably), which hand looks similar to one possessed by the Enigma. However, in the novelization Vrin refers to this last aspect as the Lady of Sharp Crystal— the Enigma doesn't look like sharp crystal. Later, when Eotain recounts the history ✣ to Gilgamesh and his group on their way to fight the Polar Ice Lords, she also uses that name (or so Tarvek translates it), and we get a silhouette that doesn't resemble any of the foregoing.

Eotain also refers to this "the cruel aspect" as "the bringer of vengeance," but the silhouette does not resemble the The Muse of Vengeance.

Jar

When Albia realizes that it was Lucrezia ✣ who used the network of Queen's Mirrors to kill the members of the Great Society of Queens, she demands that she be removed ✣ from #Agatha immediately and furthermore (after discussion with Klaus#Gil — some of which must have taken place off-screen) this copy must be kept ✣ for further study. Tarvek doesn't like the delay, but Trelawney Thorpe is determined ✣ that the capture should occur, so he volunteers to build the containment unit.

And, with a number of further delays, the transfer is finally accomplished ✣ .

The jar is seen being held by Tarvek 2019-11-20 (Wednesday) ✣ panel 3 and 2019-11-22 (Friday) ✣ .

The Works

Lucrezia Mongfish is a sepia-toned card in The Works. She is depicted in a long-sleeved, high-collared garb with a Heterodyne trilobite at her neck, and holding a hypodermic syringe. The additional details are Villain, Legend, and Spark.

Novelization

In the prologue to Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg, Lucrezia is in her secret lab under the Castle, accompanied by minion Mozek (a defrocked priestess) and a Geisterdame named Glimtockka. Evidently pregnant with Agatha, the creation of Von Pinn (body and spirit) has been completed, and she is about to transfer the Castle's consciousness into the Otilia chassis. The switch is thrown...

Possibly relevant outside information

"Lucretia McEvil" is a 1970 song by Blood, Sweat & Tears.

In early Roman history of the tale of Lucrezia and Tarquin, Lucrezia was attacked while her husband was away. The end result changed the course of Roman history with empire-wide repercussions.

There just might be a little nod to a certain Ms. Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) who is remembered by posterity as the quintessential femme fatale who'd do literally everything to advance her power and that of her Mafia-like family (like lots of illegitimate affairs, poisoning drinks with poison hidden in a ring, impersonating her father who happened to be the pope, you name it). Quite probably most of this is based on little more than rumours and fiction, but for some reason it stuck and immortalised her name. And she did have a tendency to choose influential husbands/lovers, who, in turn, had a suspicious tendency to die or vanish or be disposed of with surprising swiftness. And she had long blonde hair, and she was known to be highly intelligent, and she almost certainly enjoyed teasing everyone around her.

Open Questions

Of which there are a lot... feel free to speculate in the Fan Theories Forum!

• Was the electrical apparition in Beetleburg (shown here ✣ ) an image of Lucrezia?
• In what way, and with what motives, is Lucrezia the Other?
  • Did she plan it all along?
    • Tarvek says ✣ "My father... worked with Lucrezia before she became the Other." So there's one vote for there being a time before Otherhood.
  • Did she become the victim of one of her own experiments?
  • Did she just get bored, like Klaus told her she would?
  • Given the Other's body-snatching proclivities, is Lucrezia really the first Other?
  • Or something weirder?
• Where is she right now, and what's she up to?
  • Possibly should be stated: "Where are shes?"
• How many of her are there, anyway?
• Who was her mother?
• Why did she start to murder God-Queens? Where did she get a weapon capable of doing so?
• When and how did she gain the ability to time-travel? What happened to her, body and mind, to make her so twisted?
  • Does it have anything to do with the time she was in need of rescue ✣ for "so long"?
  • What is "this", that isn't a game ✣ ? 
  • Enigma was trapped in an orb ✣ for 200 years. If that was the 'prime' Lucrezia, that would explain all the above nicely. In the previous panel, Lucrezia influenced Agatha's actions in freeing Enigma, Agatha later reported feeling Lucrezia's huge sense of triumph ✣ at Enigma's release.